The rail industry urges governments to look at the bigger picture when considering the ongoing operation of rural rail lines.
Chief executive officer of the Australasian Railway Association (ARA) Bryan Nye expressed his concerns on the issue saying that governments around Australia must decide whether or not they want more and more trucks forced onto already congested rural highways and roads.
"Viable grain and other agricultural rail lines right across Australia are being forced to unfairly compete with other transport modes that do not pay their fair share of infrastructure maintenance costs," said Mr Nye.
"This leads to situations where impasses over maintenance costs can lead to rail lines unnecessarily closing. It is akin to a government shutting down a highway because they won't pay to fix a pothole," he said.
The advantages of rail are there for all to see. The average freight train takes 110 trucks off the road, reducing truck movements by around 49.7 million truck kilometres a year or 3,100 times the distance between Sydney and New York.
Rail is also the safest form of land transport. On average, there are over 1,500 road fatalities and more than 30,000 road injuries costing Australia $35 billion every year. In comparison, rail has around 40 fatalities and 130 injuries annually.
Even after paying substantial ongoing access fees and high up-front capital costs for the world's best new rolling stock, rail operators can still deliver the cheapest transport option in many markets around Australia.
"Despite this, the lack of an equitable and consistent model across Australia for funding track maintenance can still threaten the operation of otherwise perfectly viable rail lines.
"In this day and age, pushing more and more trucks onto country roads is counterproductive for not only safety but also economic reasons.
"We would encourage all parties to think about what is in each community's best interests when considering the funding of rail maintenance into the future," Mr Nye concluded.
