Re: Declining oil traffic

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

In article <7m60j7$3ae$1@toto.tig.com.au> "Ken Neate" <kenneate@tig.com.au> writes:
>From: "Ken Neate" <kenneate@tig.com.au>
>Subject: Re: Declining oil traffic
>Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 09:25:14 +1000

>Most likely, apart from the longest hauls, the only way fuel will return to
>rail is if a transport operator were to adopt roadrailer technology.  As
>pointed out, by Thommo, for economic, environmental and OHS reasons the
>preference is to load once and go straight to the customer which cuts out
>the use of rail tank cars.

>At the major (capital city) oil terminals, truck loading costs the majors
>less than rail tank car loading due to truck drivers loading on a self serve
>basis.

>Country distributors save the cost of unloading, storing and reloading if
>they use road transport.   Using rail tank cars, the cost for the long haul
>by rail would have to be a fraction that for road.

>Now if roadrailer technology were used the handling costs would be the same
>as for road and it may become economic to use rail again.

>But who wil spend the capital to make it happen?.

>Ken


The biggest single threat to Rail currently and the previous poster did 
mention it is B double trucks.
No matter how much we rail fans might like to argue that rail is more 
efficient than road with the current access regimes in place and maze of 
administrations involved in running rail  B doubles beat rail hands down.
If the current trends continue , ie the rate of loss of freight from rail to 
road and the current number of B doubles keep increasing then withing 10 years 
there will be NO rail in this country servicing general freight,
Once the Pacific Highway is duplicated beyong Maitland to the Queensland 
border you can kiss goodbye to rails existing share of the east coast 
freight market.
About all that will survive is the coal trains,

MD