Pricing and the level of investment in the critical rail line connecting the North West Minerals Province with the Port of Townsville are being questioned as it reopens this week, with its shortcomings prompting a call to look west for solutions.

Economic policy expert Craig Wilson believes there is a strong argument to build a new standard gauge rail line westwards from Mount Isa to link to the Darwin port.

The DeltaPearl Partners managing director said the Mount Isa to Townsville line – which has been cut for about a month after flood damage – had suffered from underinvestment for a long time, and there were other drawbacks for industry.

“For good reason, the quality of the Mount Isa line is often derided,” Mr Wilson said. 

“It is so slow and freight costs are high.  This tends to push freight load onto road, which creates something of a death spiral for the rail line.”

He said the arguments for an alternative line westwards grew as the cost-effectiveness of the Mount Isa Rail line diminished.

This came alongside the prospect of a larger freight task from a growing phosphate mining industry in the NWMP and the Mount Isa-Tennant Creek-Darwin corridor.

“The Mount Isa rail line is constantly looked at through a ‘Queensland’ prism,” Mr Wilson said. 

“But through an ‘Australian’ lens, the arguments for continuing to a full business case of the Mount Isa – Tennant Creek Rail link are much stronger.”

Queensland Rail points to significant investment planned for the track and argues that rail transport on the Mount Isa line remains cost effective compared with road transport.

But Cloncurry Mayor Greg Campbell also believes there are problems to be addressed in the pricing framework.

“Because the framework hasn’t been right, and we’ve seen more bulk commodities go on road, it becomes a vicious cycle,” he said. “If there’s less product, then there’s less reason to invest. So the framework is the first thing that needs to be fixed.”

He said there were about half a dozen ‘weak spots’ that were regularly impacted by flooding.

If it was not viable to fix these points to make the line more resilient in the wet season, then the line must be made much more efficient to ship more product during the rest of the year, he said.

Cr Campbell said opening a new route to port through the NT was always an option.

“There have been studies where the only way that it actually works is to bring that western link into the Cloncurry area rather than Mount Isa, because this is more central and that would eliminate some of the mountainous terrain,” he said.

“But where we’ve already got an asset … and these are Queensland mines, I would love to see the policy and the investment aligned to actually make the North West hum with the infrastructure that we already have, benefiting all of Queensland.”

Member for Traeger Robbie Katter is also critical of the regulatory arrangements and pricing applying to the Townsville-Mount Isa line.

“Transport companies are not using the track because the prices are too high,” he said. 

As for the mooted Darwin link, he said the priority should be fixing the issues on the Mount Isa line to Townsville first. 

Queensland Rail head of regional Scott Cornish said that it was impossible to make the 1000km-plus line completely immune to significant weather impacts.

But Queensland Rail continued to improve the flood resilience of the line and review processes to improve the efficiency of recovery efforts, he said.  

“The Mount Isa line is a crucial part of freight infrastructure in north Queensland, supporting exports and regional jobs. Queensland Rail continues to invest in the line to ensure it is safe and reliable,” he said.

“More than $140 million in capital upgrades and $242 million in maintenance work will be invested over the next five years as part of our commitment to shift freight from road on to rail.

“Queensland Rail’s modelling shows that rail transport continues to be more cost effective than road transport for the movement of freight on the Mount Isa line.”