Waking up in Geelong

For residents of the inner west of Melbourne, the endless procession of trucks carrying containers from the Port of Melbourne has been concern for many years. One proposed solution is the operation of port shuttle trains, which could carry containers directly from the wharves to ‘inland ports’ on existing industrial land, where the cargo will then be distributed to factories and warehouses. So why are such services not running today?

Turns out the operation of port shuttle trains has been tried before in Melbourne, and failed. “Shaping Melbourne’s Freight Future“, a discussion paper published by the Department of Transport in April 2010, has more to say on the topic:

The Victorian Port Strategic Study (2000) provided a comprehensive assessment of the land use and infrastructure requirements of the major commercial ports in Victoria.

The Study identified strong container trade growth forecasts for the Port of Melbourne and emphasised the important role to be played by inland intermodal terminals in the future in handling this growth. The Study estimated the mode share of rail in the transfer of port related freight at that time to be approximately 10% and predicted a progressive modal shift to rail.

In relation to the State’s ports and rail systems, it announced an aspirational target that would see the proportion of freight transported to and from ports by rail increase from 10% to 30% by the end of the decade (i.e. 2010).

A number of private sector interests became involved in efforts to develop rail shuttle services to the Port of Melbourne. Some invested considerable time and resources in attempting to establish such services. Despite these efforts, the establishment of viable port shuttle services in Melbourne has not occurred to date and as a result, significant progress against the 30% port rail mode share target has not been possible.

The paper detailed the failed train service that operated between the Port of Melbourne and the CRT container terminal at Altona, to the west of Melbourne.

The only port shuttle trains to have operated for a reasonable length of time in Melbourne ran between 2003 and 2006, between the privately owned CRT terminal in Altona and the Port of Melbourne, a rail journey of about 22 km.

CRT had been attempting to operate port-rail shuttles since 2000 in a way which reflected successful Sydney operations.

In 2004/05, CRT’s Port Shuttle service transported 13,000 TEUs to and from the Port, which would otherwise have been transported using over 4,000 road truck movements via the West Gate Bridge.

However, during this period, import utilisation of the service was only 42 per cent of capacity and export utilisation was 58 per cent, compared with CRT’s goal of 85 percent utilisation. (Inquiry into Managing Transport Congestion, 2005).

The short distance between the Port of Melbourne and Altona was seen as an impediment against the success of the service.

Because the short shuttle trains occupied the same effective path space on the ARTC network as a long interstate freight train, CRT was charged access fees on the same basis as those paid by interstate operators. The Port Shuttle service also faced far higher port handling charges – reportedly up to $72 per forty foot container compared with $3 for containers delivered by road trucks.

The impediments faced by the CRT Port Shuttle service were particularly damaging on the Port-Altona corridor as the road distance on this corridor is far shorter than the rail distance (the standard gauge rail line takes a circuitous route via Newport, Brooklyn and Tottenham). Overall, the Port-Altona route is the shortest of the three main intermodal corridors in Melbourne, and conditions would need to be favourable for it to be viable.

The paper also describes the lack of success establishing a rail service to a similar facility at Somerton, to the north of Melbourne.

Austrack commenced development of the Somerton terminal in 1998, with the terminal itself occupying 21ha within a larger “freight village”.

The Somerton intermodal terminal includes four 750 metre dual gauge rail sidings, connected to the main standard gauge Sydney line and the broad gauge Victorian track to Seymour, Shepparton and Tocumwal. These terminal connections are to and from the north only, showing expectations of interstate rail movements.

While the terminal operation works well as a road-only shuttle terminal, several unsuccessful attempts have been made to initiate port rail shuttles.

Finally, the paper summarised the lessons learnt from the failed port shuttle services.

Despite considerable effort devoted by Government to establishing appropriate policy settings and by the private sector in attempting to operate metropolitan intermodal services in Melbourne, success has not been achieved to date.

Whilst there appears to have been a desire on the part of the private sector to operate port shuttles and on the part of customers to use the service when competitive, a range of factors have militated against the establishment of such services.

These have included:

• Prevailing access pricing and priorities which favoured large, long-distance interstate trains over port shuttle trains;
• Lack of certainty in securing train pathways;
• An inability to defray rail capital and operating costs across a metropolitan-wide port shuttle network, resulting in poor utilisation of available container slots on the trains and higher costs than road;
• Poorer service levels and higher charges for containers handled by rail at the port interface compared with road;
• Inefficient port interface arrangements due to inadequate rail track infrastructure and stevedoring practices; and
• Road trucks being able to avoid City Link tolls by using local roads

But despite the previous failures, the paper had one positive note regarding future services.

It is notable that the Dandenong corridor, despite being considered by Sd+D (Melbourne Intermodal System Study 2008) to be the most conducive to a viable rail shuttle operation and the existence of some private sector interest, has never been tested.

This has also meant that the prospective strength of the Dandenong corridor has never been leveraged to assist in achieving viability on the apparently weaker Altona and Somerton corridors.

Giving it another go

In the 2014-15 State Budget funding was made available for the establishment of Port-Rail Shuttle services as the ‘Metropolitan Intermodal System’.

Port-Rail Shuttle services (the Metropolitan Intermodal System) will improve the efficiency of containerised freight transport throughout Melbourne by connecting the port to major outer suburban freight hubs by the existing rail network.

The 2014-15 State Budget provided $20 million, along with $38 million from the Commonwealth Government, towards developing the project. It is anticipated that the private sector will also invest in the project.

The project will deliver:

• intermodal freight terminals located within dedicated freight and logistics precincts in the south west, north and south east
• a dedicated rail transfer facility for containers at the port dedicated shuttle trains using off-peak rail network capacity
• business systems necessary to manage information and operations across the network.

The Metropolitan Intermodal System will be operated by the private sector.

Development of an effective Metropolitan Intermodal System will result in efficient freight movements across the city. It is estimated that at least 2,400 trucks a day will be removed from the road network, which is around 10 per cent of all port-based truck movements.

A market engagement process will commence in 2014. Port-Rail Shuttle services are expected to be operational by 2017.

With planned inland ports at Somerton, Lyndhurst and Altona we can only hope that the second attempt at port shuttle trains succeeds, and removes trucks from Melbourne’s increasingly busy roads.

Further reading

The full “Shaping Melbourne’s Freight Future” discussion paper can be found here.

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