Re: Rail privatizations.

[mauried@tpg.com.au (Maurie Daly)]

On Fri, 13 Oct 2000 23:12:37 +1000, "William Miller"
<backtran@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

>Not sure I agree with the premise here Maurie about the rapidly dwindling
>cake.Sure NR has been doing it tough and has lost traffic to the other
>operators, but this was bound to happen since NR was a monopoly interstate
>and it would be unrealistic to expect a new player not to take some of that
>share. Having said this, IIRC the transcon market share of rail has
>increased overall since competition has come along and the private operators
>you mention all seem to have taken some traffic back from road, ATN in Tas
>in particular seem to have done this with FA and Austrac also reporting new
>traffic that once was hauled by road.
>
>It is difficult to tell what the overall picture is though since I am not
>sure the private operators are required to publicly report their tonnage's
>like the predecessor State owned ones did.
>
>
ATN in TAS is the only example of rail winning back road freight that
I know of and I left it out of the argument as its not mainland.
The bottom line is that on the mainland ,rail cant win back much from
road whilst road doesnt have to pay mass distance charges and rail
does.
I also cant see why NRC should have lost any freight to other players
as it has the most modern efficient loco fleet in the country and its
creation was heavilly bankrolled by its 3 shareholders, ie if any rail
operator was going to succeed it should have been NRC.

On the main south which is where I live , the number of trains
carryung containers and other contestable freight has actually fallen
since the creation of NRC, with what used to be all NRC trains now
being slowly replaced with FC,FA and Austrac trains , but no net
increase in train numbers .

I would love to see some signs of rail winning back freight from road
, but if it is , its miniscule .

MD