I used to be a strong proponent of the Inland Rail Project, which seeks to establish an inland rail freight link between Melbourne and Brisbane.
The reason I supported the project is best summarised in the below map, which shows that rail’s share of long haul freight is abysmally low at less than 30% between Melbourne and Brisbane:
Trucks have inherent competitive advantages in the transportation of short-haul general freight because of their ability to offer a flexible door to door service without modal transfer (i.e. transfer to/from rail) and their capacity to handle small shipment sizes.
By contrast, rail tends to be more price competitive over longer distances where pick-up-and-delivery costs are reduced in unit cost per kilometre terms.
My hope was that an inland freight route between Melbourne and Brisbane would dramatically increase rail’s freight share. This would increase efficiency and remove thousands of trucks from the road, in turn helping to lower transport emissions and traffic congestion.
However, my enthusiasm for the Inland Rail Project evaporated after it was revealed that freight trains would stop 30 kilometres short of the Port of Brisbane around the southern Brisbane suburb of Acacia Ridge.
This means that intermodal transfers of freight to trucks would be required before the freight reaches the port, thereby creating ‘double handling’ and eliminating most of the efficiencies gained from this project.
My enthusiasm has cooled further given the Inland Rail Project’s cost has ballooned from an original estimate of $4.7 billion to a budget of $14.5 billion, which could end up costing more than $20 billion by its due date in 2027.
Last week, federal Transport Minister Catherine King warned the project is “way over budget and way behind schedule” and has been treated like “a strange vanity project”.
This follows an unreleased independent review, which identified “significant concerns” with the project, which King described as “gripping reading” and a “damning indictment” of its former administrators.
“The previous government, I think, lost sight of (its goals). They didn’t see it as a project that had those goals”, King said.
“Under my predecessor, frankly, I think the project became something of a strange vanity project for him. And now Inland Rail, it is way over budget and it is way behind schedule”.
So, chalk the Inland Rail Project as another Australian infrastructure boondoggle.
While the project was good in theory, the implementation has been botched.
Cost blowouts aside, Inland Rail is only worthwhile if trains can travel direct from farms/mines to port without needing to transfer to trucks for the last remaining kilometres.
Otherwise, they might as well travel on trucks for the entire journey and avoid the double handling.
