Yesterday I attended a hearing into the Inland Rail project. The massively expensive project will see up to 40 heavy freight trains a day travel through southern Queensland to Acacia Ridge. (20 into Brisbane and 20 out)
Inland Rail uses passenger lines through south west Brisbane that local residents were promised would never be upgraded to heavy freight. That promise, by Labor Premier Beattie has now been broken by Premier Palaszczuk.
It is telling that neither Premier Palaszczuk nor any of her administration had the courage to front the inquiry to respond to the criticism of the route her Government is promoting.
The Mayor of Logan City Darren Power testified that within 20 years more than 50,000 residents would live with 1km of the train line, putting up with noise and vibration from 1.8km long heavy freight trains 24 hours a day.
The current plan is to terminate the line at Acacia Ridge, and not upgrade the rail link to Brisbane Port until 2040. This stupid idea will put hundreds of additional A double heavy freight trucks and related traffic onto local roads that can’t handle the traffic they have now.
Inland Rail’s preferred alignment also goes across the Condamine floodplain near Millmerran. Building a 2m railway embankment across a major floodplain is a really bad idea. The small culverts being built into the embankment will quickly block during heavy rain and flood out thousands of local residents and businesses.
The much better route through Warwick, along mostly existing freight rail lines was not seriously considered by the ARTC, this is a poor decision.
The budget for Inland Rail now stands at $20 billion and will go much higher. At this cost Inland Rail will never pay for itself. Our investigations into this and listening are going to continue. The more I hear, the more concerned I am about this project.
