High Speed and Fast Rail

[Stillwater]

We should go further and build new inland cities, and that may happen if the private sector is to come on board to fund HSR.  A concession to build a new city or two along the route, in addition to places such as Wagga Wagga and Shepparton etc.

[Gazza]

hey should build a newcastle to canberra HSR.  That would be the only one that would be financially viable any time soon.   And also have all the other long distance interstate trains use that trunk higher speed route, easily shaving 1 hour off all other journeys.

That's exactly what I think, and would be a major step improvement to current transport options (Particularly for Newcastle...The 2.5 hour journey is a joke!)
Even if the full HSR corridor isn't viable yet, I reckon this would be.

[#Metro]

I don't support HSR. Happy to see the Canberra - Sydney corridor investigated further though.

HSR is a national want, not a national need.

We have a good airport/aviation setup and it isn't broken.

The costs of HSR are around $114 BN, or about 25% of the Australian Government budget.


I'm not at all presuaded by the regional argument. It's very romantic / idealistic getting both the country and city, this promise to have it all. Who wouldn't want that? But is it worth $114 BN? I'd say no. If people want the benefits of a capital city, go and live in a capital city, rather than deduct enormous amounts of $$$ from the taxpayers.

Similarly, I am not presuaded by the 'it stops in the middle of the city' argument. That is a 'first world' problem - people too posh to travel to the Airport so want $114 BN for their trouble. No thanks. Even if you accept that, it would only justify HSR from the city centre to the airport.

Other improvements such as upgraded baggage handling and faster / automated security screening hasn't been looked at (why?) and would cut airport time.

Thirdly, I am also not persuaded by the 'time poor people would use the HSR'. HSR, at best, would provide similar travel times as planes (after spending $114 BN). For something that is slated to start around 2060, there is massive risk and uncertainty in that projection. We are getting an NBN, if people have no time they can do a teleconference - with hi speed NBN internet and technology changing the way that it is, there is little doubt in my mind that by 2060 teleconferencing will be amazing. It's already quite good now.

Fourthly, I doubt that there is another class of people who are more time sensitive than 9-5 commuters going to work. That's where the money is at. We know that commuters have a predictable and consistent time travel budget of about 60 - 90 minutes each day (Marchetti constant). Throw in waiting time etc, that puts the reasonable area around a capital city for commuting purposes at about 200-300 km depending on the speed of the train and train frequency.

I strongly prefer a Regional Rapid Rail solution to HSR because it passes the 'ordinary worker' test. You could get to the Noosa on the Sunshine Coast in just over an hour (less depending on how much you want to spend and how fast you want to train to be), and the same to the Gold Coast. It's going to get far far more patronage than competing against planes in the sky is. Cars are legally limited to travel at 100 - 110 km/hour, and motorways don't have good lane capacity compared to trains.

So really, I think where the money is at is having trains vs motorway lanes, rather than trains vs planes.

That's my 2c. I would never say never and am open to changes in position based on compelling new information, but at this stage, it hasn't got my support.

[Gazza]

I don't even reckon it would cost $114 bil though?
That's kind if just the high range estimate.

[Old Northern Road]

HSR tickets would be a lot more expensive than regular tickets. Certainly not something that daily commuters would be able to afford

[tazzer9]

HSR tickets would be a lot more expensive than regular tickets. Certainly not something that daily commuters would be able to afford

A heap of people use Englands various long distance trains on a daily basis.
Its also cheaper to live in france and commute to central london every day on the eurostar than to live in london.   Sydney is very quickly approaching a point where it will be cheaper to fly there each day for work than to live there.

[tazzer9]

So really, I think where the money is at is having trains vs motorway lanes, rather than trains vs planes.

HSR will never compete for the large capital air trunk routes. Australia is simply too large.  Brisbane-sydney and melbourne-sydney are two of the busiest in the world.
But HSR isn't about the end points, its about the stops. And the short haul flights.   It is truly shocking how there are even flights between canberra and sydney.
Even if HSR did go all the way from brisbane to melbourne, people wouldn't be using it as a replacement for air travel, it would be a replacement for driving between a smaller town to the big city.

