How a quiet rail closure could swamp western suburbs with trucks

A plan to shut a key freight train route in Melbourne’s west to accommodate additional passenger services and airport rail is set to push thousands of tonnes of goods bound for the Port of Melbourne onto trucks.

The move is expected to worsen road congestion and pollution in the western suburbs, and has prompted crisis talks between the freight industry and state government.

The impending removal of the freight “crossover” at Sunshine has also jeopardised the growth of Victoria’s grain export industry. Grain handler CHS Broadbent warned that its planned rail link to a new $30 million distribution hub in Ballarat might no longer be viable if trains were forced to travel an extra 47 kilometres via Geelong.

Freight industry operators have told the Allan government that shutting the Sunshine route to the Port of Melbourne undermined its goal of increasing the portion of freight moved on trains as part of its net zero climate policy. There were warnings Victorian roads would be swamped by a threefold increase in truck trips to the Port of Melbourne, Australia’s busiest port, over the next 25 years, even before the closure of the Sunshine route was revealed.

The Sunshine crossover is a track junction built 15 years ago as part of the Regional Rail Link project. It connects broad-gauge trains from Ballarat to dedicated freight tracks at Tottenham Yard and onwards to the Port of Melbourne.

Some freight operators were blindsided when the state government told them in February the junction would be removed as part of the $4 billion Sunshine Superhub upgrade to simplify the tracks in preparation for passenger train services to Melbourne Airport and the extension of the Metro network to Melton.

With the removal of the crossover, trains from Ballarat and north-west Victoria will have to travel an extra 47 kilometres via Geelong and Werribee.

All freight trains from Victoria’s west and north-west, as well as ARTC services to Perth, will be squeezed onto a single corridor between Geelong and Melbourne via Werribee. That includes a section of single track at Newport station, leaving the network vulnerable to bottlenecks and being paralysed during a derailment or maintenance work.

Industry players say many freight train services will be unviable because of the slower journeys and higher operating costs, while also raising concerns that the loss of network capacity will restrict future rail freight growth and contribute to growing road freight.

Truck traffic is one of the biggest concerns residents have about liveability in Melbourne’s booming west. Over coming months The Age is increasing its focus on the western suburbs with a special series examining the positives and challenges the region faces. In October, our reporters will moderate a West of Melbourne Economic Development Alliance’s (WoMEDA) summit to discuss a vision for the western suburbs’ success.

Grain handler CHS Broadbent has told the Allan government it will not proceed with a planned rail connection to its freight hub at the government’s $55 million Ballarat West employment zone unless a way to mitigate the track closure is found, according to two sources familiar with the issue who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters.

CHS Broadbent has already spent close to $30 million building an intermodal hub at the site over the past decade, predicated on the direct rail link to the Port of Melbourne. There are plans to unlock export opportunities for Victorian farmers currently limited by how much grain can be moved by road.

Federal Government funding was made available for the Ballarat Terminal but not a single piece of new track has been laid for the project now into its 3rd year.

The government was spruiking a direct freight route between Ballarat and the Port of Melbourne as recently as three years ago.

In late July, rail freight giant Pacific National pleaded with Freight Minister Melissa Horne and Transport Infrastructure Minister Gabrielle Williams to find ways to mitigate the impact of the closure and “ensure critical freight volumes remain on rail”.

“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,” the company said in the letter to the ministers, which The Age has seen. “These six cancelled services would be replaced by 120 return B-Double trucks on Melbourne’s road network.”

Qube, another major freight rail operator, has warned that the closure will “increase transit times, costs and operational risks [and] also create a significant barrier to attracting new customers to rail”.

“At a time when we are trying to encourage greater volumes of freight to shift from road to rail, consistent with the Victorian government’s own objectives, the current proposal will effectively incentivise the reverse,” a Qube spokesperson said. “That will mean higher costs for regional producers and more congestion on the road network.”

The Port of Melbourne has encouraged customers to lobby the government about the changes through the consultation process for the Sunshine Superhub, according to correspondence seen by The Age. Freight trains on the route mostly move agricultural produce. In the future, they were intended to be used by the Murray Basin’s nascent mineral sands industry.

CHS Broadbent declined to comment on the future of its investment at the Ballarat West employment zone but said it was aware of the “complex issues” around the Sunshine works. “We have been in ongoing discussions with government in recent months, and we’re hopeful of a positive outcome,” it said.

In May, the Department of Transport and Planning hired Deloitte to consult the freight industry about the impact of removing the Sunshine crossovers.

A Deloitte briefing pack for that consultation seen by The Age acknowledges the removal would have a “material impact” on freight services because of the extra travel time and loss of network capacity, and extra fuel, access fee and staffing costs for operators.

The rail network downgrade could also prompt “freight operators to shift some volume to road transport” and lead to “increased congestion and emissions which does not support the Sate’s NetZero targets”, the confidential briefing says.

A spokesperson for the Allan government said the Sunshine crossovers needed to be removed to enable more passenger trains, including to the airport and Melton.

This is simply a lie. The crossovers can exist between the lines and only used for freight which mainly runs overnight. They lie and lie and lie this government.

“We are establishing a dedicated rail freight working group on this issue to bring industry, operators and government together to find practical outcomes to address this impact,” they said.

Labor had invested more than $470 million in the regional rail freight network since 2020, the spokesperson said. 

The Port of Melbourne has predicted the number of trucks visiting the port every day could rise from 11,000 to 34,000 by 2050, even if it succeeds in moving more freight onto rail.

But efforts to boost rail freight have so far been fruitless. The 20-year, $183 million Port Rail Shuttle project has yet to move a single container.

And is not even close to being ready.

There have been warnings about trucks on local roads in the west after the government pushed back the timeline of the proposed Western Interstate Freight Terminal.

The project was meant to link into Inland Rail near the majority of Melbourne’s industrial customers, but a terminal at Beveridge in Melbourne’s north was prioritised by the Commonwealth for funding.

This prompted a warning that freight in Beveridge will have to travel by truck to areas such as Truganina, where the majority of customers who would use Inland Rail are based.

A spokesperson for the Port of Melbourne said the port was looking forward to working with the state government and the freight industry on potential solutions to the Sunshine closure. Pacific National declined to comment.

With the age