Article: Rail freight still shackled by bad policy

[ozbob]

From the Ballarat Independent click here!

Rail freight still shackled by bad policy

Rail freight still shackled by bad policy

Author: Bill Russell

The current privatisation of QR National, unpopular and unmandated as all such fire sales of public assets by opportunistic politicians are, is a reminder of the need for better policy on rail freight.

For many years, Australia has been developing unsustainable forms of transport-car dependence for commuters instead of public transport, semi-trailers and B-doubles instead of the vastly safer and more fuel efficient freight train, and short hop air travel on the east cost instead of high-speed rail. These unsustainable transport modes have been supported by monumental investments in freeway systems that have reshaped urban form to reinforce car dominance, truck dominance and interstate air travel-all of which are not sustainable in their present form in a low-carbon, post-peak oil economy.

The advantages of rail freight over road transport for bulky loads over reasonable distances are overwhelming. There are several reasons why it is in the public interest to maintain or expand the role of rail freight.

Cost and efficiency

Particularly on longer distance and heavier traffic, rail commands a significant efficiency and cost advantage over road. Per tonne kilometre, rail requires a third of the fuel of road transport, and one rail crew can replace 150 semitrailer drivers. It is in the public interest to identify those types of traffic where these efficiency savings are obtainable and to ensure that extraneous obstacles (such as poor governance or regulation, or unfair access charging) do not undermine these efficiency gains.

We have the technical capability to realise these gains. Australians run the most efficient freight trains in the world in the Pilbara, where BHP on its ore railway recently moved a world record 100,000 gross tons in a single 7-kilometre long train consisting of no less than 682 wagons. We have the engineering capacity in Australia to deliver world-leading rail freight performance, but we are hampered by poor policy and the stranglehold of the roads lobby and certain of their political and bureaucratic acolytes. BHP would not be silly enough to run 682 separate B-doubles to move this load, yet that is precisely what the roads lobby still advocates in our crowded cities as they seek to pour yet more billions into already excessive freeway networks.

Safety

Heavy road transport imposes a high cost on the community in terms of deaths and fatalities. A significant reduction in deaths and fatalities could be expected if a meaningful shift of freight from road to rail could be achieved. About 10 per cent of B-double accidents are rollovers and a further 30 per cent involve the vehicle running off the road. Such accidents are dangerous to other road users and can involve fires and explosions, as well as damage to roadside properties.

During the 12 months to the end of March 2009, 248 people died in Australia from 229 crashes involving heavy trucks or buses. These included 138 deaths from 124 crashes involving articulated trucks, 90 deaths from 86 crashes involving heavy rigid trucks, and 22 deaths from 21 crashes involving buses. *1

When deaths and serious injuries are included, the national figure is around 1000 per year. Thus a 10 per cent shift of freight from road to rail might save 100 serious injuries and 25 lives per year, other things being equal.

The long distance transport of dangerous goods such as petrol is a particular example. Petrol tanker accidents can involve additional risks of fire and explosion and the reduction of the number of road tanker movements is highly desirable. Yet the New South Wales government in 2009 pursued policies to transfer from rail to road the transport of petrol to regional centres, even in the face of horrific petrol tanker accidents occurring at the very time the policy change was being implemented.

By contrast, rail freight accidents are relatively unusual, rarely involve fatalities, and minimise damage to third parties as derailments usually occur on railway right of ways and less frequently involve human bystanders, third party vehicles or structures.

Reduced congestion

The number and size of heavy trucks on our highways and within cities is growing rapidly. One example is the number of containers (TEUs) moving through the Port of Melbourne, which grew from 1.2 million in 2003 to 2 million in 2009 and is expected to reach 7 million by 2030. Similar growth will occur in several other major container ports around the country.
Such numbers of truck movements will impose significant additional congestion on road systems and require massive additional freeway investment. Rail capacity to move these containers can be provided at lower cost, with less land requirements, and with less threatening impact on motorists.

Environmental superiority of rail

Rail freight requires a third of the fuel and gives rise to half the greenhouse emissions associated with the movement of a similar amount of freight by road.

A single freight train from Melbourne to Sydney can replace 150 semi-trailers, use 45,000 litres less fuel and give rise to half the emissions produced by the road transport required for the same task.

