THE new 36-kilometre Southern Sydney Freight Line has begun operations.
It's a $1 billion piece of infrastructure to speed up the movement of trains through Sydney and improve overall competitiveness and reliability of the nation's interstate rail freight network.
Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said the project was part of a much larger capital works program which would take up to a million trucks a year off the nation's highways.
"For many years Sydney has been the single largest bottleneck on the interstate rail network, with freight trains facing frustrating delays getting into and out of the city due to its limited track capacity and the priority given to passenger trains, particularly during peak periods," he said.
"This new dedicated line between Macarthur and Chullora will go a long way to alleviating this handbrake on productivity.
"It will allow passenger and freight services to operate separately from one another, more than tripling the capacity of this important rail corridor.
"It will also support the development of the new intermodal proposed to be built at Moorebank."
In partnership with RailCorp, the project also improved access to Glenfield, Warwick Farm and Casula stations.