FORG has released its list of rail freight election priorities
The Freight on Rail industry group has released its election priorities for the upcoming Federal election.
Election priorities include prioritising rail infrastructure resilience, the inland rail project, providing equality for rail and road infrastructure pricing policies and utilising rail freight to reduce emissions in the transport sector.
Other priorities include coastal shipping regulations, improving the productivity of rail freight and investigating transport infrastructure proposals.
The Freight on Rail group (FORG) represents Australia’s largest freight operators and infrastructure owners, including the likes of Pacific National, One Rail Australia and Australian Rail Track Corporation.
FORG recognises the important role rail-based freight and logistics operations perform in Australia’s export industries and domestic markets, with the need to efficiently meet future freight demand a priority for Australia going forward.
According to FORG, the current review of road and rail supply chain resilience in Western Australia sums up its priority to prioritise rail infrastructure resilience.
This includes using investing in technology to detect when networks require protective actions and ensuring that rail networks are prepared to undertake efficient recovery works when required.
The inland rail project is a key focus of FORG, as the industry group says improvement in the domestic and export supply chains depend on the project.
FORG says a focus should be on supporting the large private sector investments that will be required to realise the economic and regional benefits of the supply chain services that will use the inland rail in future.
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Another key priority for FORG is ensuring the next Federal government provides a level playing field for rail and road with infrastructure pricing policy, as FORG says the current road user charges for trucks aren’t cost reflective.
FORG says the Federal government can ensure this equality by either introducing cost-reflecting user charging for heavy vehicles or introducing a rail freight utilisation incentive program with potential to link it to emissions reduction benefits.
The group wants more emphasis to be placed on utilising rail freight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector, as FORG says there is an opportunity for the industry to increase the utilisation of rail freight to produce 16 times less carbon pollution than road freight per tonne kilometre.
Other priorities include regulating the transportation of domestic freight to recognise investments in land transport operations and using a nationally coordinated focus to improve the productivity of rail freight.
Finally, FORG says the next Federal government should make transport infrastructure investment assessments a requirement to recognise the externality impacts of transport modes, including safety, environment and congestion benefits.