BDA raises a lot of very good points about funding for major freight rail projects and as well the relatively low/minimal standard that our interstate corridors are constructed to and the impacts this is causing in loss of productivity, competitiveness and basically the loss of potential that rail could bring in regard to our overall international competiveness, job opportunities etc.
The funding challenge is an especially difficult one to overcome. If you ask just about anyone in the street where would they prefer to see freight transported and they’ll say overwhelmingly even if it is simplistic that it should be on rail.
That very generalized support for rail doesn’t translate into clamours from the wider community to encourage or force greater investment however. In another thread it has been mentioned that investment in road infrastructure in 2016 will be some 8 TIMES MORE than rail.
So you can argue in one sense that money is there but rail doesn’t get it despite the fact that these days the quality of the business cases developed for rail projects are as well put together as they are for other infrastructure projects.
Whilst people may support rail, there is no doubt that the advocacy in the road lobby is far stronger and better organized than it is for rail. In addition, roads are something the community uses everyday and every road project delivers some benefit for all road users. Decision makers know that the public outcry in deferring or not approving a rail project attracts little or almost zero backlash than delaying a road project. People in their daily lives don’t get any sense at all how important a well-developed and executed rail freight network would be until you have some major smash on the Hume Freeway that blocks traffic and then there is the usual clamor that freight should be on rail. I know this is simplistic but at the end of the day it how people think.
I think it’s very clear based on history to date that no matter how strong the business case is, most of our rail development has relied on visionaries at various times in our history and from time to time as we know pro-active Railway Commissioners.
Lets take Sydney to Melbourne. In the past 45 years or so as BDA points out there has been an unrelenting program of various works that has piece by piece developed the Old Hume Highway into now a grade separated freeway. Investment has always occurred sometimes fairly substantially and at other times on a small scale but the vision to have this piece of infrastructure at the standard that is has always been there.
Look at rail. As an interstate rail corridor, the first substantial improvement in the rail corridor was in 1961/62 with the construction of the standard gauge south of Albury. Even that which was billed as a nation building project (and rightly so) was done on a shoe string budget; substandard formation, light weight rail, short crossing loops etc. (I’m not discounting the benefit of the project). It certainly lifted rail productivity substantially and no doubt assisted rail in remaining as the dominate mode for some period thereafter. But from 1962 until 2010 there was no major infrastructure and rail alignment improvements.
(I’m discounting the mid 1980’s when CTC signalling was installed south of Junee to Albury and 3,000 HP locomotives, elimination of guards vans and introduction of through running started as these are incremental and/or operating improvements). You only have to look at YouTube clips of even the 1990,s to see how small and inefficient trains were.
So until commencement of the ARTC North-South Alliance Project in 2008 we have over 46 years of effectively zero substantial improvement at a time when numerous well documented schemes to improve alignments, and the productivity of the railway are developed, reviewed and represented on numerous occasions. Certainly from time to time we saw initiatives like the development of the Superfreighter concept tried to be pushed through but none of this was arresting the slide in market share and the huge investment being made in the Hume and general overall performance and influence of the road sector.
ARTC then develops the $2 billion North – South Project and again a once in a 50 year initiative is significantly underfunded, and consequently the scale and scope of work largely amounts to catch up on deferred maintenance and replacement of antiquated signalling. Despite its scale there were really only a handful of what you could describe as major performance enhancements like SSFL, double tracking Seymour to Wodonga and the Wodonga ByPass as well as a few extended passing lanes.
Simply put $2 billion to upgrade almost 2,000 km of railway from Brisbane to Melbourne is spreading it very thin. Since then the only other investment has been in selective rerailing that is again needed but there is so little of it to enable any major improvement in running higher axleloads and/or speed. The goat track remains.
Had this been the Hume the various realignments that would have reduced journey times by hours would have been progressed over a period of a couple of decades. The resleepering would have been most likely undertaken on a full-face process coupled with subgrade remediation and improved drainage and most likely rerailed at the same time so that significant line segments would have been available for running higher axleload and/or speed.
As much as I am a proponent for the Inland Rail Corridor Project, it does not replace the need for a high capacity, highly competitive rail corridor between Sydney and Melbourne or at the expense of neglecting investment in the other interstate corridors as well included the so often quoted East-West Route to WA. (As good as its mode share might be, ask any driver about what they think of the standard of it. They certainly won’t describe as a super railway)!!!
