We use a variety of different sources to estimate the captured and induced demand for the proposed regional high-speed rail link, and find much higher ridership than projected by previous studies due to serving a large number of regional stations.
Value capture is an essential part of the funding model for any realistic high speed rail proposal, but mis-selling the idea can be fatal to public opinion. Hot Rails discusses the critical difference between “positive” and “negative” value capture.
Sydney Central to Canberra Civic in 91 minutes, for less than $5 billion: A new strategy for high-speed rail in Australia which will have it built sooner, cheaper and at no net cost to the taxpayer.
A 10km dual-track tunnel takes us to Central Station at 200-plus km/h – this is the most expensive sector of the railway by far, but by using existing infrastructure to a far greater extent than previous proposals, the total cost to access the Sydney CBD is the lowest of any proposal to date.
In our look at the possible corridors we could use to access inner Sydney, we identified two possible contenders that could get us to within about 15km of Central Station before we had to go underground. The first was to use the East Hills corridor until Revesby or soon after, and subsequently using a long tunnel (15-17km) to Central. The other main option was to use the Cumberland and Inner West corridors via Liverpool and Cabramatta…
The existing rail corridor between Campbelltown and Glenfield was rejected by the 2013 government study due to having insufficiently large radius for their unrealistically fast 400km/h design speed. However, the corridor actually has fairly good geometry, with only two curves of relatively gentle radius; the one at Leumeah has radius 1000m, while the one between Minto and Ingleburn has radius 1800m. This is sufficient for tilting trains to achieve 200km/h…
Access to Sydney’s city centre has always been one of the major challenges of previous high speed rail concepts. The density of existing development, the lack of suitable transport corridors and the formidable terrain mean that there is no easy way to access Central Station on a high-speed alignment. There have…
The last sector before we reach metropolitan Sydney presents few design difficulties, or at least no more so than the adjacent Hume Highway. A couple of bridges and moderately deep cuttings are all that is needed to bring the high-speed railway back to the Southwest Rail Corridor, where the prevailing radius is about 1800m.
In this 20-kilometre stretch, the line enters a sustained gentle-to-moderate descent from the Southern Highlands down into the Sydney Basin, dropping over 300m in altitude. There aren’t a lot of plausible corridor options here; the Hume Highway already occupies by far the best one, and it is of sufficient straightness and flatness for a high-speed rail alignment.
As we get closer to Sydney, the Southern Highlands constricts down to a narrow spit of cleared land nestled between the Blue Mountains on the west and the Upper Nepean gorge on the east, and almost all of the transport infrastructure squeezes into a narrow 500m-wide band between Yerrinbool and Bargo. This limits the room available for deviations but also gives us a choice of several existing corridors to utilise.
