Article: Taxpayers fork out for rural rail services

[WTN]

Personally I like to see the Courier Mail publish stories showing the millions of dollars propping healthcare, Translink services, national parks, water supplies, footpaths, roads, etc. How many of those will be labelled as a waste of public money?

[#Metro]

I perceive the CM to be biased. To me, it is leaning towards a certain stripe.
It is heading in the way of ACA and TT if you ask me.

Then add to that the unusual selective publication of commentary, IMHO Courier Mail has lost me.
That is one thing. There is another thing- the CM has a point, even if it is just a grain.

The best guarantee for retaining and growing long range regional and rural rail services have is to have a sound balance sheet.

What does this mean? It means faster rail services delivered through a combination of better rollingstock
and a rolling, long term incremental track upgrades to enable higher speed. These track upgrades will have side-benefits for freight, so overallin the grand scheme of things, this will eventually have a cash return in them.

It may mean more services just so there is a train daily to pick from.

It may mean a "last minute" discounted seat policy so that no train leaves without a passenger sitting in it paying at least something. Hotels and airlines do this all the time- they understand that running a plane with some passengers makes losses smaller than what they otherwise would be if they ran an empty flight or had an empty hotel.

It also means a serious and hard look at co-ordination with buses and regional bus services. The Swiss have made a fine art of this! It means aggressively going after the tourist market with passes etc. It may also mean FREE bus/coach transfers into the rail system.

If Brisbanetimes was right, the fare box ratio is 45%, which is very good for a rail service.

Doing nothing is not an option IMHO.

[frereOP]

I agree with this, but current operation is that there is a train that runs along this route, the Tilt train. If that were a faster service, it would pull many more passengers...

...and the "hop-on/hop-off" nature of it. It may or may not be possible to share the costs of operation with freight.

... they are slow, extremely slow and this makes them uncompetitive, unattractive and therefore unprofitable.

A faster service may well have higher initial capital costs, but because it would save significant amounts of time it would also attract more passengers and *may* have a lower marginal cost to run one extra service. I can't remember if the corridor is electrified already.

The are two problems with this arguement:-

• The secret to going fast is not what the top speed is, but not going slow ie to maintain sustained high speed over longer distances.  The TGV from Paris to Strasborg (600km, 2h 30mins) has no en route stops and Eurostar from London to Paris has 1 stop en route at Ashford. Every station slows the service and using it as a hop-on/hop-off service with stations at places like Beerburrum and Childers would turn it into a long distance suburban commuter service with speeds to match.

• High speed rail is not cheap to use.  It is a premium service aimed at a specific market like airlines and often with premium prices that are comparable to current economy airfares for standard class, and business class airfares for business class.  eg London - Paris by Eurostar is between €41.50 (A$59) and €155 ($220) one way standard class depending on fare type or €286 (A$406) for Business Class.  This is no more a "backpacker" or "pensioner" service than an airline.

[#Metro]

There are problems, but I often find there are also solutions to them 

* The secret to going fast is not what the top speed is, but not going slow ie to maintain sustained high speed over longer distances.  The TGV from Paris to Strasborg (600km, 2h 30mins) has no en route stops and Eurostar from London to Paris has 1 stop en route at Ashford. Every station slows the service and using it as a hop-on/hop-off service with stations at places like Beerburrum and Childers would turn it into a long distance suburban commuter service with speeds to match.

This is quite right, but for a long distance service, the number of stops the tilt train made when I took my trip was not many.
I think they even showed how fast the train was going on a screen. After hearing all the hyped marketing about Tilt Train, I caught myself thinking "this thing isn't going faster than QR CityTrain!"

High speed rail is not cheap to use.  It is a premium service aimed at a specific market like airlines and often with premium prices that are comparable to current economy airfares for standard class, and business class airfares for business class.  eg London - Paris by Eurostar is between €41.50 (A$59) and €155 ($220) one way standard class depending on fare type or €286 (A$406) for Business Class.  This is no more a "backpacker" or "pensioner" service than an airline.

Does it need to be maglev speed? No. HSR- hmm maybe, it wouldn't hurt to look. But and improved faster average speed (130 km/hr?) would be good, which is within the current capability of existing Tilt Rollingstock - No?. It wouldn't hurt to look at HSR options IMHO, but faster rolling stock or track straightening- worth looking at. This is why I think upgrading the Sunlander to Tilts is a good idea. 

[#Metro]

Every station slows the service and using it as a hop-on/hop-off service with stations at places like Beerburrum and Childers would turn it into a long distance suburban commuter service with speeds to match.

At the speeds I experienced when I took my trip (maybe this has changed since then?) I thought it
was no faster than a commuter train. Maybe it already is like this? I decided to check against Perth's
Mandurah line:

Brisbane-Cairns
1691 km divided by 24 hours = about 70.5 km/hour

The average speed is 70.5 km/hour for this Tilt train to Cairns.
http://www.queenslandrail.com.au/RailServices/Traveltrain/Pages/TiltTrain.aspx

Compare this to Perth's Mandurah Line, running on narrow gauge and identical trains
as the new QR CityTrains (no Tilt Technology):

Mandurah Station 70.1 km
50 minutes (Perth Timetable, Perth Underground)

70.1 km / 0.84 hours = 83 km/hour

Perth's Mandurah line has a higher average speed than Queensland's Tilt Train, even though it is a suburban service with more stops to stop at over the same unit distance and none of the tilting technology. Ergo: Tilt train must be sped up, track should be straightened to enable higher speed where possible

[Golliwog]

Yes the Eurostar only stops at Ashford (unless like my last trip on it you have a signal fault ). However, the line (at least on the UK side anyway) is built such that there are more stations on the line that the Eurostar doesn't service which are serviced by other high speed trains. IIRC the stations all had at least 4 tracks, with at least 2 tracks that didn't have platforms, allowing the non-stop services to pass easily.

[frereOP]

Yes the Eurostar only stops at Ashford (unless like my last trip on it you have a signal fault ). However, the line (at least on the UK side anyway) is built such that there are more stations on the line that the Eurostar doesn't service which are serviced by other high speed trains. IIRC the stations all had at least 4 tracks, with at least 2 tracks that didn't have platforms, allowing the non-stop services to pass easily.

That is the Shinkansen philosophy too.  Trains depart every 6 mins from Tokyo and express services overtake all-stops services at stations.  Stations are spaced and trains timed so accurately that there is no slowing down of express (Hikari = light) services while overtaking slower all-stops (Kodama = sound) services in a kind of musical stations train shuffle.

[SteelPan]

I perceive the CM to be biased. To me, it is leaning towards a certain stripe.
It is heading in the way of ACA and TT if you ask me.

Then add to that the unusual selective publication of commentary, IMHO Courier Mail has lost me.

The CM is now nothing more than what it, in truth is - a 2nd rate tabloid!  It's staffed by a team of "flat-earthers" - who long for the days of Brisbane in the 1960/70's!  Gave up regular reading of it yrs ago...happily.....

[Golliwog]

I perceive the CM to be biased. To me, it is leaning towards a certain stripe.
It is heading in the way of ACA and TT if you ask me.

Then add to that the unusual selective publication of commentary, IMHO Courier Mail has lost me.

The CM is now nothing more than what it, in truth is - a 2nd rate tabloid!  It's staffed by a team of "flat-earthers" - who long for the days of Brisbane in the 1960/70's!  Gave up regular reading of it yrs ago...happily.....

IIRC part of why they are anti PT is because a few of them got politely told to get stuffed by TL/QT when they asked if they could make a bus route that would take them from Bowen Hills station to their office, which is something like just around the corner from the station.