Historically, railways have provided the means to open up new areas for economic development. When built to link existing centres of economic activity, they have given rise to greatly increased opportunities for trade and travel.

• Brisbane to Melbourne Rail Link: Economic Analysis
  
  wp_045.pdf
  (154.74 KB)

The BTRE projects that the total freight task will continue to grow strongly. Such growth will increase the infrastructure maintenance needs and possibly hasten the need for capacity expansion. Setting prices for infrastructure use that reflect costs provides important signals as to the appropriate level of transport activity, choice of transport mode, and the level of infrastructure spending. At the Australian Logistics Council (ALC) meeting on 7 November 2002, the Council asked BTRE to provide a comparative analysis of current land transport pricing regimes and their objectives and to present the findings at the next Council meeting, held on 27 February 2003. This working paper comprises the paper prepared for the ALC and already released by the ALC as a discussion paper.

• Land Transport Infrastructure Pricing: An Introduction
  
  wp_057.pdf
  (648.07 KB)

This report is the third in a series covering the socio-economic costs of transport accidents in Australia. Transport accidents impose a significant burden on the Australian community. Not all of their consequences can be expressed in financial terms. However, to weigh up options for minimising and dealing with this burden, it is important to know the costs of transport accidents.

• Rail Accident Costs in Australia
  
  report_108.pdf
  (3.16 MB)

Since the early 1990s, railway operations in Australia and in many overseas countries have been radically reformed. One reform has been widespread outsourcing of railway activities such as infrastructure maintenance, to encourage efficient provision through competitive tendering for services. In some cases, entire rail operations have been contracted out or privatised. The major reform, however, has been to introduce regulations to require access to rail infrastructure by outside ("third-party") train operators. This mandated access also supports rail interoperability objectives facilitating train service coordination by streamlining the logistics chain across infrastructure networks.

Prior to these regulations, there were no access charges because the track use was an internal transaction within the railway company the company maintaining the infrastructure had exclusive use of the tracks for its own trains. In essence, the railway's revenue was generated only from tariffs for transporting goods and passengers. However, with mandatory access, rail infrastructure owners offer an additional service non-track owners' access to the infrastructure.

What are fair, equitable and efficient charges for that access? We know that the level and structure of these charges matter, for they account for, perhaps, one-third of the train operator's total operating costs. This report focuses on the rail infrastructure pricing structures that have developed with mandated access around the world, and the lessons that can be drawn from the subsequent experiences.

Our analysis involves consideration of the benefits and costs of mandatory access; the principles of efficient access charges; Australia's systems of access and pricing; international pricing and access systems and the lessons from the experiences with them. While principles of access charges apply equally to freight and passenger trains, mandated access is generally directed only at freight operations. For that reason, in this report we consider only freight operations.

• Rail Infrastructure Pricing: Principles and Practice
  
  report_109.pdf
  (2.98 MB)

Australian Transport Statistics provides an easy introduction to a diverse range of transport statistics. Topics include employment, GDP, passenger and freight movements, trade, funding, motor vehicles, fatalities and estimated greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the transport industry. Various international comparisons are included and details provided for the road,rail, marine and aviation sectors. Data are gathered from various sources both within the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics and external organisations.

This report summarises the existing knowledge of freight in Australia and presents the time series data, analysis and sources which underpin the BTRE's long-term freight forecasts. Consistently measured time series data are required to model and forecast freight flows. The report describes the methodologies evolved by the BTRE to do this. It includes the results of modelling and forecasting undertaken using the derived series. Non-bulk freight is projected to increase by 82% in tonne-kilometre terms between 2003 and 2020 (average 3.6% per year).

The expected rate of growth in gross domestic product and reductions in freight rates are the key drivers of this growth as well as a continuing trend to national distribution by manufacturers, wholesalers and importers. With Treasury projecting some fall-off in the long-term economic growth, the non-bulk growth rate is slightly lower than in the recent past. Based on past trends, road's share of national non-bulk freight is projected to increase marginally from 74% to 76%, with the rail share declining from 21% to 17% and sea freight making up the balance (with air freight vanishingly small in tonne-kilometre terms, albeit not in value).