[Stillwater]

Canberra-Sydney flights are unusual, as this is the route many public servants take as they go about their business.  While there are flights out of Canberra to other destinations, the Canberra-Sydney leg is used by airlines to 'plug in' public servants to the largely business flights north-south (Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne).

[ozbob]

Couriermail Quest --> High-speed train line won't be seen in our lifetime, model railway hobbyists say

[ozbob]

News.com.au --> Tell him he's dreaming! Why Malcolm Turnbull's plan for high speed rail is a joke

[ozbob]

Coalition backs away from high -speed rail plans, "not sensible" says Projects Minister #auspol https://t.co/0jlU6lmrNi via @FinancialReview

— jenny wiggins (@jennywiggins) June 16, 2016

[ozbob]

Train journeys from Syd to Mel set to take less than two hours thanks to a new high speed rail project. https://t.co/MTiva9hQSA

— The New Daily (@TheNewDailyAu) July 14, 2016

[verbatim9]

Heard this on the radio its a 20-40 year plan

[ozbob]

Despite the pic above, the plan is for maglev ...

[ozbob]

ABC News --> High-speed rail link between Melbourne and Sydney proposed by private company

[ozbob]

Melbourne-Sydney High speed rail launch video showing MAGLEV 🚝 pic.twitter.com/a5kkwxXdha

— Andrew Lund (@andrew_lund) July 14, 2016

[ozbob]

Consolidated Land & Rail Australia

>> http://www.clara.com.au/

[Stillwater]

A Maglev high-speed train is not suitable for Australian conditions.  NSW and Vic will need to be on board with this project.  They control land use planning.  Imagine the bunfight between towns along the route, over where stations should be and existing towns expanded! 

This should be seen as a bit of an ambit claim, for discussion.  Expect more such proposals, maybe from Chinese consortiums.  (Pauline Hansen alert!)  The new towns would have to have an economic reason to exist, and grow, beyond just the economic benefit derived from the HSR passing through several times a day.

The question should be asked whether this is more of a land development project and less a transport project.  While agreement may have been reached for people on the outskirts of major regional towns to sell their land to the consortium, the track between those towns would have to be built in a corridor where landowners might not be too happy about having their land acquired compulsorily by government and handed to private enterprise.

[#Metro]

It is hard to tell whether this is a serious company that is actually going to risk its own money or a lobby group made of hungry infrastructure construction companies that want contracts.

So, people want HSR so bad that they are prepared to build entirely new cities just to support the patronage?

What about our existing cities where people already happily live within 30 minutes of work? Or all the things that need to be done there?

Perhaps the UK provides a model of the fate of these 'new cities'. Around London there are a number of 'New Towns' and 'Garden Cities' that were started after WWII. I think that's the sort of scale that the 'cities' would take. They would be tiny. It would take many decades for them to build any kind of momentum. And even then, only a fraction of the people would use the train to go to the 'main' capital city from there.

Perhaps the best example from the English New Towns project is Milton Keynes, which is about 1 hour out of London and 230,000 people living there.

Milton Keynes, locally abbreviated to MK, is a large town[note 1] in Buckinghamshire, England. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes and was formally designated as a new town on 23 January 1967,[2] with the design brief to become a "city" in scale. It is located about 45 miles (72 km) north-west of London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes

There could be a role for some form of HSR within Australia, but its proponents would have to accept giving up the idea of trains vs planes and focus on trains vs motorway lanes, where rail has an absolute advantage over the car. Cars are legally limited to 100-110 km/hr. Fact. Trains are not limited to this speed.

I still wonder why this is entertained given that The Basics - things like Sunshine Coast etc isn't even funded.

[ozbob]

The media has gone hook line and sinker for this effort today.  Rather telling that they waited till after #ausvotes to float CLARA.

My comment to the media was essentially if you have to first generate the demand (build 8 regional centres), to justify the HS rail connection it is never going to  ' fly ' no matter how much the rail foamer deep within would like.

They are talking Melb to Shepparton as a possible first leg. This could happen but cannot see much more from that.

In reality, Australia needs to look at where demand is and fit to that.  Some obvious choices for regional rapid rail are Sydney - Newcastle, Brisbane to Gold Coast, and possibly to the Sunshine Coast eventually.  Other Canberra <> Sydney.

