Australia is importing an increasing volume of goods. Nearly every year the level of container freight transported through Port Botany increases, making the poor planning choices of the past more problematic.
There are two Intermodal Developments proposed for Moorebank. They are massive in scale and therefore they are very worrying to residents. They are also complex and confusing for residents to understand. This is a summary of the most important points.
SIMTA (Sydney Inter Modal Terminal Alliance) has concept approval for an Intermodal Terminal on the Wattle Grove side of Moorebank Ave at Moorebank, formerly the DNSDC. The SIMTA proposal is to take containers from Port Botany by rail and put them on trucks for distribution throughout Sydney. They also intend to unpack containers on their site and distribute from the site.
SIMTA sought approval for 1,000,000 TEUs per year, however the PAC gave concept approval for 250,000 TEUs, with a future maximum of 500,000 TEUs. A TEU is a Twenty foot Equivalent Unit, the standard unit of measure for containers. As an example, six TEUs could be six 20 foot (6.1 meter) containers, or three 40 foot (12.2 meter) containers or two 60 foot (18.3 meter) containers
SIMTA is a private business owned 67% by QUBE Holdings (Logistics) and 33% Aurizon (Rail Freight, formerly known as QR National)
MICL (Moorebank Intermodal Company Ltd) is a Federal Government enterprise that currently has an EIS open for public comment. MICL is seeking concept approval to handle both containers from Port Botany and also to handle interstate rail freight from its site on the Casula side of Moorebank Ave at Moorebank, formerly the School of Military Engineering.
MICL is seeking approval to move 1.2 million TEUs.
Why Moorebank
MICL and SIMTA both explain their decisions to target the Moorebank locations because they are close to the M5 and M7, they are close to the SSFL (South Sydney Freight Line) and they are large sites that can accommodate large freight trains.
Both imply that the locations are close to the industrial areas that will consume the containers being shipped through them
Why Not Moorebank
Apart from the stress and worry these project are creating for local residents there are a lot of good reasons to reconsider the location:
- Even the proposed huge freight precinct won't resolve the problems caused by the failure in strategic planning that lead to all of NSW freight being moved through one port, Port Botany. Sydney needs a better plan, with containers entering the state through multiple ports and being shipped as close as possible to their destination. The current proposals call for road freighting containers from Moorebank in the south-west to the west and north-west.
- The Moorebank sites are surrounded by residential areas, impacting residents sleep with noise and light.
- The roads around Moorebank are already very congested with hundreds of millions of dollars needed to upgrade them to meet current need and a great deal more needed to support the estimated one truck every 18 seconds generated by the proposed terminals.
- The container terminal land use is incompatible with the Liverpool Council master plan for the Georges River. The proposal would lock up the riverbank for another hundred years.
- The Diesel fuel used by the locomotives and trucks that would service the intermodal will produce a significant level of pollution including high levels of PM10 and PM2.5 which are very hazardous.
- The Georges River is protected to preserve its platypus population. It is hard to imagine how millions of containers per year crossing the river can be guaranteed not to leak chemicals.
- The development of a container terminal has been forecast to actually reduce the number of jobs in the local area by converting existing high jobs density light industrial (eg panel beaters) into warehousing which has much lower jobs density.
- The opportunity cost of building a freight terminal is that other, more compatible developments cannot be built. The council's highest and best use study casts a vision of a mixed use commercial and residential precinct that will bring jobs to the area and make use of Liverpool's riverbank to enrich the lives of locals.
Where Then?
Liverpool council and residents are not opposed to development. The majority of residents and the council support the development of an airport at Badgery's Creek in Liverpool, outside the urban area. Of course an airport has a large surrounding area that is only suitable for industrial development. It seems like an airport and a freight terminal would perfect for each other. Both are noisy and don't get on well with the neighbours. What's more integrating air freight and rail freight could have significant benefits.