Article: Railways make much more sense than roads

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Railways make much more sense than roads

Railways make much more sense than roads

Philip Laird
January 30, 2008


Articulated trucks such as semi-trailers are involved in about 30 per cent of the fatal road accidents on the Pacific Highway. As the number of trucks carrying freight between Sydney and Brisbane increases, we will see more incidents like the fiery semi-trailer crash that blocked the F3 north of Sydney yesterday.

Making the entire highway dual carriageway would improve safety and congestion but what is really needed is a better rail system so more freight can be moved off the road altogether.

Improvements to the Pacific Highway have resulted in even more trucks using the route. While about 168 kilometres of dual carriageway was constructed in the decade to 2006, the amount of freight carried on the route more than doubled. The Roads and Traffic Authority gave approval for multi-trailer trucks, bigger than semi-trailers, to travel the entire length of the highway in August 2002.

This decision led to an extra 340 heavy vehicles travelling on the highway each day - an increase of 38 per cent. With more Sydney-Brisbane freight moving by road, rail's share has fallen - from 24 per cent in 1996 to less than 12 per cent now.

By contrast, fewer trucks have used the New England Highway since 2002, and road safety has improved considerably.

The issue of trucks on the Pacific Highway, and the stern safety challenges, were addressed by a committee of the NSW Legislative Council in 2006. "There was widespread community support for greater use of rail freight to reduce the environmental and safety impact of heavy vehicles," the report noted.

Moving more heavy goods between capital cities can be accomplished with a good rail system but is near impossible with the antiquated NSW system. The constraints include rail congestion around Sydney and "steam age" alignment on the route to Brisbane.

The tracks between Maitland and Casino started as branch lines built on the cheap in the early 20th century before later being joined.

A train moving between Maitland and Casino traverses a total of 55 circles to the left and 55 circles to the right over "steam-age" aligned track with excessive curvature and extra length.

Basic track and signal upgrades between Sydney and Brisbane are now under way and are due to be completed next year. They will improve average freight train speeds between Sydney and Brisbane from an inadequate 50kmh to just 64 kmh. To make rail a viable alternative for freight an average speed of 80kmh is needed.

The capacity upgrade between Strathfield and Hornsby promised before the federal election will help.

But more is needed. The double track section between Hornsby and Wyong, now the busiest in the country, requires an upgrade. The Hexham to Casino track needs straightening.

Track straightening was favoured in another report last year, this time by a House of Representatives committee, which noted that a new section from Hexham to Stroud Road would remove 97 kilometres of substandard alignment. The chairman of the committee, Paul Neville, expressed the big picture well on ABC radio on February 4 last year. "We know that the freight task is going to double in the next 20 years, and, because of that, our roads will become totally and utterly congested if we don't do something serious about rail in that time. If we're not progressing rail in parallel with road, in other words, if rail doesn't really catch up, all we're doing is exacerbating the amount of freight that will go on the newly upgraded roads, and that would be ones like the Hume Highway and the Pacific Highway."

To date the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority has concentrated on just building roads. The Federal Government must adopt a balanced approach to rebuilding the North Coast railway as well as the Pacific Highway. Such a balance between road and rail would improve safety and the impact on the environment. The average accident risk for road freight is about 20 times that of rail freight.

Rail freight uses about one third of the diesel that trucks use, so there are potential significant greenhouse gas reductions (more than 150,000 tonnes a year) from really upgrading the North Coast line. These are compelling reasons for a balanced approach by both the Federal Government and the State Government.

Dr Philip Laird is a Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Informatics at the University of Wollongong.