(The following appeared on the Liverpool City Champion website on February 28.)
LIVERPOOL CITY, Australia — The company that says it introduced inland ports to America is full of praise for a similar freight transport network for Sydney, but stresses the importance of planning.
Speaking to the Champion from Texas, Hillwood Development Company communications director David Pelletier said that intermodal terminals like the one touted for Moorebank had helped create a user-friendly freight system in the US.
“Transporting goods by rail is a cheaper alternative, keeps trucks off roads and has an environmental component,” Mr Pelletier said. “There’s significant truck traffic in and out of the intermodal yard and constant trains can impede traffic and disturb homeowners, but this can be prevented if the project is planned properly.”
In the 1980s, Hillwood developed Fort Worth Alliance Airport, the world’s first exclusively industrial airport, about 400 kilometres inland from the port of Houston.
During construction, they were approached by Burlington Northern Sante Fe (BNSF) Railway to build a nearby off-loading facility. Car imports shipped to Fort Worth by train were then taken by truck to dealerships.
The successful system prompted BNSF and Alliance to develop a fully integrated road-rail-air logistics hub in 1995 that could handle about 280,000 containers a year.
The site is now 6800 hectares in size and handles 600,000 containers a year and BNSF has plans for a more automated crane set-up that will enable the yard to handle 2 million containers.
It has been proposed that the Moorebank facility handle at least 500,000 container movements a year.
Mr Pelletier says it will take residents some time to get used to the freight yard, but that the community benefits will be “immense,” including more state funding for schools and police officers through property taxes.
The Fort Worth Alliance freight transport precinct has so far attracted 170 companies (65 of them global entities) and generated 28,000 jobs. Businesses alone add $80 million in taxes to the local economy.
“Another number public officials love is the amount of private investment that has been made in the development, primarily by companies buying land and building facilities,” Mr Pelletier said.
“That figure now stands at $6.2 billion.”