New Submission re Yelarbon to Gowrie (Y2G) Assessment
by
Friends of Felton
10 February 2017
The purpose of Y2G is to assess the alignment options open to the Inland Rail (the Track)
and make a recommendation to the Federal Minister for Infrastructure and Transport as to
which alignment would best serve the national interest. The work of Y2G is meant to be
completed by the end of March. In the meantime, the project consultants are applying ‘likewith-like’ comparative analysis to inform the decision making process. This is an elaborate
process by which relevant criteria are scored against the Base Case (ie, via Millmerran); it is
presumed that the alignment found to have the highest score will be recommended to the
Minister.
The purpose of this latest note is to draw some comparisons between the Base Case option
and the so-called Karara-Leyburn option. These comparisons may prove useful if the MCA
scores turn out to be similar for the main contenders, making it desirable to incorporate
higher order criteria to discover real points of difference. Not including all relevant factors or
criteria in the analysis will risk arriving at the wrong conclusion. Below we discuss three more
issues considered relevant.
1. Representation on the Y2G Project Reference Group
By our reckoning, the Millmerran option has three times more (against the Track) specialinterest representatives on the Y2G Project Reference Group than the Karara-Leyburn
option. At first blush this might suggest more opposition in aggregate to the Millmerran
option than the Karara-Leyburn option. Friends of Felton (FOF) challenge this suggestion
based on the history of our organisation and our membership. FOF was formed in 2008 to
confront the threat of an open cut coal mine. Despite this threat being put asunder in 2012,
the organisation remained active for the purpose of supporting like-minded communities and
generally protecting the viability and integrity of agriculture in the Felton Valley. At the height
of our struggles against the mining proposal, our membership exceeded 100 people and we
had hundreds of non-member supporters who lived outside the immediate district. Today we
have 76 financial members and 52 associate members. If asked, we suspect all these
people would oppose the Track going through the Felton Valley, due mainly to impacts on
the Valley’s high amenity values.
2. The ‘Before and After’ significance of accommodating the Track
A primary rationale for MBIR is alleviation of the enormous freight burden currently being
suffered by the MB road network. The Gore Highway, connecting Goondiwindi to
Toowoomba via Millmerran is a critically important part of this network; it carries far-far more
of the north/south road freight than, for example, does the Toowoomba-Karara Road
(connecting the New England and Cunningham highways). In this case Millmerran is already
established as on a major freight route. This situation suggests Millmerran would have more
to gain from accommodating MBIR than would (say) Leyburn, which presently suffers
relatively few heavy trucks. In a nutshell, we would argue that Millmerran is an established
‘freight town’ and adding the MBIR would serve as a strong complement to this status and
capability. By way of contrast, the Toowoomba-Karara Road is not gazetted for heavy
transport and therefore has no scope to benefit from becoming the route for the Inland Rail.
As a side issue, we note the Karara-Leyburn corridor passes right over the top of Leyburn,
presumably due to the town’s location coinciding with a gap in the hills. This strikes us as a
little unfair relative to how the corridor is positioned in relation to other towns en route.
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3. Relevance of Existing Rail Easements on Access to a Route
It is appreciated that all the Y2G track will be new and constructed will be to world-best
standards. However, it would still be possible to use existing rail easements where these
exist. Thus a point of difference between the alternative Y2G routes is the existence, or not,
of railway reserves (or easements) that might be used by MBIR. The existence of reserves
(whether currently used or not, but probably best if they are not) should greatly reduce the
cost and feasibility of land access relative to routes where no railway reserve exists1. On this
basis, the Karara-Leyburn route should score poorly because no-where along its corridor are
there any railway reserves. By implication, the Karara-Leyburn route would suffer very high
access costs, especially north of Leyburn where the farms are small and intensive, implying
the likelihood of stiff compensation demands. Along similar lines, we suspect the emotional
impact of MBIR on neighbours would be much greater where no rail easement has ever
existed. All such considerations should give rise to negative scores for the Karara-Leyburn
option relative to the Base Case.
Note we have avoided the term ‘green field’ as it can’t be applied to Y2G without qualifying the
situation it is actually referring to; nor does it have an antonym that can be used without qualification.
Certainly at the Warwick meeting it caused a good deal of confusion.
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