But seriously, a nation that is struggling to put together freight rail networks and maintain proper suburban rail networks is unlikely to get anywhere with HS rail in the end.

Inland freight rail will happen as the demand is there essentially.  Oz does real well with bulk rail freight east <> west but poorly south <> north.

The figure for CLARA cost of $200 billion, plucked from thin air ...

[#Metro]

The figure for CLARA cost of $200 billion, plucked from thin air ...

If the demand is there, then very well. However, if a private railway line to Brisbane Airport can teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, then I would suggest that a rail proposal 10x larger than that to far-flung towns solely existing to pump up HSR demand is going to go bankrupt pretty quick.

[verbatim9]

ABC News @ 7 Mentioned that Qld Government has other priorities than HSR. CRR 3 remains the top project for Qld followed by M1 lane expansion works. Both combined to ease city congestion.

[ozbob]

Melbourne Age --> Fast train: plenty of backers for $200 billion rail plan with scant detail

The backers of the latest plan for a fast train between Melbourne and Sydney have met with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and have enlisted two former premiers, a federal trade minister and the USA's ex-transportation secretary to their advisory board.

But the company behind the $200 billion, 35-year project can't yet specify the route for how its first stage - to the Shepparton region - would be reached in a promised 30 minutes.

A magnetic levitation rail system is the preferred option for the line, which would be built from the profits of farm land bought dirt cheap and sold for hundreds of times its purchase price – once it was turned into a residential city, accessible by fast rail ...

[#Metro]

The simple fact that this consortium is off to Canberra suggests that they are asking for government money.

$200 billion is 44% of the entire Australian Government annual expenditure or 37x Cross River Rail. We are having trouble just building 1x Cross River Rail.

If the cost is $200 BN, it would need to generate at least $200 billion worth of value to break even with a BCR of 1.

This is equivalent to 200 000 homes being sold with land/home package  at $1 million each - a city about between the size of Ipswich or Canberra would have to be induced by the project.

Given that there are apparently 8 new cities, each city would require about 25 000 - 50 000 homes in it on average.
A city with that sort of population is difficult to imagine as being nice to live in. It would be difficult to support essential services like hospitals, large shopping centres, universities, decent nightlife etc.


:conf

[ozbob]

The Border Mail --> Very Fast Train | NSW and Victorian governments in the dark on train plan

[ozbob]

The Border Mail --> Very Fast Train | Albury mayor wants more action, less talk on high-speed rail

Albury mayor Henk van de Ven has reservations about the viability of the newest high-speed rail proposal from Melbourne to Sydney.

The latest in a string of iterations, Consolidated Land and Rail Australia has now struck land deals to begin the next phase of the plan which would link Melbourne to Sydney in two hours and include the construction of eight new regional cities.

Cr van de Ven said it would be preferential if the substandard North East line received upgrades before launching into a new build.

"I've indicated before it's time to stop talking and actually do something," he said.

"It would be fantastic for the region if something happens but there's been a lot of talk for a long time now.

"It's a matter of whether the building of the infrastructure is going to get a return.

"They think it's viable ... I just don't think we've got the population to justify high-speed rail.

"It would be nice to see a fast, reliable service at the moment – we don't have that – let's get that fixed first."

Albury MLA Greg Aplin said the latest blueprint had a "6.5 out of 10" chance of realisation.

Mr Aplin admitted he was surprised the plan included the construction of a new green fields city between Albury and Wagga.

"Landowners are normally very reticent to part with their land for developments of this nature," he said.

"I was surprised so much land was seemingly acquired so easily when we generally encounter major difficulties (for works) ... and some confrontation.

"Clearly, if you're in one of those shires you'd be welcoming the prospect of a new city because that would represent a new rate base and opportunities for people to settle and develop businesses and services."

Mr Aplin said he believed the plan had its merits.

"I think there's always been a consideration that anything of this nature requires a public-private partnership – and in the past it's been driven more by the public than private sector," he said.

"There's always been plans and booklets showing different route structures but this one seems to have moved to the point of acquisition of land, which of course hasn't happened before."

