Northern Territory freight rail and logistics capacity improvements
The Northern Territory has a rich resource base in gas and minerals deposits, rare earths and solar irradiance. The NT’s resources base offers a unique prospect for Australia to develop and export blue and green fuels, renewable energy, and low emissions commodities and manufacturing products to the global decarbonising economy.
The estimated total investment from several proposed projects in mining, minerals and energy industries across the NT is over $38 billion. This investment is expected to support an estimated 6,000+ construction jobs. Much of the investment and employment increase will occur in remote and very remote regions with higher proportions of First Nations people.
To realise this opportunity, the capacity and efficiency of rail freight and logistics infrastructure along the primary north-south Darwin-Tarcoola rail corridor would need to be upgraded.
This north-south rail corridor is capacity constrained and rail-road interface is severely limited and inefficient. These factors have led to the predominance of trucks as the primary mode to transport the Territory’s freight task. The vast distances trucks need to travel from project to port, and the size of the proposed private projects, could increase road maintenance costs and safety concerns, with the effect of constraining economic growth and impacting the social benefits from private investment.
The proposal identifies the need for appropriately located and configured intermodal terminal capacity with supporting rail sidings and warehousing infrastructure along the Darwin-Tarcoola rail line to facilitate the development and operation of proposed mining, agriculture and energy projects.
Strategic Fit
Improving rail efficiency and intermodal capacity in supply chains will support the NT government’s objective to achieve a $40 billion economy by 2030 through the development of mining, agriculture and energy projects.
Societal Impact
Improving rail efficiency and intermodal capacity along the north-south corridor will support rail volumes on the Darwin-Tarcoola rail line, thereby achieving benefits from mode shift from road to rail and removing investment barriers for the development of proposed mining, agriculture and energy projects across the Territory.
The development of private projects will lift Gross State Product, government royalties and create employment opportunities. Rail transport results in reductions in road freight, improves environmental outcomes and reduces heavy vehicle crashes. Having viable alternative transport modes increases supply chain resilience opportunities for freight movement. Community resilience and social benefits will result from improved local supply chains for consumer and essential goods. This will support the living standards in remote and regional towns that will need to grow to support the delivery of private projects.
Deliverability
The development of rail and logistics infrastructure will need to be supported by road access, utilities and social infrastructure to effectively enable industry investments. Regulatory arrangements and/or incentives alignment with the below-rail operator of the Darwin-Tarcoola rail line will be critical to realising the benefits of this proposal, as well as commercial investment decisions by private companies and Native Title considerations.
The Northern Territory Government is undertaking an infrastructure audit to provide an evidence base to guide future infrastructure investment decision making. Based on this audit, they will develop potential investment options (Stage 2 of Infrastructure Australia’s Assessment Framework).
Refer to Infrastructure Glossary for terms and definitions.