One hundred and fifty-seven years ago today on 10 May 1869, just short of 7 years after Congress passed enabling legislation the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroad projects joined up at Promontory Summit, Utah.
This massive feat in human engineering and common resolve was commissioned in the middle of the civil war and achieved without bulldozers and tunneling machines.
Pick and shovel, dynamite and physical human labour were the main contributors to nearly 2900 kilometers of railway from Omaha to Sacramento.
The project was not without drama, disaster, and disappointment – but it was done!
And the US had its first transcontinental railway – infrastructure spine which was the catalyst to investment and development from which modern America emerged.
Contrast this monumental nineteenth century achievement with the public mismanagement, political bickering, lack of resolve, goal shifting and poor stakeholder treatment that has characterised Australia’s 21st century attempt to build a rail link between Melbourne and Brisbane.
An attempt now that after more than a century of talking about it has been cancelled because it was all too hard, too costly and taking too long to complete.
As a country we should hang our heads in shame at falling so short of what reasonably can be expected in the delivery of infrastructure enabling efficient economic development including decentralisation and diversification of our economy.
With so much already invested, it is timely to reconceive and recalibrate the Inland Rail project.
The private sector and private capital must be given the opportunity and incentive to take a fresh look.
It should start with building/ upgrading a link between Gladstone Port and the Toowoomba intermodal facilities around Wellcamp and Charlton and then on to the Moree Special Activation Precinct and beyond eventually to Parkes and the southern end that should be completed in the next year or two.
The proposal to link to Brisbane has been distracting and was known a generation ago to be so costly and complex as to jeopardise the feasibility of the project.
SEQ is not the nation and there is more at stake here long term than providing business for the Port of Brisbane.
We should be taking ‘a first things first’ approach and what works most efficiently. It should not be a choice between bulk commodities and container traffic but an evolving infrastructure corridor that boosts our regions, national productivity, and economy.
If there is a lesson to be learned from the American transcontinental achievement of 157 years ago, it is that the railway is not the end in itself but just the beginning of a development vision that here in Australia in 2026 must not be abandoned.
Professor John Cole 