These mode share projections do not take account of the potential for rejuvenation of rail on north-south routes, in somewhat the same manner as has already occurred on east-west routes. Capital city freight tonne-kilometres are projected to grow by 3.0% a year between 2003 and 2020 (compared with a 1971–2003 average of 5.0%). While heavy vehicles comprise only 4% of the metropolitan traffic stream, growth of this level implies a slight increase in the heavy vehicle proportion (to 4.2% in 2020).

Rail is expected to remain the largest mode in shipping bulk freight (46% share in 2003, 45% in 2020), followed by sea freight (30% and 29% shares respectively). Rail is well suited for transporting Australia's large export tonnages in coal, other minerals and grains to port. Rail freight has fallen in most other bulk commodities.

Australian Transport Statistics provides an easy introduction to a diverse range of transport statistics. Topics include employment, GDP, passenger and freight movements, trade, funding, motor vehicles, fatalities and estimated greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the transport industry. Various international comparisons are included and details provided for the road, rail, marine and aviation sectors. Data are gathered from various sources within the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics and from external organisations.

In the last decade, Australia's railways have undergone an ownership, operational and technological revolution. The establishment of national public and private train operators has finally brought seamless rail freight services across the country. There has been a complementary development in track management, with one manager (Australian Rail Track Corporation) rather than five, now controlling most of the interstate track.

The standardisation of the Melbourne-Adelaide railway in 1995 removed the break-of-gauge on the East-West Corridor. This has facilitated the subsequent more than doubling of rail freight task between those cities.

Infrastructure investments and complementary funding of new generation locomotives have enabled train operators to harness train economics of heavier, longer trains, for instance, with Melbourne-Adelaide trains now 50 per cent longer than a decade ago.

These changes are transforming the industry. However, the perception is that the legacy of the separate State-based networks may still draw a long shadow over the performance of the network. This report investigates the extent to which physical, operational and regulatory breaks-of-gauge impede the industry. The report provides guidance to policy makers and industry on those issues.

• Optimising Harmonisation in the Australian Railway Industry
  
  report_114.pdf
  (7.89 MB)

BTRE has recently completed estimates of passenger movements by various modes (i.e. air, car, coach and rail) between major Australian cities (covering ten main routes) from 1970–71 to 2003–04 and predicted passenger flows up to 2030–31.

This paper analyses train sightings data collected at Gheringhap, Victoria, located on the Melbourne to Adelaide main line. These sightings provide an independent source of information on train movements, train lengths, and reliability, and, given knowledge of freight volumes, can be used to estimate average wagon loads. In cases where trains are not scheduled, sightings such as these are presently the only publicly available source of data for freight volumes on specific routes.

Following the growth in private train operations since the mid-1990s and the privatisation of National Rail in 2002, rail freight activity data became increasingly scarce. The lack of data can be a challenge for the BTRE in providing the government with timely and accurate information about trends in Australian freight transport. The rail industry has recognised this deficiency: the Australasian Railway Association and its members are working with the BTRE to produce the first public report on the performance of the Defined Interstate Rail Network and to supply data for AusLink planning.

In the meantime, the BTRE has investigated other potential data sources, including information from railway enthusiasts. This paper presents an analysis of one such source of rail data that is reported online, from video-taped observations made and collated by Graham Elliott at Gheringhap Loop, Victoria, on the mainline between Adelaide and Melbourne. The paper provides a short review of the reliability of the data, makes observations about trends in freight activity from the data set, and draws some conclusions about the value of the data collection method.

• Filling a gap in rail data: an investigation of the Gheringhap Loop train sightings
  
  ip_057.pdf
  (465.23 KB)