The benefits of the Inland Rail project to regional Australian communities and freight outcomes are already being felt according to Inland Rail CEO Nick Miller.
Speaking at an infrastructure conference in Sydney, Miller said trains are already carrying freight on the completed sections of the project, and that the benefits that are currently being seen are only set to increase.
Once completed, Inland Rail will span 1600 kilometres between Melbourne and Brisbane, and is already being heralded as a crucial factor in making a more sustainable and efficient freight industry down Australia’s east coast.
“We are already seeing the benefits of Inland Rail via the Narrabri to North Star section, which has been completed,” Miller said. “The first trains have used that section carrying canola seeds to the Port of Newcastle, so there is that first sign of connectivity in place.
“Getting that modal shift from road to rail is critical, if you take the drive north of Narrabri to Moree in the evening you do not get your headlights on full, it’s just a constant stream of freight trucks, but we are going to get some of those off the road and get them onto rail.
“Australasian Railway Association research found that getting trucks off the road and onto rail was 16 times more efficient from a sustainability point of view, that’s a very significant finding in addition to the fact we will also make our roads safer, and they will require less maintenance.”
It had previously been revealed the project, as at the end of September, had spent $496 million with local companies since 2018, with roughly $100 million of that coming in the last 12 months alone.
Miller says the benefits of adding to local economies in the regions of the works is an added benefit of the state-spanning project.
“There are over 6000 people that have worked on Inland Rail to date,” he says.
“The majority of those people have been regional people, we have engaged with over 750 regional businesses that have supplied into Inland Rail, so that’s a really important statistic in terms of how we are engaging with regional Australia.”
Inland Rail Executive Director Program Health, Safety, Environment and Sustainability Stephen Jones says that engagement with local communities has been a marked focus over the duration of the project.
“Inland Rail has worked extremely hard to engage with local businesses and help to bring them on board as suppliers, and these latest figures demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach,” he says.
“We are proud to be supporting local businesses as we deliver Inland Rail across Victoria and New South Wales, construction is bringing benefits to regional communities, with local content key to the program’s success.
“A major focus has been the build skills in communities along the alignment, so local communities can participate and benefit from this once-in-a-generation project and others in the future.”
Read more ATN:
Cementing the future of Queensland’s rail network
New logistics centre to help make scientific breakthroughs
Sewer collapse results in NSW heavy vehicle variation