ADVERTORIAL: AUSTRALIAN RAIL TRACK CORPORATION

SMARTER, TARGETED INVESTMENT ALREADY PAYING DIVIDENDS FOR REGIONAL AUSTRALIA

By Australian Rail Track Corporation Inland Rail Chief Executive Rebecca Pickering

Due to smarter, targeted investment by the Australian Rail Track Corporation, Inland Rail is already paying dividends to regional communities well in advance of the completion of the entire project.

Split into 13 sections, the 1700km Melbourne to Brisbane Inland Rail, will transform the way we move goods between Melbourne and Brisbane, Perth and Brisbane and Adelaide and Brisbane.

The benefits of investing in national infrastructure that meets Australia’s growing freight task, will be seen and felt by everyday Australians – firstly through the 21,000 jobs it will create during the peak of construction and then through shifting modal share from road to rail.

Inland Rail will transform rail’s northsouth offering and trigger significant modal share shift in the intermodal and agricultural markets including supporting four of Australia’s richest farming regions, providing supply chain benefits and cost savings for producers.

While Inland Rail is a multi-year project, the build schedule allows for individual components to be released into the national network when complete, providing incremental benefit as each section is completed. This means regional producers will have earlier access to the national capability of Inland Rail.

As the first fully completed stage of the project – the Parkes to Narromine section – has already shone a light on what is possible.

During construction more than 760 locals worked on the project and almost $110 million was spent with local businesses –and it was widely acknowledged that the spending counteracted a large downturn that would have occurred due to the prevailing drought conditions in the area.

Parkes Shire Mayor Ken Keith revealed that the Railway Hotel served in the vicinity of 14,000 meals in three months.

“The year before last we were second only to Byron Bay in the appreciation in value of houses in our community, and last year it rose by 26 per cent, so it’s still growing year on year, and a lot of people are taking interest in positioning themselves in Parkes for the future,” he observed recently.

And why not? Following the completion of Inland Rail, the Parkes National Logistics Hub is emerging as one of Australia’s largest intermodal sites.

The reason is the 5.3km stretch of new rail track near Parkes, known as the North West Connection, which was completed with trains now using the line.

The North West connection provides a link between the north-south Inland Rail and the east-west Transcontinental Railway and has positioned Parkes as the epicentre of Australia’s freight and logistics network.

Rail freight operators can now consolidate freight at their terminals in the Parkes National Logistics Hub, before hauling them double-stacked across the Nullarbor to Perth or singlestacked to the ports of Botany, Brisbane or Melbourne.

Parkes is set to be a launch pad for freight volumes to all corners of the continent and the North West connection has already delivered immediate benefits with the east–west transcontinental line to Perth.

As the construction of Inland Rail continues, we will see even more employment opportunities for local businesses in regional Australia, bringing signifcant growth.

The second section of Inland Rail which is currently under construction –Narrabri to North Star – will allow freight customers to transport heavier freight volumes at higher speeds through its access to the Hunter Valley Rail Network.

The Inland Rail system will be built with 60kg of steel per metre of track with concrete sleepers at 25 TAL, allowing an average speed of 80km/hr and a top speed of 110km/hr.

This will make a large difference to productivity as it isn’t efficient to have a grain train that can only be partially loaded because one section of the trip is on tracks with a low weight limit. Standardising the Inland Rail will mean the same locomotives and wagons can be used for the entire trip and bulk handlers can use the full capacity instead of having to calculate how much they can load on each wagon in a section with a lower limit.

This has immediate tangible benefits to farmers with lower transport costs.

A second aspect of joining the Inland Rail N2NS section to the Hunter Valley network will be added reliability.

Although, they are already connected, raising the tonnages across the two networks will make the Inland Rail and the existing coastal network more resilient to extreme weather events.

Inland Rail Chief Executive, Rebecca Pickering

We have had lines shut this year by fire, floods and land slips. Inland Rail will provide greater connectivity throughout the network and in some cases provide multiple pathways to work past a blockage.

Planning is being accelerated for all other sections of Inland Rail. More than $2 billion has already been spent in rural communities and another $1 billion in contracts is being rolled out.

The next few years will be pivotal as we continue to realise the benefits of this once-in-a-generation project.