The bouquets gained by bipartisan support for the Melbourne-Brisbane inland rail link have come thick and fast from supporters
August 29, 2013
The bouquets gained by bipartisan support for the Melbourne-Brisbane inland rail link have come thick and fast from its supporters.
The Australian Logistics Council (ALC) joined the Australasian Railway Association’s (ARA) cheers on the news that Nationals leader Warren Truss had swung Coalition support behind the project that Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese had already pledged to back.
Truss describes it at a “visionary project” that will allow new industries to be established in regional New South Wales and northern Victoria.
But the ALC’s support does not extend to another government project that the ARA is keen on – the high-speed rail link.
“The potential benefits of an inland rail line are enormous. It would improve rail freight efficiency and reliability along Australia’s east coast and it would free-up rail capacity in our major cities, particularly in Sydney which often acts as a bottleneck as passenger trains are afforded priority,” ALC Managing Director Michael Kilgariff says.
Kilgariff adds that inland rail will “also come at a far more achievable price tag compared to high speed rail and would have a significant productivity pay-off”.
ARA CEO Bryan Nye says the project will “complete an economic missing link in our nation’s freight network” and had the “potential to unblock an infrastructure bottleneck that currently sees Brisbane to Melbourne freight unnecessarily travelling through Sydney, congesting road and rail networks alike”.
“This project will take seven hours off transit times from Melbourne to Brisbane, remove trucks from the Pacific, Newell and Hume highways and boost regional development along the entire 1,700km route,” Nye says.
The Coalition has pledged to begin building the link in 2016, with work to finish in 2026.
Of the route, 41 per cent has existing track, 25 per cent has track that needs to be upgraded and 34 per cent requires new track.
Additional funding commitments will see the construction of the remaining sections begin, including the construction of a tunnel capable of taking double-stacked trains through the Toowoomba range.
