Feature
Issue No. 29 - June/July 2006
ARTC finds itself in heavy traffic
by Professor Richard Blandy
During the past eight years Australian Rail Track Corporation Ltd, headquarted in Adelaide, has grown from a 45-employee company running a rail network over the interstate standard gauge in SA to a major player of more than 1700 employees covering a national rail network from the Queensland border to Kalgoorlie.
Triggering the booming expansion was ARTC’s coup in September 2004, signing a 60-year lease with the NSW Government to manage the NSW interstate and Hunter Valley networks and a further agreement on the Country Regional Network. The lease involved the secondment of about 1000 workers from State Rail and RIC in NSW.
Since then, ARTC has progressively taken management of Victorian standard gauge and concluded a wholesale agreement over Kalgoorlie to Perth traffic.
But despite shifting its centre of operational gravity into NSW, ARTC is still headquartered at Mile End, along the Main Adelaide to Perth line.
In South Australia, employee numbers have also grown, from 45 in 1998 to 152 today. ARTC’s Mile End site has had a major refurbishment, reconstruction and extension of its buildings.
Senior managers living in Adelaide include CEO David Marchant and Chief Operating Officer Wayne James, Chief Financial Officer Andrew Bishop, General Manager Operations and Customer Service Denise McMillan, General Manager Risk and Safety Andrew Kitto, General Manager Assets Management Tim Ryan and General Manager Corporate Services Geoff Atkinson.
In 1999 ARTC sales were $87million. In 2006 ARTC will achieve sales of more than $439m. The firm has lifted east-west rail volumes from just over 50% in 1998 to its present level of 81% of all land transport, while reducing access charges by one third.
Major new works in SA have included an upgrade of the bridge at Murray Bridge allowing a long-standing speed limit to be removed. Trains with axle loads up to 30 tonnes can now cross at 50km/h.
Other work included two ...
