The ARA joined with the Public Transport Association Australia New Zealand and Roads Australia for a national summit in Canberra on Wednesday to address decarbonising transport.  

The ARA’s CEO Caroline Wilkie attended the National Decarbonising Transport Summit and talked about the significant role that rail plays in sustainable transport as well as the challenges, innovations and priorities for decarbonising transport. 

The interactive Summit was supported by ARA member Arup and brought together over 40 senior government and industry leaders representing the nation’s transport sector. 

It explored how Australia’s governments can work with industry to reduce barriers to implementation, build capability across the supply chain and ensure national consistency across procurement, data collection and performance reporting.  

We are also currently finalising a new major research report – the Rollingstock decarbonisation critical path to support the industry’s journey to net-zero.  

The report will form the basis for the ARA to contribute to the Commonwealth’s consultation on the Transport and Infrastructure Net Zero Consultation Roadmap. 

This report, being prepared by GHD, will outline a coordinated approach and specific actions for government, industry and other stakeholders to progress the decarbonisation of rail operations nationally, as well as addressing the supply chain challenges and capabilities needed to support this transition. 

The efficient and timely decarbonisation of rollingstock will be substantially dependent on supply chain capability and available workforce and skills.  

The supply chain capability framework in the report provides recommendations to industry and government to ensure there is enough domestic capability to support the transition to emerging low and zero emission technologies and improve the competitiveness of the Australian rollingstock supply chain.