NSW Launches Major Freight Reform to Secure Economic and Environmental Future
NSW has released a sweeping freight reform plan to future-proof the sector amid population growth, climate pressures, and emerging technologies.
The report highlights critical challenges in land availability, emissions, infrastructure resilience, and skilled labour shortages. A roadmap of industry-wide and network-specific reforms—covering planning, data use, workforce, decarbonisation, and pricing—is now set for implementation. These changes aim to boost efficiency, lower freight emissions, and improve service continuity across road, rail, port, and air networks.
An overview:
Transport for NSW’s June 2025 report, Delivering Freight Policy Reform in NSW, presents a comprehensive roadmap to overhaul the state’s freight sector amid rapid population growth, climate change, and evolving technologies. Prepared by an independent panel, the reform focuses on optimising freight networks across road, rail, sea, and air, and ensuring the system is resilient, sustainable, and economically competitive.
Key challenges identified include severe industrial land shortages, outdated pricing frameworks, and workforce deficits—especially in trucking and rail. Strategic reforms will centre on improved planning, better data sharing, stronger integration of freight in land use decisions, and investment in skills development. Notably, decarbonisation is a high priority, with a modal shift from road to rail recognised as crucial to emissions reduction. Rail produces 16 times less CO₂ per tonne-kilometre than road freight, and even a 1% shift could reduce national emissions by over 330,000 tonnes.
The NSW Government has accepted all recommendations and committed to implementing the reform roadmap. Future actions will include support for night-time freight operations, new infrastructure, incentives for low-emissions technologies, and regulatory reform across all freight corridors.
NSW has released a sweeping freight reform plan to future-proof the sector amid population growth, climate pressures, and emerging technologies. The report highlights critical challenges in land availability, emissions, infrastructure resilience, and skilled labour shortages. A roadmap of industry-wide and network-specific reforms—covering planning, data use, workforce, decarbonisation, and pricing—is now set for implementation. These changes aim to boost efficiency, lower freight emissions, and improve service continuity across road, rail, port, and air networks.
