About 2.2 million containers pass through Sydney’s Port Botany every year. Photo: Peter Rae, SMH.
Transcript Channel 7 News, Monday 19 October 2015 – watch report here.
MARK FERGURSON (7 News): There’s a new push to get hundreds of thousands of shipping containers off our roads. It involves an ambitious plan to develop a huge site at St Marys where technology would shift containers from trains to avoid traffic in our suburbs.
MATTEW SNELSON (7 News): A vacant lot right now but this land at St Marys has been earmarked as the site for a $100 million investment as freight giant Asciano seeks to set up a container handling hub – artists impression show the massive scale.
The terminal at St Marys will ease traffic on 60 km of road including the M7, M5, M4 and Roberts Road, with 300,000 containers a year no longer driven from Port Botany.
RAY WILLIAMS (Parliamentary Secretary to the Premier for Western Sydney): The ability to be able to move large amounts of shipping containers out to areas of Western Sydney and then dispatch them locally will theoretically remove thousands and thousands of heavy vehicles movements.
MATTEW SNELSON (7 News): Estimates suggest it could be up to 90,000 truck movements a year. The Development Application has been lodged for the 43 hectare project at Forrester Road.
DAVID BORGER (Sydney Business Chamber): Eastern Creek must be one of the biggest logistics precincts anywhere in Australia, but until now it’s had no connection, no real connection with the rail system.
MATTEW SNELSON (7 News): It comes after the approval of a terminal at Moorebank in South Western Sydney which is set to begin operating in 2017.
MICHAEL KILGARIFF (Australian Logistics Council): The movement of freight is just as important to the liveability of our cities as the movement of people.
MATTEW SNELSON (7 News): 7 million containers a year are expected to come through Port Botany by 2031, St Marys and Morebank will handle just a fraction meaning either more terminals or gridlock.
If approved, construction on the St Marys terminal would start next year.