Government makes tracks for future growth

Decades of neglect of Australia’s rail system could be nearing an end.

With climate change - a potent political issue in the country - the environmental advantages of rail appear to have convinced the government.

The government is planning more rail investment

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced late last year a sweeping package of investments to improve throughput times and upgrade infrastructure.

This followed a report by environmental economist Ross Garnaut pointing out that rail and shipping respectively account for 2% and 3% of Australia’s transport-related emissions, compared with 32% for vans and trucks.

The Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), which operates much of the country’s rail network, says the country will face massive increases in demand for land transport in coming decades, and trucking alone will not fill that gap.

The country’s rail system has historically been plagued by interstate rivalries, differences in gauge and lack of investment. But since it started out a decade ago, ARTC has slowly overcome many of these obstacles and rail has gradually attracted a larger share of Australia’s land freight.

Average costs door-to-door are now 20% lower than trucking.

But ARTC wants more state and federal government support and is using the green argument to prove its case. "We are basically getting 100 trucks off the road with one train, " an ARTC spokesman tells IFW.

"The point really is the amount of fuel used is far less. One train transports more goods than over 100 trucks and uses incredibly less fuel than those 100 trucks. That is the bottom line."

That does not mean trucks will have no role, he adds. Some areas of Australia are inaccessible by rail and trucks will always be needed to feed into the rail network, in a truly intermodal system. Nevertheless, rail is overall cheaper and greener.

In a recent landmark public address, ARTC CEO David Marchant took up the theme. Transport currently represented 14% of Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions, he said, but this could increase to 66% by 2050 if nothing was done.

"In the next 25 years, we cannot rely on trucks doing all the heavy lifting of freight that has been so much the growth story for our economy in the last 25 years."