Re: Alice Springs-Darwin loses financier

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

On Sat, 27 Jan 2001 00:27:54 GMT, "Peter Berrett"
<pberrett@optushome.com.au> wrote:

>
>Dear Paul
>
>I hasten to disagree with this statement for a number of reasons.
>
>Fistly, there are costs associated with accessing the ocean namely port
>handling charges, fuel, ship staff wages etc
>
>There is also a question of timelyness.
>
>Secondly, the advantage that rail has over sea travel is that it the more
>direct route to get from south east Australia to south east Asia. That must
>equate to savings in fuel.
>
>Finally I disagree with your statement that goods will cost more as a result
>of landing in Darwin.
>
>If it is cheaper to carry goods by sea, exporters will still use sea travel
>to ferry their wares. They will choose the cheaper option. Given that the
>company(s) railing freight from Darwin to south east Austarlia and vice
>versa will be competing against sea freight they will have to drop their
>freight charges lower.
>
>cheers Peter
>
Sorry Peter.
Paul is spot on.
Rail cannot ever compete with shipping when the cost of building the
railway in the first place has to be factored into the track access
charges.
Ships dont have to pay track access charges, nor do they have to pull
their loads up and down hills.
If rail was as efficient as shipping then we would be railing all the
wheat and grain grown in NSW and Victoria to Brisbane and then loading
it into ships as Brisbane is closer to the final destination than
places like Melbourne, Geelong or Portland.
As for reducing rails charges to compete with shipping , in the case
of AP to darwin it simply isnt possible.
You have a $700 million debt plus annual interest bills to pay which
you can only derive from track access charges.
As for timrlyness, rail can only compete with shipping when the
function of train control is in the hands of the rail operator.
In an environment where a 3rd party provides the train control ,rail
operators have no certainty that their trains will arrive on time.
Its in most cases in the hands of 3rd party train controllers.
And there is also the road freight industry.
People seem to beleive that once AP to Darwin is built then all of the
existing freight that goes by road will magically switch over to rail.
Why??
It hasnt anywhere else.

MD