RAIL - Back On Track Forum

TBH im suprised that its 1.25m flying between Newcastle and Sydney! Is that correct?

Would imply 3400 passengers per day, 1700 each way.

I can only see 1 pelican flight per day.

Town planning considerations come into pay also ... new towns along the way, linked to Sydney-Newcastle.

There's been a lot of detailed discussion re Sydney-Newcastle HSR on the Skyscrapercity forums.

You wouldn't necessarily build new towns along that corridor (there are plenty of existing ones already) but where it makes sense to have an HSR stop also isn't necessarily an existing town centre.

One of the more interesting things that user "zoomwhoosh" argues is that the 2013 AECOM report over-estimated tunnel per-km cost but under-estimated tunnel portal cost, to the point where what should be e.g. a continuous 10km tunnel-bore would've been broken up into several shorter tunnels and bridges.

The other thing is to realise that the vast bulk of HSR patronage coming into Brisbane is going to be from the Gold Coast, and similarly the vast bulk of HSR patronage coming into Sydney is going to be from Newcastle, the Central Coast and the Illawarra.

Indonesia launches high-speed railway, first in Southeast Asia

Can't say you didn't know...

Business case also came up roses... 🌹

Justifying Mega-Projects An Analysis of the Swedish High-Speed Rail Project
by Erik Ronnle, Lund University

Another curious case of trying to justify proceeding with a HSR project when the signal coming from the numbers is clearly red... the BCR on this is 0.6.

From the Research thread https://railbotforum.org/mbs/index.php?msg=276689

QuoteThis dissertation is based on a case study of the Swedish high-speed rail project... Interestingly, it is also heavily unprofitable in cost benefit analysis calculations, with a Benefit-Cost Ratio of 0.6 (Trafikverket, 2016). This means that in the economic models, the project is expected to yield only 60 cents of value for each euro spent. Based on these calculations, the project is unprofitable and should be cancelled. 

This project is therefore an interesting case to explore as, judging by the analysis material, it seems obvious that the project should have been closed down already. Still, it has continued under two different governments. As such, there is a need to explain the attraction of the project that goes beyond formal instrumental-rational decision-making models.

A carefully chosen case study was used as the method, as a project with BCR = 0.6 clearly cannot be justified on cost/benefit grounds.

QuoteA carefully chosen case study performed in depth can have considerable impact if it shows that a generally held belief or theory does not hold in one specific, but crucial, case. The case study becomes a black swan that disproves the theory. The trick here is to choose the case study in a way that really puts theories to the test (Flyvbjerg, 2006).

QuoteSweden abandons high-speed programme
New government to focus investment on conventional network instead of high-speed.
International Railway Journal, January 12, 2023
David Burroughs
https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/high-speed/sweden-abandons-high-speed-programme/#

Sweden cancels its HSR program. Looks like the resources from the cancellation will go into lower profile maintenance and Medium-Speed Rail projects.

QuoteThe government says investing in high-speed rail would mean that funding was unavailable for other necessary projects while spending on the conventional network and providing more tracks will make it easier for trains to travel faster in the future, even without high-speed lines. It says many investment projects on the existing network could also be implemented more quickly than the development of new high-speed lines.

Notes from:

Justifying mega-projects An analysis of the Swedish high-speed rail project
https://portal.research.lu.se/files/55727005/Erik_Ronnle_web.pdf

- Swedish Government set up a negotiation commission that had two phased (a) find out the facts and define options, and (b) form a negotiation with stakeholders to finance the project. This involved an open call for local governments to submit proposals on how they thought the project would benefit them.

- Basic findings was the HSR proposal was deeply uneconomic, benefits of the project were negative 6 billion to negative 8 billion EUR. This also excluded the costs to construct actual stations, and was therefore an underestimate.

