Re: Alice Springs to Darwin line, but wait, there is more.!

["< Tell >" <telljb@OZozemail.com.au>]

"Bill Miller" <backtran@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
> What do you mean by "anything"? If you mean the current level of traffic
> then OK, but surely not for the development of the iron ore or coal
> deposits. If it were cheaper to do all this by truck the the Pilbara would
> be running trucks (a lot of them) instead of trains, all the traffic on the
> Nullabor would be on trucks.

What iron ore and what coal are you talking about.?
There is no iron ore worth worrying about.  The Lake
Phillipson coal deposits south of Coober Pedy are a
part of 'aus.rail urban folklore', the deposits are
SHIT coal, there are ample supplies far closer to
Adelaide than these.  The NT uses Natural Gas for power
and will continue to use that source for a long-long
time.  The pipeline from Alice to Darwin which carries
the Mereenie/Palm Valley gas North will, when the
supplies run low this end, carry the huge off shore
deposits out from Darwin back down this way and all the
way to Adelaide.! 
 
> It can come down to the chicken and egg thing, ie do you wait for the
> traffic to warrant the railway or build the railway to encourage the
> traffic. It may be this railway will not be built until a mining company
> wants it done and then everyone else will benefit.

There is nothing for any mining company which is not
already being mined and could be carried with a semi
let alone a road train. 

> Another issue is the level of cost recovery of these road trains. A lot of
> studies have shown the bigger trucks get the poorer the cost recovery is.
> Did the road train operators commit capital to the upgrade of the Stuart? Of
> course not, this is paid for (and risked) by the tax payer. The proposed
> operator has to risk his AUD800m against 20 year or so payback with little
> knowledge of what the economy could be like over this time.  They have
> directly contributed to it being financially inviable and need to fix it.

Cost recovery, well seeing that only a *fraction* of
the taxes paid by Australian motorists and trucks
actually finds its way back into the roads.  I am not
sure what your point is.  
Railways pay stuff all taxes when compared with
cars/trucks.  Keating, remember him, he slapped an
excise on fuel for railways which has now been revoked
by those terrible Torys.!  It was peanuts compared with
the road impositions.

----Terry Burton
Alice Springs NT
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