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.
The CLARA plan for high-speed rail, costing $200 billion and creating eight new inland cities, depends on unrealistically large numbers of houses being sold for unrealistically high prices while interest rates stay unrealistically low. Hot Rails is not impressed…
Melbourne’s CBD isn’t quite as hard to access as Sydney’s, but it’s still no walk in the park. The Macedon Ranges on the west and the Kinglake Ranges on the east restrict northern access to a single corridor; all plausible alignments pass roughly through Heathcote Junction. We look at the four most promising corridor options.
Beachside resorts at Victor Harbor? Food and wine tours to Coonawarra? Possibly even an innovation hub at Port Augusta, powered by solar thermal or 3rd-generation nuclear? Fast rail could put it all on Adelaide’s doorstep, far easier and cheaper than proposals in the mountainous Eastern Seaboard.
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…
