Inland Rail was meant to take 200,000 trucks a year off our roads – but it’s now been cut in half. Why is rail freight shortchanged compared to roads and city rail?
- Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Wollongong
The latest announcement follows more than 40 years of previous plans that amounted to nothing. Will this time be any different?
The High Speed Rail Authority has publicly outlined plans that allow for some optimism that Australia could have these trains in the late 2030s.
Trains once carried most of our freight. Could a return to rail help us meet our emissions cutting goals?
Both major parties are promising major road projects this election. Meanwhile, the potential for passenger and freight rail to help meet the country’s climate goals seems stuck at the station.
Some 34 countries have high-speed rail or are about to get it. Yet since it was for proposed for Australia in 1984, no local plan for high-speed rail has got further than the drawing board.
Converting to electric cars is going to take time. With transport being Australia’s fastest-growing source of emissions, action on all fronts – road, rail, sea and aviation – is needed.
Improving the rail link between Australia’s two biggest cities will have many benefits, not least in meeting our carbon-reduction goals
Large numbers of trucks not only add to road construction and maintenance bills, they also make our roads less safe and more congested and add to noise and air pollution.
Regional NSW, home to a third of the state’s population, is still waiting for the promise of faster train travel to be delivered. Other states improved their regional services years ago.
The benefits of road-user charging are now well established. And including electric vehicles doesn’t have to be a deterrent to their uptake, as New Zealand and other nations have shown.
Once again, the state looks intent on pressing ahead with a huge road project without releasing a business case. Among the many concerns is the failure to look at lower-emission alternatives.
The continued upward trend in our second-biggest source of emissions is a result of government inaction on a transport mix dominated by trucks and cars and a lack of fuel-efficiency standards.
More than half a century after the first high-speed trains began running overseas, Australia is still waiting for the long-promised service. Right now, faster rail is a better short-term prospect.
High-speed rail for Australia has been on the drawing boards since the mid-1980s but has come to nothing. Three states are developing medium-speed rail with federal funding, but NSW is missing out.
Australia should follow the lead of other nations like New Zealand and Switzerland and increase the charges for heavy vehicles on roads, proportionate to the amount of wear and tear they cause.
Mike Baird’s Liberal National coalition has been comfortably returned to government in New South Wales, despite a 9% statewide swing against it on the two-party preferred vote.
If you’re looking for key battles to watch in the New South Wales election, which could help decide who forms the next state government, then you need to know the story of the Newcastle railway line.
Australia has scored poorly in the energy efficiency of its land transport, and is well behind other major economies, a recent international scorecard has revealed. That means Australians are using more…
“Without trucks, Australia stops” is now a fact of modern life. But when all costs are considered, road freight is an expensive way of moving large amounts of freight. And, as shown by ongoing fatal crashes…
Articulated trucks such as semi-trailers and “B-Doubles” are involved in about 30% of fatal road accidents on the Pacific Highway. As the number of trucks carrying freight between Sydney and Brisbane increases…
The Australian Government has released an “implementation” study for high speed rail (or HSR) on the east coast with a further study to follow. The proposal looks at corridors between Melbourne, Sydney…
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