Issues identified or mentioned:
-    Planning fallacy – belief that your own project will succeed, even when other similar projects are clearly failing
-    Optimism bias underestimates the problems that the project could reasonably fall into
-    Studies are done to build support for or justify a project and a favoured choice (retro justification) rather than choose between competing valid alternatives
-    Valuing easily understood and convincing narratives over numerical results
-    Continuing to invest in a narrative, even in the face of contradictory numerical results
-    Double counting of benefits in local government reports, due to a lack of separating out cause and effect, for example, counting time savings and property value increases, when property value increases are an effect of time savings.
-    Incorporating benefits that would have already occurred anyway had the project not been realised
-    Expanding the project scope from being a transport project to being a transformative visionary catalyst that incorporates an aspirational "progress" narrative that suggests improved housing supply, reduced unemployment, better environment to get it over the line
-    Inflated projected housing numbers around stations
-    Risk not shared optimally between co-financing partners (Local Government funding stake ~ 0.5%)
-    Being vague about objectives and assumptions

Overall conclusion
– "Narrative misrepresentation" explains the support for the project.

HS2: UK Government announces Phases 2a, 2b and HS2 East Scrapped

Network North: Transforming British Transport
Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Transport by Command of His Majesty
October 2023

URL: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65290f86697260000dccf78b/network-north-transforming-british-transport-print-version.pdf

Some relevant graphs in the below paper:

Interview 28 Nov 2023 ABC Radio Brisbane Drive Host Steve Austin with Robert Dow RBoT discuss fast rail for regional Queensland.

Here --> https://backontrack.org/docs/abcbris/abcbris_sa_rd_28nov23.mp3 MP3  10.0 MB

ABC Listen--->https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/saturdayextra/even-reasonably-fast-rail-would-be-good/103179616

^^Fast rail would be the best outcome for Australia rather than HSR

Unfortunately, good fast electric rail outcomes are getting lost in all this HSR rhetoric.

Quote from: verbatim9 on December 03, 2023, 16:07:36 PMUnfortunately, good fast electric rail outcomes are getting lost in all this HSR rhetoric.

Fast rail is being lost in all the road widening rhetoric!!

We're not even getting proper fast rail when the opportunity arises.

Straightening out only 1 turn on the LGCFR and leaving the rest is hardly an inspiring outcome.

https://x.com/railjournal/status/1740322784360771906?s=20

https://x.com/hot_rails/status/1771843223570596310?s=20
Talgo XXI (diesel) pacing a TGV on the Perpignan-Barcelona high-speed line.

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https://x.com/thecharlier/status/1792574177947316375?s=46&t=EDszjTErsxTIqAna7yuP-w

It's a good observation. One of the reasons it is so great to get a high speed train in France or Spain is that at both ends of the journey you are connected to a tremendous metro or light rail system. This is also true in Japan and increasingly so in China.

In the U.S., other than New York and maybe one or two other cities, you could only be greeted by a multi-storey carpark and a kerbside crowded with hundreds of taxis and rideshares.

Frequent connected public transport in the urban areas should always be the first priority.

In that respect I think we are halfway there.
In the east coast cities rail gives reasonable coverage, and in Vic even the regional network could act as a decent feeder.

If we did do HSR, I would like to see more of the existing network broken up and become better local trains networks, for example, I could imagine around Coffs you could run a smaller local trains trains from say Macksville to Coffs to meet with the HSR.

ABC News --> France's high-speed rail network hit by arson attacks hours before Olympics ceremony

QuoteArsonists lighting fires in conduit points across France's high-speed rail network have disrupted the transport network hours before the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

Train operator SNCF's chief executive, Jean-Pierre Farandou, said the attackers had started fires in "conduits carrying multiple (fibre-optic) cables" that carried "safety information for drivers" or control the motors for points.

"There's a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it's a manual operation," requiring "hundreds of workers", he added. ...

https://x.com/ozbob13/status/1821570731253358684

https://x.com/Ogilvie_CJ/status/1822204145408856241

https://x.com/grescoe/status/1840921024331653302

https://x.com/grescoe/status/1841135861343121462

https://x.com/JRUrbaneNetwork/status/1842852727367557554