Sub-Theme
Railways and Railway Stations
Railways are transportation systems using one or more rails to carry freight or passengers. Railway stations are recognised stopping places where goods, vehicles or passengers may be transferred from one form of transport to the rail network, and vice versa. Railway stations can also include what are now called “intermodal transfer stations”.
National Datasets in this Sub-Theme
Purpose
National railway database provides information that connects capital cities, metropolitan or suburban railway lines, down to access railways which provide access within properties
Dataset Uses
- Routeing, traffic flow management and economic analysis
- the development of routeing road networks for use by freight and logistics companies, emergency service / response authorities, and general public includes: shortest distance, fastest time and presence/absence of obstacles or restrictions depending upon mode of transport - name, structure, weight/height/speed limits or some other weighting
- fuel-efficient fleet management and self-drive vehicles - require full transport surface specifications including slope, camber, etc.
- predicting, analysing and modelling passenger and freight vehicle movements, and accidents, when joined with business or statistical information for analysis. May only need a list by name, but possibly also location and intersection with other roads, railways, crossings etc.
- Context for other location information
- context for other features over local or small project areas - may show location, name, surface and user access
- context for other features on topographic maps, or other regional or national tourist maps - usually name, class, surface, and route number, obstacles or barriers
- context for charts and reference maps - generally only the location of higher order roads shown
- Asset management, infrastructure protection and public safety
- asset management systems by roads authorities
- identification of infrastructure vulnerable to different hazards
- Service provision
- Being able to calculate the remoteness of communities by comparing a location to the nearest urban centres, particularly to identify areas poorly served by medical facilities
- funding determinations for infrastructure investment
- Determination of other foundation datasets
- determining the location (as a boundary or an important artery) of administrative boundaries such as local government areas, localities and statistical geographiesunique addresses within a locality and its neighbours
Access and Licensing
Access and Licensing Details
Quality
- Accuracy of data varies from:
- Approximately 2m in metropolitan areas. Does not include light rail networks in urban areas
- 10–20m in urban fringe and rural areas
- 50–150m in remote areas. There are breaks in connectivity at state borders
Data is six months old when released to market but in rural and remote areas features have a currency of 5–20 years
- Information is available that describes:
- Name
- Operating
- Gauge and number of tracks
Current Status
In each jurisdiction, the land management or mapping agency creates and manages datasets representing the location of a railway, which may be integrated from data held by transport authorities, or derived from GPS data, roads defined in the cadastre, or from interpretation from satellite or airborne imagery.
There is currently no single vertical integration of all transport datasets, as listed, for the national coverage
Railway datasets are released as products by the states and territories, or supplied to PSMA Australia for aggregation into a national information product and distributed through value-added reseller networks.
Geoscience Australia maintains a railways dataset which was revised regularly up to 2006 as part of the 1:250,000 scale topographic mapping program from satellite imagery and information supplied by railway associations, local government, tourist information and other volunteered information. Dataset has been updated internally awaiting release.
There is currently no single vertical integration of transport datasets, as listed, for the national coverage.
Future Status
Short-term objectives
- Provide a nationally consistent railways dataset which supports and delivers transport information through the vertical and horizontal integration of the currently listed datasets. This will allow linking of location of these features across all themes.
- Dataset custodianship will sit with the relevant state and territory land management authority.
- Suggested custodianship of the national roads dataset is:
- Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, as the lead Australian Government agency on transport and regional affairs
Other significant stakeholders include:
- Commonwealth Grants Commission, due to its role in assigning funding to state governments through GST revenue
- Geoscience Australia, due to its role as the national mapping authority and its close collaboration with state and territory agencies in maintaining all topographic information, its role in maintaining information on exposure of infrastructure to hazards, and its underpinning role in providing spatial advice to other parts of Australian Government.
PSMA will be the aggregator of the national rail dataset.
The National Topographic Information Coordination Initiative will continue to;
- Integrating the GEODATA Topo-250K data content into datasets managed by the states and territories, with subsequent aggregation by PSMA Australia
- National information products will be made available as web services
Medium-term objectives
- Rail information included in national topographic mapping products will be derived from the datasets in states and territories
- Data held by transport authorities which is categorised as part of the foundation will be integrated with the foundation datasets.
- Rail will be captured no greater than 1m in urban areas and between 2m and 10m in remote areas if captured from imagery.
Long-term objectives
- National information products will have near-real-time currency
- All national information products will be available under open access arrangements (for example, by CCBY) at zero cost