A new Sydney-Canberra high-speed railway

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.

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Bowral / Mittagong

The geography between Moss Vale and Mittagong presents a significant barrier to infrastructure development, both due to the built up areas of Bowral and Mittagong and also the imposing topography of Mt Gibraltar. For this reason, re-use of the existing corridor is the best and probably only option here.

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Marulan to Wingello

The Marulan sector consists of about half existing alignment and half new alignment around Uringalla. The country is undulating, meaning that significant earthworks and possibly some tunnelling and structures may be required.

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Bungendore to Mt Fairy

North of Bungendore, the line encounters rolling countryside with a few substantial hills that must ideally be avoided. There are fewer sections of the existing alignment with minimum radius under 1000m (the smallest radius at which 200km/h is possible with tilting trains). We are therefore able to use the existing…

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Mulwaree Valley

This is what Hot Rails is all about – twenty-two kilometres of near-straight, near-flat railway corridor just begging for some trains that can really take advantage of it. We don’t need to do anything to this alignment – just upgrade and duplicate the existing track, put in some decent fences…

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Stations

AECOM13 manages to spend $7.1 billion on new and unnecessarily expensive stations (indeed, compare this cost to the actual track, at only $6.6 billion). This post demonstrates that this cost is excessive by comparison to contemporary examples, and proposes a more realistic and affordable estimate. The Hot Rails strategy, in…

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