A VICTORIAN Government plan to close a key rail freight link to the Port of Melbourne in Melbourne’s west is threatening the realisation of a planned warehousing and logistics hub in Melbourne and a rail link to a grain terminal in Ballarat — with no solution to the impasse yet in sight.
The plan would also divert more port-bound export freight on to trucks — against the government’s own policy to make better use of rail freight.
The planned removal of crossovers at Sunshine that directed freight trains from the Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong lines into the Tottenham Yard and then to the port casts doubt on Boral’s plan for a warehouse and logistics hub at the building materials giant’s Deer Park quarry site, according to The Age.
Unless an alternative route is implemented, cutting the vital rail link also jeopardises CHS Broadbent’s plans to build a rail link to its freight hub in the Ballarat West Economic Zone, where the grain handler has already spent nearly $30 million building an intermodal terminal for the transport of containerised crops including wheat, barley, pulses and canola.
The closure of the direct Sunshine link would force containerised freight trains from Ballarat to detour via Geelong, adding 47 kilometres to the journey to the Port of Melbourne, Victoria’s only container port.
The “Sunshine Regional Rail Link Crossovers” were added as part of a rail route to the port in the Regional Rail Link, which has segregated Geelong and Warrnambool line regional trains from the suburban Werribee line since it opened 10 years ago.
But, reportedly under pressure from V/Line and suburban train operator MTM to avoid passenger – including future airport – and freight trains sharing the same tracks, the government has proposed cutting the rail link as part of its Sunshine Superhub project.
The Sunshine Superhub project includes streamlining the short but complex rail corridor between Sunshine and Tottenham, where broad and standard gauge tracks are traversed by freight and regional and metropolitan passenger trains from several lines.
The project is a prerequisite for the long-awaited Melbourne Airport Rail Link and the almost-as-long-promised electrification of the rail line to Melton, allowing more frequent metro services for residents in Melbourne’s outer western suburbs.
But the proposal to remove the crossovers without proposing an alternative rail freight path has been slammed by rail operators and advocates.
Rail operator Pacific National wrote to Victoria’s Minister for Ports and Freight Melissa Horne and Transport Infrastructure Minister Gabrielle Williams in September, noting that a preliminary briefing from consultants Deloitte had stated that “crossovers will be removed” before asking about the impact of the move.
Pacific National CEO Brett Grehan replied that “meaningful consultation should inform any decision in the first instance” in the letter obtained by DCN.
“The proposal to remove the Sunshine crossovers will not just have business or financial impacts but will also negatively impact the broader supply chain by reducing the number of trains that can operate,” Mr Grehan added.
“If these critical rail crossovers are removed, every month six of Pacific National’s 12 trains each carrying 1000 tonnes of dairy products would be unable to run because of reduced paths. These six cancelled services would be replaced by120 return B-Double trucks on Melbourne’s road network.”
Mr Grehan asked the ministers for a meeting with rail stakeholders to “discuss viable measures to mitigate impacts and ensure critical freight volumes remain on rail”.
Such measures include replacing the Sunshine crossovers with a new 400-metre link from the Tottenham-Newport line, allowing continued rail freight access to the port from the Ballarat line while avoiding interaction with passenger services. This workaround is outside the scope of the Sunshine Superhub project and is understood to involve land acquisition, adding to the project’s expense.
But to date, no meeting with Pacific National represented has been held, according to a source close to the issue inside the company.
Advocacy group Rail Futures Institute is also concerned about the proposal.
“An important matter of concern is the proposal to remove the ability at Sunshine for freight trains from the Ballarat and Geelong lines to directly access the Tottenham Yards, Dynon Terminals and the Port area,” RFI president John Hearsch told DCN.
“While we accept the rationale for this action, it is a reasonable expectation that this functionality be suitably replaced as part of the Sunshine Superhub project, in this case by a long-proposed west to north connection on the Sunshine-Newport freight line between Brooklyn and Tottenham Junction. This will fully separate freight from passenger trains in this area, and in any event, provide a much more effective solution than retention of the existing crossovers.
“While industry has made it clear that it will be adversely affected if no work-around is found, the spectre of extra freight trucks travelling through the inner West has also generated massive concern from communities who live there.
“When government has a clear policy of more freight on rail, it is nonsensical to undertake works which will produce the opposite result,” Mr Hearsch concluded.
A Victorian Government spokesperson told DCN, "a dedicated Rail Freight Working Group has met to bring industry, operators and government together to find practical outcomes to keep Victoria’s freight system strong, competitive, and ready for what’s ahead.’’
As a priority action in the Victorian Freight Plan Update announced earlier this year, the Department of Transport and Planning will develop a long-term vision for rail freight for consideration by government which will build on the Rail Freight Capability Statement released in 2023, the spokesperson added.
Replying to Mr Grehan, Minister Williams said that the government needed to “balance the needs of rail freight whilst catering for the rapid population growth and changing travel needs in Melbourne’s western suburbs including a new line to Melbourne Airport, as well as increased services on the Sunbury, Melton and Wyndham Vale lines”.
Those western suburbs communities will not thank either minister or their government – which faces an election in 12 months – for the extra truck traffic and diesel emissions if a strategic rail freight link is closed without a workaround.
Any diversion of freight from rail to road also flies in the face of the Victorian Government’s – and Labor’s – commitment to Net Zero greenhouse emissions by 2050.
Already, the impending full opening of West Gate Tunnel next month has drawn the ire of inner west Melbourne residents soon to be affected by concentrated emissions from the underground freeway’s unfiltered ventilation towers, the subject of rallies and media events organised by Maribyrnong Truck Action Group over the past two years.
Representing the Williamstown electorate in Melbourne’s inner south-west, Minister Horne would be acutely aware that some of those residents are her own constituents.