Impact of Cross River Rail. The Queensland Government is promoting Cross River Rail, a tunnel project to increase the capacity across the Brisbane River for passenger trains. NHG considers this is highly relevant as part of the DAU2 process given that Cross River Rail is anticipated to be operational by 2024 (within the next regulatory period) and given the impact both the construction and operation of Cross River Rail will have on West Moreton coal services that utilise the Metropolitan system. During construction, significant track closures are expected to impact coal train services to the Port of Brisbane. There are two possible consequences of the impact on coal train services to the Port of Brisbane. First, that there are not enough coal paths left around the closures to meet shipping contracts. Second, if the paths are clustered together around the closures, there may not be enough rolling stock to meet shipping contracts in the shorter operating window. Additionally, once the Cross River Rail development is operational, disruptions to coal train services will become entrenched (even where the disruptions become consistent with planned services) and will continue to affect West Moreton coal train services in the long term. While we acknowledge this may be an unintended outcome of the project, the paths available to coal trains will be of lower value. There will be a lesser proportion of continuous paths from the Western System, down the Toowoomba Range and through the Metropolitan system. In fact, the Toowoomba Range will have a lower capacity in that period instead of 113 return paths per week, being likely to be a lower figure because of the construction closures. Consequently, NHG considers the appropriate means of mitigating the impact of the Cross River Rail on West Moreton coal train services both during construction and operation is to include a material change in system capacity as a new Review Event in Part 7 of DAU2. The new Review Event would be arise due to a material change in the coal train paths available to West Moreton coal train services and would ensure the flexibility to vary the reference tariff to align with the variations in track closures at different stages of the Cross River Rail project, including in respect of the usability of train paths and discounting of the value of paths that necessarily are clustered around closures.