Avoidance of cost shifting

If significant levels of heavy freight-especially grain and mineral sands-are transferred to road transport, local councils will have to pick up the cost of rebuilding roads and bridges to cope with heavier axle loads as receival points may not be on state highways, and as trucks will need to detour from time to time when state highways are closed due to weather events, maintenance or accidents.

Providing a capacity for passenger rail

Since the attack on regional and rural rail passenger services by ideologues in the 1980s and 1990s, there are many country communities that lack the access to education, jobs, leisure and social inclusion that a rail network provides, and for which patchy, unco-ordinated and physically uncomfortable bus services provide no substitute. To the credit of Victoria's Bracks and Brumby governments, passenger rail services have been returned to a number of such communities, while others (like Mildura) currently have demonstrations in the streets demanding the return of passenger trains. Effective rail freight services help support the infrastructure of tracks and safety systems upon which such vital community services can be restored to country communities.

The advantages of freight rail, like those of the parallel sustainable transport categories of rail-based public transport and high-speed intercity rail, are of course the subject of some good policy at federal and state levels. The recognition by federal infrastructure Minister Albanese and his Infrastructure Australia advisors that national governments should fund rail projects as well as new freeways was refreshing. It contrasted with the barren Howard years in which federal funding of rail was prohibited, and federal transport funding was reserved for needs of the trucking industry. It has been important to see rail projects funded, and the Australian Rail Track Corporation assume management of important rail corridors, including the interstate network, the Hunter Valley in NSW and the Portland corridor in Victoria. The injection of $500 million into the Sydney to Melbourne rail freight corridor and the construction of the Wodonga rail bypass offer some promise of relief from the tyranny and danger of excessive road freight traffic on the Hume Highway.

The Sydney to Melbourne upgrade will provide double track and better alignments over the majority of the Sydney-Melbourne route, and provides an example of freight investment allowing passenger upgrades as a spin-off. Current Sydney to Melbourne passenger trains are operated by aged and slow Countrylink trains that the New South Wales government may not be able to afford to replace. Much faster passenger trains should be provided between Sydney and Melbourne, and fast conventional services should be the next target.

On the other hand, federal governments have always been slow to address the fundamentals of road pricing, and the Henry Report's recommendations for fairer road pricing in corridors where rail and road 'compete' should be acted upon. Because such significant subsidy remains for truckers, while rail must pay full costs and access fees, there is no level playing field, and federal policy still underlies much of the imbalance toward road transport in contestable markets like the Sydney-Melbourne corridor. State governments have also taken some important steps toward reinstating the role of rail. The Victorian state government, as well as reinstating country rail passenger services to Ararat, Echuca, Maryborough and Bairnsdale, from which they were withdrawn by the destructive whirlwind that was the Kennett government, has also invested significantly by deprivatising and then upgrading its domestic rail network. Tim Fischer, appointed as a reviewer by that government, provided a blueprint for rehabilitation with lines classified as platinum, gold, silver and bronze, and to its credit, government has delivered. But services are still dependent on private operators, who over the years had not limited their neglect to the tracks (which government has now largely remedied) but also to the business. Government will have to find new governance and business structures to rebuild what so quickly the private operators allowed to dissipate.
Tasmania faced similar problems when its freight railway, which had passed first to Commonwealth ownership under Whitlam and was later privatised, was taken back into state ownership last year. As was the case in Victoria, private operators looked to the larger parts of their business in northern states and the Tasmanian business was neglected.The state will now have to remedy the damage inflicted in the interim.
Both New South Wales and Queensland face difficulties compounded by years of underinvestment in rail infrastructure except on coal railways. The parts of those states that produce other commodities are fighting to retain rail freight services but have lost or are losing the capacity for cross subsidy that the freight lines once provided. The state governments in those areas face similar problems as to investment, governance and the role of rail in a sustainable future.

