The Australasian Railway Association has released a fresh series of recommendations regarding the financial support of state and territory infrastructure projects.
Among these submissions, which outlined the industry’s growth in revenue, job opportunity and other metrics, are a series of key recommendations that were provided to guide the success of future sector projects.
The submission first suggested that the Federal Government require all federal funded rail infrastructure projects to demonstrate clear alignment with integrated transport, land-use and urban settlement planning frameworks.
Commonwealth infrastructure was also recommended to be provided on a conditional basis, in order to support nationally consistent rail interoperability standards, digital systems, and modern construction and procurement practices.
Recommendations highlighted the need for Federal Government to establish and maintain a sequenced, multi-year national rail infrastructure pipeline to improve transparency, reduce investment volatility, and moderate cost escalation across the sector.
Additionally, the submission expressed that infrastructure funding allocations should be transparently linked to population growth, regional development needs, and nationally significant freight and passenger corridors.
It was also recommended that all state and territory rail projects seeking federal funding should now be supported by independently assessed business cases that consider network-wide benefits, interoperability, whole-of-life costs, and the impact of delivery days.
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Governments were recommended to seek bipartisan support for major rail infrastructure projects with delivery timeframes extending beyond a single electoral cycle, to minimise project disruption and cost inefficiencies.
Meanwhile, the submission suggested that digital rail upgrades, signalling modernisation, network optimisation and climate resilience works be explicitly recognised as eligible infrastructure investments for federal funding.
Project assessment frameworks should now need to apply clear and consistent criteria that evaluate economic, social, environmental, cultural and community impacts, including alignment with national Net Zero emissions targets.
According to the submission, Federal Government funding decisions should prioritise whole-of-life value and long-term performance outcomes over lowest upfront capital cost.
It has also been recommended that the Australian Government needs to strengthen federal oversight and public reporting requirements for federally funded rail projects, including cost, schedule, scope and benefit realisation metrics.
Finally, the Federal Government is being pushed to establish a national, publicly accessible infrastructure lessons-learned repository, modelled on international best practice, to improve governance and delivery outcomes across jurisdictions.
