The role of rail in the Australian port-based container market: challenges and opportunities

ABSTRACT

The number of containers handled by Australian seaports has quadrupled over the past two decades. This has posed major difficulties for community and businesses. Knowing the projected demand, the need for disruption-free and reliable land corridors is of emerging importance. This paper first aims to establish a transparent image of the role of rail in the Australian port-based container flows and, second, to empirically identify the key impediments to the competitiveness of rail in this market. To achieve the second objective, a survey was distributed among Australian ports and key container stevedores. This paper identifies that despite the significant growth in the container volumes, rail’s share in the land-based movement of this traffic was small, principally due to lower service levels. The analysis indicated that inadequacy of intermodal infrastructure is a key impediment for the use of rail, followed by poor interoperability and shortage of below-rail infrastructure. This paper concludes with important recommendation for government and industry to make informed infrastructure planning and investment decision.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the port officials for their valuable inputs to this study. An earlier version of this paper was presented in the 2015 International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME) Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Hadi Ghaderi was involved as industrial consultant in private sectors of food industry before continuing graduate studies. He graduated with Bachelor of Engineering in Industrial System Engineering from Shiraz Azad University, Iran, and Master of Engineering in Engineering Management from Universiti Putra Malaysia. He obtained his Masters in Transport and Maritime Economics from Institute of Transport and Maritime Management Antwerp (ITMMA), University of Antwerp. He is currently involved as a researcher, Ph.D. student in rail logistics and casual lecturer at the Department of Maritime and Logistics Management, National Center for Ports and Shipping, Australian Maritime College. His research interest is in the areas lead time management and horizontal collaboration in transport and logistics, intermodal transport and rail logistics.

Stephen Cahoon is the Director of NICTA Logistics Lab in the University of Tasmania. In terms of academic appointments, he is a Council Member of the International Association of Maritime Economists, an Associate Editor of the Asian Journal of Shipping and Logistics and joint guest editor of a special edition of the Growth and Change: Journal of Urban and Regional Policy. He is also active within the maritime and logistics industry in his roles as the Tasmanian Chair of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport of Australia (CILTA), member of the CILTA National Professional Development Committee and CILTA National Council, and member of the Tasmanian Transport and Logistics Workforce Advisory Group.

Hong-Oanh Nguyen is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Maritime and Logistics Management in the University of Tasmania. His research interest is focused on maritime and logistics network analysis; port development, performance valuation and bench marking; and investment theory.

ORCID

Hadi Ghaderi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4705-3471

Stephen Cahoon http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5763-8409

Notes

1. This is the latest data available.

2. According to BITRE (2012), non-bulk freight is generally perceived as any containerised or, unitised freight, placed or lifted into a transport hold. Therefore, in this paper non-bulk refers to the nature of the cargo while intermodal refers to the mode of transport.

3. Financial figures are in Australian Dollars.