‘Land bridge’ to alleviate supply chain woes

The state government is expecting to implement a ‘land bridge’ in coming days to transport products from the east coast to Western Australia after a once-in-200-year flooding event damaged railways in South Australia.

The flooding in January resulted in extensive damage to the rail line in central SA, washing away 18 sections of rail.

The damage stopped trains from being able to transport goods across the country, exacerbating supply chain issues in supermarkets and leaving some shelves bare. 

Transport Minister Rita Saffioti said she met with truck drivers, major retailers, the Freight and Logistics Council of Western Australia and union representatives to discuss the issue this morning.

Ms Saffioti said the most likely solution was implementing what she called a ‘land bridge’: using trucks instead of trains to transport goods in places where sections of the rail line was damaged.

She said she expected the land bridge to be operational in the next few days.

Other solutions the state government was exploring included shipping goods from the east coast and allowing triple road trains into Perth.

“All those options are being thoroughly investigated,” Ms Saffioti told reporters.

“Over the next few days, I think we will see some of those options starting to happen including, in particular, the land bridge option which will allow products to come over in WA in good volumes.”

Ms Saffioti said the triple road trains would be escorted to minimise the safety risks of using the large vehicles, which are considered to be dangerous.

“Those triple road trains will increase the capacity of the trucks by 50 per cent, this will facilitate a quicker movement of product and also a safer movement of product under escort,” she said.

“We are going to do what we can to try and get product easily into the state.”

Ms Saffioti said the major supermarkets had around three- or four-days stock in their warehouses.

On Monday, an Australian Rail Track Corporation spokesperson said they expected the track to remain closed for at least 12 days.

They said a further update on timeframes for recovery would be provided later this week.