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Future freight rail capacity to Eastern Creek intermodal and Sydney Main West Line
Potential investment options (Stage 2)
Location
Western Sydney, NSW
Geography
Fast-growing cities
Category
Corridor Preservation
Problem/Opportunity timeframe
Near term (0-5 years)
Proposed By
NSW Government
Date added to the IPL
17 February 2016
preserve_corridor_for_western_sydney_freight_line_and_intermodal_terminal_access

Problem

The national land freight task is expected  to grow by 86% between 2011 and 2031. The 2015 Australian Infrastructure Audit found that freight rail will need to play a growing role in the movement of goods between ports and inland freight terminals. The role of freight rail will be particularly important for containerised freight, with demand for container terminal port infrastructure projected to grow faster than Gross Domestic Product.

In 2018–19, approximately 18% of containerised freight handled at Port Botany was transported by rail. If this trend continues, congestion on Sydney’s road network will increase as the number of trucks required to meet the growing freight task increases.

In order to facilitate a shift from road to rail for containerised freight movement in Sydney, additional capacity and higher levels of service are required on Sydney’s rail freight network.

Modelling by Infrastructure Australia in 2017 estimates the net cost of protecting  and acquiring the Western Sydney Freight Line (WSFL) corridor and intermodal terminal  as $3.6 billion (2016 prices) using a 7% real discount rate.

Potential options

The proposed WSFL would be a dedicated rail freight line connecting Western Sydney to the Sydney Metropolitan Freight Network at the Southern Sydney Freight Line (SSFL). It would connect to intermodal terminals to service freight moving through Western Sydney from across New South Wales.

The core objective of the proposal is to reduce growth in truck movements on the Sydney road network and reduce delays to freight trains on the main Western Line, where passenger trains have priority. Preservation of the corridor is the first step  to achieving this objective.

On 30 June 2020, the NSW Government announced and protected the final corridor for the western end of the WSFL. Work on finalising and protecting the eastern end  of the corridor is underway.

Construction of the WSFL may also  require capacity enhancement of the  SSFL between the WSFL/SSFL junction and Sefton Park Junction.

Next steps

Proponent to complete business case development (Stage 3 of Infrastructure Australia’s Assessment Framework).