THE announcement by the SA minister for transport and infrastructure Stephan Knoll that the GlobeLink air-road-rail infrastructure plan will not proceed has been welcomed by the South Australian Freight Council.
SAFC executive officer, Evan Knapp, said, “The freight industry is both pleased and relieved GlobeLink will no longer go ahead, and that instead other options will be explored.
“We look forward to consultation on the new approach in due course.”
The multimodal concept, originally proposed in 2017, included a dedicated freight airport at Monarto and a toll-road and rail freight bypass ending north of Adelaide.
A KPMG business case found GlobeLink was economically unviable, costing about $7bn with limited projected benefits and low demand.
“The state government has accepted all recommendations in the KPMG report and will not be progressing the original GlobeLink proposal,” Mr Knoll said.
“The government is clearly disappointed with the results of the business case, but it’s become clear that this particular proposal doesn’t stack up.
“With rail volumes unlikely to increase sufficiently in the future, the benefits of a new rail corridor are very marginal,” Mr Knoll said.
Mr Knapp said the original GlobeLink package would have done “significant harm to the freight industry in SA”.
“This in turn would have increased costs for our customers, in particular the state’s exporters” he said.
“It would have also cost billions – scarce infrastructure dollars that can now be spent on far more beneficial projects such as completing the North South Corridor and improving road maintenance.”
