A LOGISTICS expert’s plan to support manufacturing business and economic growth in the West favours the use of rail, instead of road, to transport freight.
Dr Pieter Nagel and his team from Victoria University’s Institute for Logistics and Supply Chain Management (ILSCM) have created a plan to make the most of existing transport links and logistics businesses and services in the West. Dr Nagel’s years of researching logistics cities and infrastructure around the world have helped form the model to unite Melbourne’s West into a logistics city.
The plan looks at ways to help the West become a provider of services required to make Australian businesses more competitive on a global market.
Streamlining the links between receiving freight at sea, air and inland ports and the subsequent journeys to manufacturers, suppliers and providers in the West and the wider region is an important part of creating a Logistics City.
According to the plan, a different mix of transport to make these journeys and links would improve business efficiency and traffic congestion.
“(There is a) concern that there are going to be more trucks on the roads, but that is exactly what we are saying won’t be happening. It is a different mix of transport, in favour of rail over road,” Dr Nagel said.
While some of the transport networks — including the West Gate, Princes, Tullamarine, Monash and Calder freeways, the Western, Nepean and Hume highways and the Western Ring Road — already exist to link Melbourne with the wider region, some additional improvements to these networks would be needed to implement the plan.
Dr Nagel said offering proposals, not creating the infrastructure, was the role of his team.
Dr Nagel and his team have already proposed one transport improvement as part of their submission to the State Government-funded East-West Needs Assessment.
The submission called for the creation of a tunnel linking Ballarat Rd to the Eastern Freeway to improve traffic flow from the city and the East to Melbourne’s West.
Dr Nagel and his team are eager to work closely with governments and city councils to determine the best mix of roads and rail and the bridges, overpasses and exits and entries needed to connect them.
“It is about taking the current infrastructure that we have and working out how it can connect to the ports or airports in a more efficient way,” he said.
But Dr Nagel said the key to transforming the West into an environment that supported the growth of manufacturing business and logistics support did not solely rely on improving traffic flows and connections.
Dr Nagel said a holistic solution is needed.
“The basis of a logistics city is not for logistics but for a manufacturing environment,” he said.
“It creates a very fertile ground for the development of the manufacturing industry.”
A logistics city in the West would exist to aid economic development in West and, said Dr Nagel had the ability to attract additional businesses and improve existing ones to help contribute $2 billion to the economy annually.
