Re: Darwin Railway's new rollingstock?

[mauried@commslab.gov.au (Maurie Daly)]

In article <75apl8$gup$1@reader1.reader.news.ozemail.net> "David Proctor" <daproc.spambait@umpires.com> writes:
>From: "David Proctor" <daproc.spambait@umpires.com>
>Subject: Re: Darwin Railway's new rollingstock?
>Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 22:17:42 +1100

>Maurie Daly wrote in message ...

>>Much of this freight is then transhipped from rail to road and goes on to
>>Darwin and return.
>>The rest all goes by road , all the way , and will continue to do so,simply
>>because its quicker and much cheaper.

>But would it be cheaper and quicker? I am no expert in transport economics,
>but I would imagine that one of the factors that trasnport companies look at
>when considering modes of travel would be the cost of transhipment from rail
>to road at ASP and the delays involved with that. I would imagine that a
>through line would capture a large amount of the freight.

Absolutely correct , and the same transhipment problems occur at both end 
Terminals , ie you have to get the freight from the customer to the Rail 
Terminal by road , tranship onto rail , send the freight by rail and then 
tranship back to road to get it to its final destination.
Unless the customers have their own private rail sidings then two 
transhipments are required.
Even so though, rail freight costs should be a lot lower than the equivalent 
road freight costs simply because of the greater efficiencies of rail, ie 1 
train driven by two people can haul the equivalent of 100 semi trailers 
needing 100 drivers.
The trouble is that rail freight costs arnt much lower and are in a lot of 
cases higher than the equivalent road freight rates.
Modern semi trailers achieve freight rates of 3 - 3.5 c/ntk whereas rail at 
its best can only make 2.5 c/ntk, ie the differance is simply not enough to 
get people to shift from road to rail.
Most of the reasons that rail cant achieve lower rates is the high track 
access charges , which road users dont have to pay , and the plethora of State 
based rules and regulations which rail operators have to comply with but road 
users dont have to.
As the NT line will be privately owned and its owners will require some sort 
of reasonable return on their investment,then track access charges on the 
private bit of the line are likely to be quite high,thus discouraging freight 
moving from road to rail.
The other main thing going for road freight is that it is extremely 
competitive , ie many companies and owner drivers competing against each other
for the available loadings.
Their is no such competition in the Rail market, at least not yet anyway.
NRC are really the only interstate rail operator except on the Melb - Perth 
corridor .
Unfortunately where the majority of all interstate freight flows , ie Melb - 
Sydney - Brisbane there is no Rail competition, although Freightcorp are 
slowly starting up.
Whilst rail is plagued by the myriad of track access authorities and 
unrealistic track access charges and idiot state by state regulations , then 
road is the only winner.

cheers
MD