Hot Rails has previously looked at the Southern Highlands corridor, estimating the cost of a 200km/h corridor all the way from Goulburn into Central Station to be in the order of $3.2 billion. However, the most critical part of that railway is the section between Campbelltown and Mittagong, which bypasses…
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.
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.
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…
