Re: Hume (Canberra) freight terminal

["Andrew Honan" <ahonan@zipworld.com.au>]

I read the transcripts from Judy Stack et al in response to the Productivity
Commission's draft report on rail reform. This transcript was followed by
the CEO of FreightCorp. It made very interesting reading, and I would
commend it to anyone wanting to understand how track access charges are
meant to work. No doubt the transcripts will be released with the final
report.

One of the snippets was how FreightCorp wanted to see 'Value' placed on
certain lines. They made the point that before they were split up into the
different entities they had a project (I think it was a radio comms project)
on the boards. They went ahead with it, in conjunction with RAC but
basically RAC would not go ahead with it by itself because they couldn't see
the value in it for them. They viewed it as 'an above' rail efficiency
improvement. The question is what happens to these sorts of scenarios in the
future?
Another project put up by NRC was the triangle at Parkes(?) allowing longer
trains to pass. It was the NRC who put this up, because it was going to be a
benefit to them.
But did the RAC fund this??

RAC's policy is to charge what the market will bear. Basically the Hunter
lines nearly get back the so called cost of the line, whereas other lines do
not come anywhere near the recovery cost. These are funded by CSO's from the
government.

This begs the question, how are capital works programmes evaluated?? If the
RAC doesn't feel that some freight lines are not worth upgrading, is it left
up to the operator to upgrade, and if so, are they then charged access?

Andrew Hoan
Maurie Daly <mauried@commslab.gov.au> wrote in message
mauried.385.37A8DBF9@commslab.gov.au">news:mauried.385.37A8DBF9@commslab.gov.au...
> In article <37A8142F.749F825D@zeta.org.au> Don Allitt <nahgfa@zeta.org.au>
writes:
> >From: Don Allitt <nahgfa@zeta.org.au>
> >Subject: Re: Hume (Canberra) freight terminal
> >Date: Wed, 04 Aug 1999 20:21:36 +1000
>
> >I beleive that railway companys should not have to provide infrastructer
as that
> >should be the
> >job of R.S.A.after all they have to pay for the use to X Judy Stack Co.
> >Don.
>
> Yes , its silly to expect the Rail operators to have to pay for
improvements
> in the rail infrastructure so that they can then be charged for using it .
> The real problem in this whole situation is not so much RAC who are simply
> a State Govt owned corporation and therefore have to behave like all
> corporations do ,ie their first interest is their shareholder (the State
Govt)
> and not their customers.
> Its no secret that the NSW State Govt demands dividends from all its Govt
owned
> Corporations ,(RAC is no exception) and they have to pay the dividends,on
top
> of all their operating costs, which means passing these costs onto their
> customers, ie higher track access charges.
>
> This is where the whole rail  / road access regime totally sucks.
>
> MD
>
>