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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Why aren't goods transported via train?
The operational overhead is often too time-intensive, among other issues.
You can either send a lad with a truck down the highway or you can send one to a train station somewhere, have him unload everything, wait for the train to leave, the train to get there (you'll be lucky if it's going straight where you need it to), have someone go to the destination station, unload it into another truck and finally deliver it.
It's might only be worth it for veery long trips, and the start and finish have got to be in good locations (harbors f.e.).
It makes sense to use trains, but as soon as you look into it, it becomes almost undoable.
This fact is also reflected in the tonnage statistics.
For non-bulk freight across the Nullarbor, rail has double the market share of Sea transport. Which then has double the market share of Road transport. It's not the case for Melbourne Sydney though.
Contrary to what the other comments are saying, there's no compelling reason why goods transport by train can't be done here when it can be done elsewhere. It was done in the past but then we started spending billions to subsidise trucks and passed a variety of laws to benefit road transport. Plus allowing the taxpayer to cover the cost of road wear caused by trucks which totals more billions per year.
So in the end it was a pure policy decision - in the 1950s various lobby groups pushed for the introduction of laws to favor road transport over rail transport and in 1957 the first laws were passed. The rest is history.
So I've been reading up on this topic a bit more and I came across this
From here, https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/map/advanced-train-management-system-implementation-interstate-rail-network
On the bright side it is a proposal to upgrade a lot of the rail corridors to support more freight than we have currently. Though it was added in 2016 and is still only in the 'potential investment options' phase
same reason as nuclear power - high startup, low maintainance. Even if the lifetime cost is lower, the initial cost and its associated risk makes these kinds of investments unattractive.
This problem is even worse for trains, because the last miles has to go onto trucks anyways