Paul,

I know that we changed from acres to hectares but acres will always be with us.

Look at the ads,

"ACRES-ACRES-ACRES

A fine 20 hectare property......"

Simply because A comes before H in the alphabet and thus one's ad goes to the top of the column.

Steam locomotives are very efficient for society, they require more service personnel, more maintenance personnel and more crew members thus providing more jobs. They can be built locally, equals more jobs.
They require more depots and thus more jobs in regional areas, more services not directly in support of the railways but supporting the town and the workers that live there.

Steam locomotives are good for society.

Is Mise, a casual read of this forum may conclude you are making with de joke, but I know you too well on here for that, you are dead serious about the locos.
I can just picture you thundering across the American prairie in a carriage behind a steam locomotive. Dressed in your oil skins, with a big droopy mustache, the spitting image of 'Buffalo' Bill Cody, your trusty blunderbuss at the ready, shooting bison at will, as you steam by.

Is Mise, I like steam locomotives despite their inefficiency and their high CO2 emissions. But your claim of being more efficient for society because they require more jobs is completely wrong. They're LESS efficient for society for precisely that reason! Employing more people for that purpose means they're not able to be employed for a more productive purpose.

As for the Greens' transport policy, I don't think they've thought that particular part of it through at all well (though as it would be a very slow phaseout during which time the policy would no doubt be amended, that probably wouldn't've mattered much even if they had got to form government). I'm guessing they favoured rigid trucks over semis for safety reasons, but it really isn't practical even though rigid container trucks do exist.

As for running on renewable energy, it could mean biofuel which, contrary to Hasbeen's claims about ethanol, does have a positive (though low) net energy return. Or maybe they favour using electric trucks for drayage, Combined with a massive expansion of renewable energy generation, that could be a sensible long term policy, and it would deliver enormous air quality benefits to Sydney.

You were obviously a government engineer Paul1405, or government consultant engineer, if you are in fact one.

What the hell would you do with a rail line from Port Botany, & to where would you run your trains. Obviously to all thinking people, trains must run to a goods yard. Goods must get from that yard to destinations far from such depots, & very widely dispersed.

It really sounds like green engineering to load containers onto a train in Botany, take them somewhere else, then unload them again, before starting their final distribution by TRUCK. Hell you could even build that freight depot out where land is cheap at Campbell town or somewhere similar. That should use up some of that eco fuel.

As usual, green thinking that stops half way, perhaps helping a favored area, but bring 6 new problems, all requiring more tax money to cure.

God help us.

The Greens don't frame policies a such because to do so would be contrary to their modus operandi as human headlines, NSW 'Watermelon' Greens David Shoebridge is a case example, and niche as a protest party, not a serious contender for government, ever.

It is a jolly good cruise for any Greens politician. All s/he has to do is flick the smelly stuff at everyone else, confident in the knowledge that the media don't bother with the Greens and the publicly-funded ABC gives the Greens free podiums and never fact-checks them. Just polish those fine leather seats in the Parliament and cop the benefits, while others do the hard yards on comprehensive policies and integration, plus paying for it.

Referring to the Greens transport 'policy' as mentioned in the OP, it is yet another of the Greens slack rolling the arm over instead of sending down well-aimed bowls. Because as usual, all this local lot appear to have done is fudge some stuff however inappropriate and wrong from elsewhere, probably the UK Greens and re-cobble it for Australian consumption.

Not that it matters to the Greens of course. It is only ideological bumpf to use as protests and in activism. The real goal is society change. They earn their stripes as the political 'Watermelons'. A very thin veneer of green on the outside as camouflage, but deep pink and red the way through.

Hasbeen –

Where would the trains go? The planned freight terminal at Moorebank is the obvious answer, as well as the existing one at Chullora. Ecologically it makes good sense to have multiple rail terminals to serve Sydney's large metropolitan area; it saves significant fuel compared with a single terminal. But making it cost effective is much harder, and requires lot of automation.