Australia





The Creation of ARTC

Originally, each of the six states in Australia constructed and operated their own public railways, with the federal government also operating two major trans-continental lines. In the 1990s, the federal and state governments undertook extensive reform of the Australian railway industry.



As part of this, they established open access to the rail network and created the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), which began operations on 1 July 1998 and represented one of the most significant steps taken during these reforms.133 It initially managed the interstate network of the federal railway but, over time, its responsibilities have expanded to include managing much of the interstate rail network in five states, plus the Hunter Valley export coal lines (Figure 1).



Until 2004, the key ARTC activity was maintaining and operating the interstate main lines in Victoria, South Australia, and West Australia (as far as Kalgoorlie). In 2004, ARTC assumed control of a large part of the New South Wales (NSW) network and became responsible for major Federal Government investment in the network and maintaining, under contract, the NSW rural network. Two other adjustments occurred to the ARTC network during the last decade (see Box 1) and ARTC is now responsible for the interstate track from Kalgoorlie in the west via Melbourne and Sydney to Brisbane in Queensland, together with the Hunter Valley coal lines in New South Wales (NSW). The net result is that the original network of 4,443 route-km managed by the Australian National (AN) access unit has now increased to 7,112 route-km, of which 8 percent is multiple-track. The ARTC also maintains the regional branchline network in NSW of 2,828 route-km of operational track and a similar volume of non-operational lines.134

    


133 Appendix A describes the Australian rail sector and summarizes developments that led to creating ARTC.
134 This includes partially constructed line as well as closed lines which still require maintenance of bridges, culverts, etc.
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