Trainline is a compendium of Australia's railways providing insights, analysis and an understanding of the railway industry. Australia's railways are evolving via changes within and outside the industry. These changes include logistics, commodity flows, technology, urban patronage and regional passenger services. The publication presents an overview and data on railway transport tasks performed; characteristics of the railways and train operators' rolling stock that runs; and aspects of railway performance including safety, environment and reliability.

Trainline is a compendium of Australia's railways, providing insights, analysis and an understanding of the railway industry. Australia's railways are evolving via changes within and outside the industry. These changes include logistics, commodity flows, technology, urban patronage and regional passenger services. The publication presents an overview and data on railway transport tasks performed, characteristics of the railways and train operators' rolling stock that runs and aspects of railway performance including safety, environment and reliability.

A common rational for the making of transport-related forecasts is the need to anticipate the growth of transport activity and the demand it will place on transport infrastructure. Anticipation of this demand allows for forward planning of needed improvements/additions to key parts of the networks.

As such, it is useful to examine how close past Bureau forecasts were to predicting this growth, and to learn from any obvious errors.
This is the aim of the current report.

• Forecasting Australian Transport: A Review of Past Bureau Forecasts
  
  rr_149.pdf
  (3.16 MB)

In recognition of both the progress of climate science and the need to manage the risks faced by future generations, the majority of the world's governments are implementing programs for the long term reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Accordingly, the Australian government has committed to an 80 per cent reduction on the 2000 levels of emissions for the Australian economy by 2050.

As the second largest greenhouse gas emission contributing sector in the economy at 16% of national emissions, transport will need to make a significant contribution to the abatement target. The question then arises as to the potential greenhouse gas abatement options available to the sector.

The Australian transport industry, researchers and government have in many cases deep knowledge about the issues of environmental sustainability, and individual transport sector greenhouse gas abatement options. However, that knowledge is fragmented due to the diversity and complexity of transport.

There are existing studies of transport abatement options but they are limited to a narrow subset of the available options. As a consequence no single document is available to provide an overview of the options and potential for abatement in the transport sector. With this background the ARRB Group, BITRE and CSIRO formed the Australian Low Carbon Transport Forum (ALCTF) in July 2011 to bring together knowledge on the options for greenhouse gas abatement in transport and explore how deeply emissions could be cut in the sector.

• Greenhouse gas abatement potential of the Australian transport sector–Summary report
  
  alctf_summary_report.pdf
  (1.85 MB)

The Australian Low Carbon Transport Forum (ALCTF) was initiated by a project secretariat comprising ARRB Group, BITRE and CSIRO. It was organised to bring together knowledge on the options for greenhouse gas abatement in transport and explore how deeply emissions could be cut in the sector.

A report describing the main findings of the study has been published under the title Greenhouse gas abatement potential of the Australian transport sector: Summary report.

This current Technical Report is a companion document to the Summary Report, and aims to detail the methodology and results of the ALCTF process. That is, it describes how the estimated levels of abatement were calculated for each of the abatement options considered in the ALCFT workshops, and how the various abatement potentials were aggregated into an estimate for the maximal potential reduction.

• Greenhouse gas abatement potential of the Australian transport sector–Technical report
  
  alctf_technical_report.pdf
  (1.85 MB)

Trainline is a compendium of Australia's railways providing insights, analysis, and an understanding of the railway industry. Australia's railways are evolving via changes within and outside the industry. These changes include logistics, commodity flows, technology, urban patronage, and regional passenger services. The publication presents an overview and data on railway transport tasks performed, characteristics of the railways and train operators' rolling stock that runs and aspects of railway performance including safety, environment and reliability.

Well-managed, modern and functioning infrastructure underpins much of the economic prosperity of Australia. It is thus crucial that Australia's infrastructure keeps up with the needs of the community.

While some infrastructure asset types, namely public roads and airports, have made significant progress in performance measurement, for others there is a dearth of information or public engagement. The patchwork approach that has resulted means that Australia may be missing out on the potential benefits of consistent and widespread performance measurement: improved accountability, incentivised performance, and better performance evaluation. This report introduces and explores many of the issues surrounding infrastructure performance measurement that should be considered in the context of providing greater consistency across infrastructure asset types.

• Measuring infrastructure asset performance and customer satisfaction: A review of existing frameworks
  
  rr_147.pdf
  (1.81 MB)

This information sheet presents estimates of Kilometres and lane-kilometres of road length for Australian States and Territories back to 1910. It provides the same data for Metropolitan Australia back to 1910, and for individual cities back to 1970.

It also introduces the concept of value equivalent lane-kilometres, where lane-kilometres for different road types are weighted by current value estimates.

The latter concept allows a clearer picture of the growth in the value of Australian road infrastructure over time–which is substantial.

• Growth in the Australian Road System
  
  is_092.pdf
  (920.01 KB)

Road transport technologies are evolving rapidly. Recent years have seen the expansion of intelligent transport systems (ITS), such as ramp metering and signal coordination, and low-level vehicle automation. In coming years, communication platforms will connect vehicles, thereby enabling Cooperative-ITS (C-ITS) technologies, such as collision avoidance systems. Car manufacturers and technology companies are actively developing fully automated vehicles. This report summarises estimates of the costs and benefits of ITS, C-ITS and automated vehicles from the existing Australian and international literature. It also provides policy makers with guidance on what further research would improve understanding of the implications of these technologies under Australian conditions.

• Costs and benefits of emerging road transport technologies
  
  research-report-146-emerging-road-transport-technologies.pdf
  (2.54 MB)

This information sheet provides an overview of the current status of motorcycling safety in Australia. In 2016 motorcyclist deaths increased by 22 per cent, to 248 deaths (almost 1 in five road deaths). This represents an increase of 7.4 per cent on the National Road Safety Strategy base years (2008-2010).

While the national trend in motorcyclist fatality rates over the last decade has improved by 40 per cent, increased exposure means that the number of motorcyclist deaths in Australia is now similar to 10 years ago. This underpins the need to identify further areas for improvement and focus efforts on reducing motorcyclist fatalities and hospitalised injuries.

• Motorcycling Safety
  
  IS89 Motorcycling Safety_rev.pdf
  (856.4 KB)