Greg Cameron

A container terminal at Newcastle would be good for people living in northern NSW because the cost of transporting goods to and from the port will be lower, obviously, than with Port Botany.

Low-cost access to a container terminal is a vital ingredient in the successful future of any economic region worldwide – container ports drive new supply chains, markets and infrastructure.

If there are valid reasons for not building a container terminal at Newcastle, they are yet to be identified by either the NSW government or the Australian government.

It is relevant to consider why the former Newcastle steelworks site is owned by the NSW government.

Sixteen years ago, BHP was proposing to build a container terminal on the site but, unexpectedly, gave it to the NSW government, in 2001, which dumped the proposal.

The state government accepted ownership of the site's industrial contamination after 84 years of steelmaking.

Last year, the Australian government claimed that a Newcastle container terminal "would add costs to the entire supply chain". The claim is contained in the Moorebank Intermodal Terminal Project, Detailed Business Case, 6 February 2012, on page 62.

No evidence has been provided in support this claim.

The Australian government says its 1.2 million TEU intermodal terminal at Moorebank is necessary for expanding Port Botany container terminal.

The intermodal terminal "would provide a major boost to national productivity, helping to reduce business costs and the adverse environmental and social impacts of road transport, as well as creating jobs in south west Sydney".

These claims are said to be backed by a "significant amount of research". Unfortunately, this research has been redacted from the "Moorebank? Detailed Business Case".

Consequently, it is not possible to test the Australian government's claims for the proposed Moorebank intermodal terminal.

Moreover, Port Botany's traffic congestion is simply being transferred to Moorebank – see Moorebank Intermodal's? Key Assumptions Requires Deeper Scrutiny, April 2013.

Other than for the area served by the small Enfield intermodal terminal, western Sydney is better served from Eastern Creek – because it is closer to the main demand areas – than from Moorebank.

By 2030, annual container movements are expected to be 5 million TEU – up from 2 million TEU in 2012 to 7 million TEU.

At 1.2 million TEU, the Moorebank intermodal terminal is too small and will be unable to cope with Port Botany throughput, which in 2020 is estimated to be 3.2 million TEU.

Both the Australian and NSW governments support an intermodal terminal at Eastern Creek; and both support a freight rail by-pass of Sydney and Newcastle.

The likely route is from Glenfield in south western Sydney, Eastern Creek, across the HawkesburyRiver, west of the CentralCoast, and Newcastle.

Eastern Creek would be capable of handling all of Sydney's intermodal terminal requirements for the rest of the century. Ample land for warehousing is a further, decisive, advantage of Eastern Creek.

It would not be necessary to maintain multiple, small-scale intermodals scattered throughout Sydney's west in cramped conditions.

Paying for the freight rail line between Glenfield and Newcastle would be achieved by railing containers between Newcastle and Eastern Creek.

The outer wester Sydney freight rail by-pass would enable the removal of freight from the Sydney rail network, which in turn would allow all rail capacity to be used for passenger services.

If rall was to absorb 30% of the forecast growth in Sydney urban travel, the savings would be $1 billion a year by 2025.