Re: Rail lobby - enlisting Joe Average.

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

In article <36942248.0@news.camtech.net.au> "David Martin" <d_martin@mountains.net.au> writes:
>From: "David Martin" <d_martin@mountains.net.au>
>Subject: Rail lobby - enlisting Joe Average.
>Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 12:13:14 +1030

>It is obvious that rail & road do not compete on a level playing field, &
>have not done so for decades. A major cause, I suggest, is that the road
>transport lobby, both freight & passenger, has far more political clout than
>the rail lobby.

>By "rail", I refer to both heavy & light (trains & trams).

Dead right, but at the risk here of being labelled the devils advocate I am 
going to ask an obvious question that no-one seems to want to ask and its this.
Who actually wants a level playing field between rail and road.

Obviously the trucking industry doesnt want any of the current rules changed 
unless its in their favor.
Lets look at the rail industry in this country.
For the last 100 odd years or so railway administrations have run trains on 
the basis of their own little empires, with absolutely no consideration of 
whether their trains were in any way competitive with trucks , or indeed 
whether their trains were competitive with anything.
Each state rail administration dreamed up more and more idiotic rules and 
regulations for their trains and showed in just about all cases a total 
unwillingness to cooperate with each other in any way.
This gave us such idiotic practices of changing locos and crews at state 
borders for no good reason other than the rules say so.
Whilst this particular practice has fortunately dissapeared in the last 15 
years or so, other idiotic practices like requiring that a train must have a 
particular type of radio in it before it is allowed to cross a state border.
We also have track access regimes in every state with differant rules and 
secrecy conditions which simply make it hard for any would be rail operator to 
operate an interstate train.
A constant argument that was put to the Neville inquiry by most interstate 
operators was that the costs of complying with all the differant state rules 
and regulations was the major problem in running interstate trains.
One private operator (see if you guess which one) had been trying for 2 years
to get a satisfactory track access agreement ratified.
 
The point of all of this , is that I dont beleive that currently the various 
State Railway administrations give a stuff about the non level playing field 
and are deliberately continuing to do what they have done for the last 100 
years or so , simply playing trains in their own little states.
To level the playing field needs a couple of things.

1/ Uniform rules and regs and comm systems across the whole country.
2/ A uniform and publicly accountable track access regime.

After we have the above , then we can look at improving the rail corridors. 
Both of these requirements get  tacit approval from State Transport 
Ministers every time such matters are discussed,but never get any support from 
the individual rail administrations , I wonder why.

cheers
MD
 

A constant point that was put to the neville inquiry into