RP Infrastructure

The North Coast Line (NCL) corridor is a long rail system with multiple traffics and interfaces along the east coast of Queensland. It has been the main corridor for intermodal rail freight between Brisbane and Cairns for many years. It operates as a multifaceted supply chain that transports a range of commodities required for communities across the region. The diversity of the services that occur across the corridor result in a range of interactions that are more complicated than the high-volume single product resource supply chains.

Project Overview

The Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (DTMR) were looking for strategic advice to determine what the future task would be, whether the NCL system was capacity constrained and what investment options should be contemplated to ensure the NCL network meets future rail requirements and provides a competitive alternative to road transport.

Our Role

Throughout the project, The RP Infrastructure (RPI) team supported the identification of issues limiting NCL rail freight competitiveness; demonstrated that the NCL could accommodate rail freight growth then assessed the NCL system for future freight and passenger services; analysed options for improving passenger and freight efficiency on the NCL network; and determined opportunities for performance improvements over the next 10 and 20-year planning horizons. Our team proposed value for money (VfM) staged delivery of NCL capacity improvements.

We successfully delivered the comprehensive report which outlined the options for the development of policy initiatives and establishment of planning priorities to Queensland Government.  

Our team was able to undertake and assess both infrastructure constraints and underlying freight market issues. This resulted in the identification of improvement opportunities related to both process improvement and investment.