Despite the highlights, parts of latest Waterline report will make concerning reading
With productivity decline remaining a heated subject of economic debate, the most recent Waterline report on port performance should act to keep it that way.
Waterline 55, the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) report that looks at January to June last year, a period subject to seasonal factors, shows rises in some measures being countered by falls elsewhere.
Compared with the previous first half, the crane rate and elapsed labour rateimproved 4 per cent and 4.5 per cent respectively, but the ship rate declined 1.6 per cent due to a reduction in average cranes used per ship.
Alarmingly for the port-related trucking sector, land-side of port productivity remained steady or worsened in five ports.
Quarterly truck and container turnaround timesincreased by 7.5 per cent and 6.4 per cent respectively in the period January to June 2014 compared to the same period in 2013.
Only Melbourne, where truck and container turnaround timesdeclined 2.6 per cent and 7.4 per cent respectively, experienced an improvement in these measures.
Against that, total available truck timeslots in five ports increased by 11.5 per, as compared with the corresponding period of 2013.
Similarly, the number of truck slots used in January to June 2014 was 6 per cent higher than a year ago.
However, usage of off‑peak and weekend truck timeslots declined by 3.8 per cent in five ports to 48.8 per cent compared with the first half of 2013.
Rail container movements showed a solid improvement in Melbourne and Fremantle, which saw it burst through the 20 per cent mark of the total, and began operating in Adelaide, where it reached 9.7 per cent in the June quarter, but remained fairly static in Brisbane and fell away markedly in Sydney.
The full report can be found here.