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 general assumption above that Rail is much more cost effective than road 
unfortunately in Australia at least isnt the case.
B double trucks achieve an overall freight rate of 3.5 c/ntk and its still 
coming down as more of these trucks hits the highways of Australia.
The best Australian Rail has ever been able to achieve is 2.5 c/ntk which
NRC is achieving,but the 1 c differance just simply isnt enuf given the double 
handling that has to occur. (NRC are also running at a loss at this rate.)
Rail needs to get down to under 2 c, around 1.5 c/ntk to begin to start 
clawing back the road onslaught.
The problem is simply Track Access charges for Rail are simply too high where
an operator doesnt own their own track and has to pay them.
Track access charges range from 0.03 c/ntk up to nearly 1 c/ntk depending on 
whose jurisdiction you are in.
Where vertical integration exists and  private enterprise runs the trains ,
eg ASR & FV and Tasrail then there is some chance of a turnaround as the Track 
Access charges issue dissapears.
A much better solution for Rail , rather than having more and more billions 
poured into infrastructure would be simply to abolish altogether Track Access 
Charges, after all there is no equivalent Road Access charge.
Rail would then be maintained and funded in exactly the same way as road
under the same agreements which currently exist.

MD