The Turnbull government has today issued a call for faster rail proposals – the prospectus is practical, serious and foreshadows some form of government assistance. Hot rails is optimistic that this will elicit some interesting concepts from the private sector.
It’s one of the best budgets for regional and commuter rail in recent decades, among other things pledging $20 million for multiple business case studies, to focus on linking large cities to regional Australia. Hot Rails likes this idea, but thinks the government should consider supporting a larger number of more affordable studies.
Spanish train manufacturer Talgo’s medium-speed rail proposal is the latest development in the regional rail debate in Australia. While their claim of 2 hour travel between Sydney and Canberra is unlikely, even just making the train competitive with car travel would completely change the travel market between these two cities. Hot Rails explains why.
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…
Although it is probable that rollingstock will be constructed specifically for any new HSR-capable railroads, it is far cheaper to develop a variant of an existing class of railcar than an entirely new design. This post will look at some of the existing technology that might fit our needs. The…
One of the primary cost drivers of high-speed rail is the fact that the track must be far straighter and flatter than standard rail lines. In order to achieve this, far more earthworks, bridges and tunnels are required, which are extremely expensive. Hot Rails aims to use tilting trains to achieve high…
Australia’s low population density means that the track length per station will be relatively high when compared to European or Asian rail networks. The upshot of this is that capital costs will greatly dominate the total cost of any railway system – the cost of rollingstock will be comparatively minor. Capital…
