Rail Policy and Performance in Australia.

In 1981, the current author published a review of rail policy and performance in Western Europe (Nash, 1981). A 3 month visit to Australia in the Autumn of 1982 gave the opportunity to extend this comparison to the railways of Australia. Since transport is predominantly a state function in Australia, there are five major publicly-owned rail systems to consider (Table I), each with its own distinct characteristics and each facing a different policy framework. Thus the exercise is much more like a repeat of the European study on a smaller scale than the addition of a single country to the sample.