Improve the liveability and economic sustainability of regional, rural and remote areas by developing, maintaining and operating integrated freight and passenger transport networks that meet end-to-end access needs.
- Slow recovery from a sustained pandemic
- Regionalised Australia
- Digital Australia
Key messages
Smaller Cities and Regional Centres, as well as Small Towns, Rural Communities and Remote Areas, that are better connected (to each other, and to Fast-growing Cities and to domestic and overseas markets) will realise their social and economic potential.
Action plans to improve supply chains should address technological innovations, regulatory changes, place-based agreements for major port precincts and targeted infrastructure upgrades.
Improving the local accessibility of Smaller Cities and Regional Centres will complement the staging of faster rail upgrades for regional links. Longer-term national priorities for high-speed rail must align with a clear national vision for population change. Faster and high-speed rail services should be interoperable across borders.
To improve access from Small Towns, Rural Communities and Remote Areas to essential services, governments must manage road, rail and aviation links as an integrated hub-and-spoke network, with end-to-end journeys meeting a specified time-based performance standard.
What are the impacts?
Coordinated passenger transport resources will deliver significant access benefits for users from smaller communities. This includes connectivity to Fast-growing Cities and equitable same-day access to essential services under nationally consistent performance standards.
Similarly, improvements in freight transport will support businesses and economic growth of communities by removing or easing the points of friction in key supply chains. The greatest potential social gains will be where supply chains come into conflict with dense urban land uses around major ports. Investing in intermodal projects that enable targeted commodities to be moved by rail instead of road will support long-term environmental outcomes.
Going forward, separating passenger and freight movements will also impact the overall quality of services through speed, reliability and comfort. While productivity of existing assets and services will increase, affordability will largely remain the same in the short to medium term.
How easy is it to implement?
Planning and operating regional services under a hub-and-spoke model will draw on established transit network management capacity.
Using the CSIRO TraNSIT tool, and evidence available through the National Freight Data Hub, supply chain improvement plans will minimise costliness. However, the level of ease is hindered through an initial upfront expense.
Delivering faster rail services, especially high-speed rail, will present complex economic and technological challenges that are new to Australia. However, there should be enough lead time for the growing domestic rail industry to pivot from urban to regional priorities.
How certain are the outcomes?
Control over faster rail outcomes (including interoperability of projects in different jurisdictions) is dependent on a clear national plan and approach. This can be achieved through agreeing on objectives for population change and committing funds over multiple electoral cycles. If this alignment is achieved, governments at all levels can be confident that connectivity investments will help sustain a post-COVID-19 trend in favour of regional settlement.
Achieving maximum benefits from reorienting regional and remote area passenger transport requires consolidation of scheduled air services at regional and remote hub airports. This could create challenges for community acceptance, however this should be outweighed by improved land transport connections, efficiency improvements to critical supply chains and reduced passenger travel times.
| Quality |
Faster regional connections
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| Access |
Regional essential service access
|
| Governance |
Port and airport place-based plan
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Read more about this recommendation in 4.2 Connecting regional and remote Australia in the 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan.
Reform implementation pathway
This recommendation comprises of outcomes and activities, which form the reform's implementation pathway.
The implementation pathway is designed to guide change agents on the supporting activities necessary to achieve the overall reform.
For each outcome and activity, we propose change agents to act as:
- Proposed sponsor: facilitate, coordinate and champion the recommendation
- Proposed lead: deliver specific activities or lead related outcomes
- Support: share ownership, contributions or knowledge to enable the reform process.
Maintain reliable access for supply chains under all conditions by coordinating technological, operational and infrastructure improvements delivered under the National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy.
5-10 years
Identify supply chain improvement opportunities across multiple commodities and geographies by developing and applying the TraNSIT model. Drive more responsive supply chain management decision-making by making this evidence accessible to governments, industry and other stakeholders through the National Freight Data Hub.
0-5 years
Deliver local safety, environmental and economic benefits for regional, rural and remote communities by identifying and prioritising freight intermodal projects that promote shifting from road to Inland Rail and other freight rail services for targeted commodities.
5-10 years
Develop and implement place-based action plans for Fast-Growing City port and airport precincts, through government, industry and community partnerships, that align with the National Urban Freight Planning Principles. Improve the efficiency of export- and tourism-oriented corridors by implementing actions that reduce friction between freight operations and dense land uses.
5-10 years
Enable remote area supply chain cost savings by increasing domestic freight operators' access to alternative fuels, including hydrogen produced under initiatives that are currently oriented towards overseas customers and/or non-transport heavy industrial uses such as mining.
5-10 years
Support the growth and diversification of Smaller Cities and Regional Centres by investing in their local accessibility and connectivity and progressively upgrading transport connections to Fast-growing Cities.
10-15 years
Improve connectivity in and around Smaller Cities and Regional Centres by investing in multimodal transport interchanges integrated with mixed land uses that are adjacent to the train station or (for locations without a train service) the central business district.
0-5 years
Improve public transport access to the heart of Smaller Cities and Regional Centres from their suburban and rural catchments by supporting the operation of flexible and demand-responsive services.
0-5 years
Promote active travel for tourism, recreation and local access in and around Smaller Cities, Regional Centres, Small Towns, Rural Communities and Remote Areas by investing in the adaptive reuse of disused railways and integrating these with other linear open space corridors and low-traffic rural roads to provide connected networks.
0-5 years
Strengthen the connection of Smaller Cities and Regional Centres to Fast-Growing Cities by progressively upgrading existing regional passenger rail services. Make services more comfortable and reliable, and grow the patronage base for public transport, by investing in customer experience improvements such as new rolling stock and in track projects that maximise the separation of freight and passenger movements.
5-10 years
To improve the connectivity and economic performance of outer-urban areas, ensure regional rail service improvements improve accessibility outwards from Fast-Growing Cities, and better connect outer urban-areas to their larger regional catchment as well as making established central business districts more accessible to Regional Centres.
5-10 years
Support regional growth by prioritising faster rail, fast rail and high-speed rail investments based on credible scenarios for population change and using nationally consistent decision-making processes. These should include models and assumptions that are updated to evaluate project benefits and costs across wide geographic areas and over the full life of rail assets.
10-15 years
Maximise economic, productivity and safety benefits from governments' fast rail, faster rail and high-speed rail investments. Invest in the timely preservation of surface corridors. Ensure the cross-border interoperability of projects is advanced in different locations.
10-15 years
Ensure equitable access to essential services for Small Towns, Rural Communities and Remote Areas by coordinating passenger transport investments and operations.
5-10 years
Develop and adopt nationally consistent performance standards for Small Towns, Rural Communities and Remote Areas to physically access essential services that cannot be effectively provided online. Articulate standards in terms of the total time taken by people in a rural or remote area to travel to and access the education, health or other services offered by Smaller Town rural Community and Regional Centre and then return home.
0-5 years
Align spending and service delivery across transport modes with performance standards for Small Town, Rural Community and Remote Area access. Enable the greatest possible proportion of the population of these communities to access centre-based services cost-effectively within a day-return or other reasonable specified timeframe.
5-10 years
Ensure long-distance passenger travel needs are serviced cost-effectively and in line with access performance standards. Do this by integrating regional aviation infrastructure and services programs with land transport services under a multimodal hub-and-spoke network model.
5-10 years