Solution - move Port Botany containers to Newcastle and expand Sydney Airport

Transport planning in NSW is compromised by the NSW government’s unwillingness to consider the option of expanding Sydney Airport into the Port Botany Container Terminal site. Although ministers and bureaucrats say there are no alternatives to their recent transport proposals, the Port Botany terminal can easily be relocated to the best deep-water port on Australia’s eastern seaboard, Newcastle. Port Botany container terminal is the sacred cow of NSW transport policy.

The container terminal is dependent on a road system that is operating beyond capacity. Doubling the M5 East in 10 or so years’ time in the hope that this will provide a sustainable solution for moving containers to and from Port Botany is a gamble.

Competition for space between the airport and the container terminal guarantees sub-optimal performance from both. And even though the container terminal has dedicated rail capacity, it will carry only a small, and declining, proportion of containers over the next 30 years, a fact the government acknowledges.

Sydney Airport is hamstrung by lack of space but the government has no plan for dealing with the problem of how to manage increasing passenger numbers. Throughput at the airport has less to do with aircraft movement and everything to do with getting passengers on and off aircraft efficiently. A solution is to build new airport passenger facilities by expanding into the container terminal site.

By eliminating freight from the urban rail system and using all rail resources for passenger trains, it should be possible to vastly improve rail services for the south-western region of Sydney, linking to the airport and CBD.

But two major transport reports from the NSW government – the draft NSW Transport Master Plan released in September and the Infrastructure NSW plan released in early October – show the futility of attempts to share the road and rail system between passengers and freight.Sydney’s road and rail system needs to meet the transportation needs of people, not freight. Removing freight from Sydney’s urban rail system is a logical and sensible decision.

A dedicated freight rail by-pass of Sydney is the logical extension of a dedicated freight line extending from Newcastle to a new intermodal rail/road terminal in the Hornsby-Calga area. The freight rail line is commercially viable when it carries all of the container freight for Sydney together with interstate rail freight, which at present is mostly carried by truck. The freight rail by-pass enables the lowest cost solution for expanding the airport and taking cars off congested roads by making rail services more efficient, cost-effective and, therefore, appealing to commuters in the south-west. Passenger services on the Sydney-Newcastle rail line will benefit by removing freight.

While the NSW government wants 100% of Sydney’s containers to be delivered by rail to outer western Sydney, it has given up on the possibility of this occurring from Port Botany. But a container logistics terminal in the Hornsby-Calga region will enable 100% of Sydney’s containers to be delivered into north-western Sydney by rail from Newcastle. Containerised goods that are not consumed in Sydney should not be sent to Sydney– Port Botany container traffic is predicted to grow by 272% in 20 years.

With proper planning, warehouses that receive containerised goods can be encouraged to locate close to the new northern intermodal terminal, which will minimise the need to put containers onto trucks. At present, around 80% of containers are trucked up to 50 kilometres from Port Botany to warehouses in south-western Sydney, while the empty containers are returned the same way.

The investment in a dedicated freight rail line from the Port of Newcastle to south-western Sydney will generate measurable and enduring economic benefits to the NSW economy and improve quality of life for Sydney’s residents.

Even the return of empty containers to Newcastle opens up a new export market in containerised coal.Australia’s coal exports are limited to customers who have the capability to unload coal from bulk carriers. There are niche markets for containerised coal delivered by truck and rail to customers who do not have access to a coal loader.

The NSW and Australian governments are currently hawking their Port Botany expansion and Sydney road infrastructure projects to Australia’s superannuation funds to tap into this important source of local capital. But super funds know that their responsibility to members is to invest in projects that are socially beneficial, as well as profitable.

Expanding Sydney Airport into the Port Botany Container Terminal site, building a container terminal at Newcastle, and building a dedicated freight rail line from Newcastle to south-western Sydney is a nation-changing project that is commercially viable and beneficial to all super fund members.

It’s time for the super funds to request innovative proposals.

Source: http://www.tandlnews.com.au/