Evan Knapp: The Liberals should ditch their GlobeLink rail freight bypass plan for Adelaide

THE SA Freight Council has serious concerns about the GlobeLink plan for rail freight to bypass Adelaide, as it’s not in the city’s interest to be bypassed, says Evan Knapp.

• GlobeLink transport bypass economically unviable: Labor
• Freight industry has concerns about Liberals’ bypass plan

IN South Australia, it’s only recently that we have ever used the “b” word when it comes to infrastructure.

People in larger countries, cities or states may be blasé about spending billions of dollars, but South Australia doesn’t have that kind of money to splash around — every infrastructure dollar is valuable.

That’s why the Liberal’s GlobeLink plan seriously concerns the SA Freight Council. The plan includes a 24-hour freight-only airport at Monarto, near Murray Bridge, and a combined road/rail bypass to the north of Adelaide.

But it won’t work — here is why.

Airports are almost never sustainable purely on freight. The majority of air exports goes in the belly of passenger aircraft, and it requires a combination of the two to make such services viable.

There are rare instances where it can work — where there is a massive concentration of high-value local freight that requires air freight due to perishability or delivery time frames, rather than the far cheaper and more common sea freight route. Monarto doesn’t meet these criteria.

Airports also don’t come cheaply.

Adelaide Airport has freight expansion capacity until at least 2056, so there is no need for a new freight-only airport now. By all means, we can reconsider this proposal in four decades.

The proposed GlobeLink rail corridor was comprehensively studied by the Commonwealth in 2010, with a finding that none of the available routes delivered a positive cost-benefit analysis.

Costs were estimated at between $0.7 and $3.2 billion — there’s that “b” word again.

There’s a second problem with a rail bypass — it’s not in our interest to be bypassed.

If Melbourne-Perth trains cease to go through Adelaide, they won’t stop to pick up our freight.

Relatively speaking, we have only a small number of containers to be picked up and dropped off — this volume will not support the number of services we currently receive in the presence of a bypass option.

So why would we spend billions of dollars to cut ourselves off from additional rail services?

Like other industry organisations, the SA Freight Council supports further evaluation of the road corridor.

However it should not be viewed as a panacea for the South Eastern Freeway or Portrush Rd.

About 80 per cent of trucks that use the South Eastern Freeway have business in Adelaide and will use the freeway regardless — the proposal is likely to have greater benefit for inter and cross regional movement of goods.

It’s not a guaranteed proposition and will likely cost in the billions given the challenging terrain, but is worthy of further study.

If South Australia’s alternative government is looking to invest billions of dollars in the state’s future freight infrastructure requirements, the best way to do so is to accelerate the North-South Corridor’s completion date (bringing those proven benefits forward) and to significantly increase our maintenance spending on roads, regional freight rail lines and bridges.

Evan Knapp is SA Freight Council executive officer