Article: Maldon-Dombarton line could speed passenger rail

[ozbob]

From the Illawarra Mercury click here!

Maldon-Dombarton line could speed passenger rail

Maldon-Dombarton line could speed passenger rail
MARIO CHRISTODOULOU
02 Apr, 2012 03:00 AM

Construction of the Maldon-Dombarton rail line could lead to extra passenger trains running between Wollongong and Sydney, a University of Wollongong academic said.

Rail and logistics expert Professor Philip Laird believes building the Maldon-Dombarton line would take trains off CityRail's South Coast line and allow extra passenger services to run between the morning and afternoon peaks.

''We move about eight million tonnes of coal a year to Port Kembla at night and between the morning and afternoon peaks [on the South Coast line],'' he said.

''Some of this has to move during the day which means it is difficult to find extra train paths for more passenger services.''

Wollongong to Sydney services run on an hourly timetable between the morning and afternoon peaks.

Prof Laird said that without freight on the line, CityRail could run a timetable resembling its Sydney to Gosford schedule.

CityRail runs double the number of trains between Sydney and Gosford between peak periods, with services every half hour.

''The goal ultimately is to get a service looking more like Sydney-Gosford, where there are not only twice as many trains between the am-pm peaks but they are faster as well,'' he said.

A Transport for NSW spokesman said there were about 350 freight services on the RailCorp network a week, but did not specify the proportion on the South Coast line.

He said the Government was considering investigating the issue as part of a long-term review of rail services.

''The movement of both passengers and freight is important for social and economic development of the region,'' he said.

''It is estimated that one freight train can take up to 150 trucks off the road.''

The transport department is holding forums to create a long-term master plan for the area. A meeting will be held in Wollongong on April 17. For details visit: transportmasterplan.nsw.gov.au.

[somebody]

Without throwing in a straighter, steeper alignment Waterfall-Thirroul I think this project doesn't pay.  I'm happy to be wrong though.

[colinw]

This may drive completion of the Maldon to Dombarton link.  Something also need to be done about the bottleneck that is the single track Clifton Tunnel between Scarborough & Coalcliff.

SMH -> Port Kembla sale to beef up port capacity

FOR Nick Whitlam, son of Gough and former merchant banker and former chairman of the NRMA, confirmation by the New South Wales government that the state-owned port he has chaired for the past seven years will be sold to the private sector is a moment to celebrate.

The decision to make Port Kembla Port Corporation the second container port in NSW and that it will be sold for about $500 million on a 99-year lease, or in conjunction with the $2 billion-plus Port Botany, is designed to get maximum interest and top dollar.

From October the data rooms will be ready for what is expected to be a strong line-up of interested parties, believed to include the world's second biggest shipping company, China COSCO Holdings, shipping giant Maersk Group, the Indian conglomerate Adani, which is bankrolling a $10 billion coal project in Queensland's Galilee Basin, as well as super funds and global infrastructure funds.

All governments will need to sell assets as they hit borrowing limits.

In the case of Port Kembla the sale will set the asset free to allow it to fulfil its potential rather than being financially constrained by competing budget and political decisions. It will also dovetail into the NSW government's transport master plan, to be released in November with a focus on freight.

Since Whitlam took the chair of Port Kembla Port Corporation in 2005 he has been lobbying for government funding or private sector interest to develop the port and rail track. He has succeeded to some degree but in private hands - with access to private funding - it would have had a more dramatic transformation, including investing in the Maldon-Dombarton railway line, which dates back to Neville Wran's time as premier and was left half-completed by Nick Greiner's Liberal government in 1988.

Port Kembla needs more than $1 billion for a port similar in capacity to Port Botany and another $500 million to complete the Maldon-Dombarton rail line to link the port and city. This would provide an alternative export-import location to alleviate bottlenecks at Sydney and Newcastle. Port Kembla, which is one of the state's three main international trade ports, is about 80 kilometres south of Sydney's CBD and 60 kilometres from Sydney's south-western suburbs. Total trade through Port Kembla has reached 33.6 million tonnes representing $13.5 billion in value.

Yesterday there were 11 ships waiting to come into Newcastle and another 72 ships with ''notified arrival time allocated and in transit'', which is a tricky way of avoiding attention-grabbing headlines of bottlenecks. Many are ready to load but are forced to hang around out of the public gaze.

A REPORT released in the US on Friday on high-frequency trading has set the cat among the pigeons in global equities markets as it challenges several studies that say HFT cuts costs for investors.

The report, released by Pragma Securities, has gone viral on the internet, as it picks up on a share trading phenomenon that remains a mystery - and a concern - to regulators and retail investors.

The idea of an exchange as a physical place where people come together to buy or sell shares is long dead. So too is the definition of what constitutes long term. Automated trading has grown rapidly as equity markets fragmented across multiple venues.

It has become a technological race for relevance and survival as trading technologies make it possible to buy and sell shares in milliseconds - or less.

In the US more than 50 per cent of equities and derivatives volume is based on HFT, compared with Australia, where it is a relatively new phenomenon and accounts for an estimated 20 per cent of volume.

Globally regulators are concerned that markets are being manipulated by computer trading, with many blaming the May 2010 flash crash in the US on HFT, when the Dow Jones fell 1000 points, or almost 10 per cent, only to recover within minutes.

The Pragma report argues that some of the most heavily traded US stocks might also be among the most expensive to trade. It puts a figure of $US2.5 billion a year on the cost to investors. It argues that the most popular stocks among high-frequency traders, including Bank of America, Microsoft and Ford Motor Company, make it hard for long-term investors to quickly buy and sell the stocks, which raises the costs for everyone.

''In contrast to the academic consensus view that high-frequency trading is benign, our research shows that there's a significant cost to the liquidity that they're providing,'' said Pragma boss David Mechner.

The report flies in the face of the typical argument that HFT reduces trading costs by making it easier for investors to buy and sell. It illustrates that costs initially fall as trading volumes rise but as average volume continues to rise, so do the costs and time to execute.

In Australia, where trading is drying up due to a lack of real volume in the actual markets, HFT can virtually push the market, or stocks, to positions where it wants.

Trust in the financial markets is at an all-time low and the markets are at a turning point. Technology, market structure and new products have evolved more quickly than the regulation. Where and when it will all end, time will tell.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/port-kembla-sale-to-beef-up-port-capacity-20120730-23a2g.html#ixzz22A6pAXad

[somebody]

I think M-D does something about the single track tunnel at Coal Cliff by reducing the numbers of trains through it.  Similarly, it means that a bypass can be planned without needing to consider freight.  I hope they do not duplicate the tunnel on the present alignment which is quite poor.

[colinw]

I thought that tunnel was in a landslip prone area, and any bypass would be somewhat inland to get it out of harm's way.