Rail freight, rail-based public transport, and intercity fast rail are three components of a sustainable transport future. All will require a shift in our transport habits, in government investment patterns, and in the way the hidden subsidies and non-transparent policies of governments operate. These changes will be contested strenuously by the politicians and interests that comprise the roads lobby.
The measures that need to be taken cover taxation, government investment, urban planning, governance and institutional arrangements. While this may seem a formidable list, it is no less than the list of measures employed successfully by the roads lobby in its own interests over recent decades.
Taxation policy is a useful starting point, and needs to start with positively addressing the Henry Review recommendations concerning road transport paying its way. Why should road transport not face the need to pay for the capital and interest costs, depreciation costs and margins on capital that rail operators are made to pay? Why should rail operators' access charges not be capped at the level of equivalent B-double licence and registration fees?

In relation to government investment, we have seen since the election of the federal Labor government a resumption of federal investment in rail. There has also been significant investment in rail infrastructure by the Victorian state government. However, the practice of pouring billions of dollars into extra freeways has not abated, and the road builders are emerging with ever more fanciful programs of massive freeway expansion for future decades. We cannot afford this misallocation of resources that would be better spent elsewhere: elsewhere in transport, or elsewhere in needed social infrastructure.

We also need some better rail freight governance arrangements. Most states now need a strong rail freight authority to advocate and market, and in some instances deliver intrastate non-mineral rail freight. Most states need more active public involvement in the related field of country and intercity passenger train services, which need to be rebuilt as part of a more sustainable future.
And all of this will mean reorientation for many political leaders, who have seen road space and more road space as a ticket to their personal re-election. They need to focus instead on providing more sustainable and holistic means of moving people and freight for our unavoidable low carbon future. Rail freight, railbased public transport for urban and regional areas, and high speed intercity rail are three such areas.
Bill Russell is Co-Director of the Australasian Centre for the Governance and Management of Urban Transport at the University of Melbourne.

Footnote
1. Australian Government, Department of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Services, Fatal Heavy Vehicle Crashes, Quarterly Bulletin, January-March 2009, published 28 October.

[SurfRail]

I'm having difficulty linking the start of the article, seemingly critical of the QRN sell-off, to the rest of its content.  I am still unconvinced that the government needs to be involved in bulk mineral haulage and intermodal freight, as long as they retain control of the infrastructure and assets for less profitable operations like passenger, livestock and bulk grain.

The problem is one of politics.  By selling off QRN they have taken the gloves off and let them loose to compete properly with Asciano/Toll etc, and largely isolated it from government spending commitments which can now be redirected to where they are actually needed for a change.

[mufreight]

I'm having difficulty linking the start of the article, seemingly critical of the QRN sell-off, to the rest of its content.  I am still unconvinced that the government needs to be involved in bulk mineral haulage and intermodal freight, as long as they retain control of the infrastructure and assets for less profitable operations like passenger, livestock and bulk grain.

The problem is one of politics.  By selling off QRN they have taken the gloves off and let them loose to compete properly with Asciano/Toll etc, and largely isolated it from government spending commitments which can now be redirected to where they are actually needed for a change.

So the gloves off approach now means that general freight services which were operated as a community service obligation are now gone and country people now pay a highy price for goods now transported by road by operators who make no contribution to the maintenance of the roads that they are pounding to pieces.
Rail lines that were used to carry this freight and for passenger services are either closed and torn up or mothballed so again more freight is pushed on to roads and the government no longer provides the services it is elected to provide and we all pay for this neglect in higher prices for food or anything else that used to be moved by rail.
Yes it is a politicial problem, an inept shortsighted government that is progressively destroying this nations transport systems.

[SurfRail]

So the gloves off approach now means that general freight services which were operated as a community service obligation are now gone and country people now pay a highy price for goods now transported by road by operators who make no contribution to the maintenance of the roads that they are pounding to pieces.
Rail lines that were used to carry this freight and for passenger services are either closed and torn up or mothballed so again more freight is pushed on to roads and the government no longer provides the services it is elected to provide and we all pay for this neglect in higher prices for food or anything else that used to be moved by rail.

Yes it is a politicial problem, an inept shortsighted government that is progressively destroying this nations transport systems.

I was talking about intermodal freight and coal/mineral traffic, neither of which are CSO services.  I am also dubious about QRN having anything to do with general freight, unless it is being propped up by the government in lieu of having to spend on roads.

It's not entirely accurate to say that road users do not contribute to the ongoing cost of road transport, but they largely do not contribute to capital expenditure and certainly do not pay for the negative externalities of excessive long-haul trucking.