Sydney is on track to have 5.5 million TEU trucked between Port Botany and western Sydney each year by 2030, unless the NSW government finds $1 billion to build a rail spur linking a new intermodal terminal at Eastern Creek with Port Botany container terminal.
This compares with a 'mere' 1.7 million TEU trucked last year between Port Botany and western Sydney, while 0.3 million TEU were railed.
Container movements through Port Botany are expected to reach 3.2 million TEU by 2020. By then, the Australian government plans to have its proposed intermodal terminal at Moorebank operating at full capacity of 1.2 million TEU. With a further 0.3 million TEU to be railed to the intermodal terminal at Enfield, this leaves 1.7 million TEU to be moved by truck in 2020.
Therefore, the Moorebank intermodal terminal will not produce a decrease in the number of truck movements compared with today.
However, by 2030, estimated container movements through Port Botany are 7 million TEU. To meet this demand, the NSW government proposes to build an intermodal terminal at Eastern Creek.
Eastern Creek has several key advantages. There is land available for expansion to meet container demand into the next century. The design can accommodate unlimited truck movements, as compared with Moorebank, where road capacity is inadequate. Most importantly, Eastern Creek is closer to the main demand areas for freight than either Moorebank or Port Botany.
At present, the NSW government has no funds for building a freight rail line connecting Eastern Creek with the metropolitan freight network. Therefore, the intermodal terminal would not be built. Reliance on Moorebank intermodal terminal will result in 5.5 million TEU movements by truck in 2030. (This number may be reduced by 1 million TEU if a second intermodal terminal is built at Moorebank by the private SIMTA consortium, which would add to Moorebank's traffic woes.)
An additional $4.4 billion, in present value terms, is required to upgrade the Northern Sydney Freight Corridor to carry more freight by 2028. The primary reason for upgrading the corridor is to service Moorebank and Port Botany. Since the NSW government has no funds for upgrading the corridor, it is obliged to abandon its freight rail strategy for Sydney.
It would be possible for private enterprise to fund and build a freight rail bypass of Sydney and Newcastle, by building a container terminal at the Port of Newcastle and railing containers between Newcastle and Eastern Creek. Commercial viability would be achieved by fixing a charge to cover principal and interest over a period up to 50 years. A use for the Port Botany container terminal site is for expanding Sydney Airport including extending the parallel runway to 4000 metres.
The freight rail bypass would extend to Glenfield and containers would be railed between Port Botany and Eastern Creek via Glenfield until the bypass was completed, in around 10 years' time.
100 per cent of Sydney rail capacity can be used for passenger services when freight is removed from the metropolitan network.
Given that the NSW government has no strategy, perhaps it might see the sense in examining a viable [alternative] proposal?
Greg Cameron is a former BHP manager and specialises in economic modelling.