Former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer said if it proceeded, it would be another reason why the rail corridor, between Melbourne, Seymour and Albury-Wodonga, must be fully upgraded to 160mk/h to ensure two-hour city services.

[ozbob]

Rail Express --> Greens not keen on private high speed plan

The Australian Greens have expressed concern over private company CLARA's plans to build its own high speed rail line on Australia's east coast, saying national interest must come first when it comes to major infrastructure projects.

While the party said on July 14 it welcomed a fresh discussion about high speed rail, it said it was crucial that the infrastructure is not built simply to suit the profits of private property developers.

"Federal and state governments need to lead this cross-generational project, not just respond to the private sector," Greens senator and spokesperson for transport Janet Rice said.

"High speed rail between Australia's eastern mainland cities is a nation-building project that will transform how we move around the country and will be central to the shift to a clean economy."

Rice said the Greens want to see a new Turnbull government get east coast high speed rail back on track, but "in the public interest".

"Australia and Antarctica are the only continents that don't have high speed rail," she said. "Now is the time to take action before the penguins beat us to it."

Prior to the election, the Greens were in favour of a high speed rail plan.

Shadow transport minister Anthony Albanese has proposed an authority be established to coordinate the development of such a project.

"We urgently need a High Speed Rail coordinating authority to bring governments together, plan the development transparently, complete environmental assessments, begin rail corridor reservations and determine what the best way to finance it would be," Rice added.

"We think value capture could have a role to play, but we propose that smart use of government debt from a national infrastructure bank is likely to serve the interests of the Australian community more.

"The Greens have concerns about information absent from today's announced CLARA proposal, apparently due to commercial in confidence considerations.

"Being asked to 'just trust us' is not good enough for a project of this scale."

[aldonius]

This is equivalent to 200 000 homes being sold with land/home package  at $1 million each - a city about between the size of Ipswich or Canberra would have to be induced by the project.

Given that there are apparently 8 new cities, each city would require about 25 000 - 50 000 homes in it on average.
A city with that sort of population is difficult to imagine as being nice to live in. It would be difficult to support essential services like hospitals, large shopping centres, universities, decent nightlife etc.

Bolding mine. 1 million? for what was until now the middle of bloody nowhere? Too high, not by a huge amount, but the Australian property market has stopped its price growth right now and is long overdue for its pop IMHO.

As an example of what might be achievable, we can look at Toowoomba. It's a bit over 100K inhabitants, although admittedly it's the service town for a much wider area.

[Stillwater]

The Australian newspaper has become a champion for this project, with a further 2 glowing stories today.  If I was a mayor of a town where a big developer had taken out options on land surrounding the town, I would be worried.  No other option for further developers to move in, also the land being tied up for four years.  CLARA would have state and federal governments override the town plan, with CLARA plonking a big Toombul-size shopping centre on the land that it owns at the outskirts of town.  Everyone would go and shop there, turning the traditional town centre into a ghetto.

[ozbob]

Meanwhile, in the real rail world ..

=============

Watch:2 Chinese bullet trains racing at 420kmh toward each other passed world's fastest crossing test for trains Frihttps://t.co/4TkTJJLUIQ

— People&#39;s Daily,China (@PDChina) July 15, 2016

[ozbob]

Meanwhile, back in Oz ..

AFR --> $200b fast rail is 'potential trainwreck'

Transport experts have dismissed the latest plan to build a fast rail system between Melbourne and Sydney as a potential "financial trainwreck" that fails the economics test because of high costs.

The plan from Consolidated Land and Rail Australia would be funded by speculative land deals aimed at turning rural land worth $1.2 billion into residential lots worth $180 billion.

"It appears that this latest fast train proposal is driven by funding opportunities from higher land prices which can be highly speculative and unreliable," said Garry Bowditch, head of the Better Infrastructure Initiative at Sydney University.

Nick Cleary, chairman of Consolidated Land and Rail Australia, the company pushing the $200 billion plan to build eight new "smart cities" along the fast rail route, said it would be funded entirely from land deals and not need public funding.

Mr Cleary said rural land along the route, which runs via Shepparton, Victoria – the first stage – and Gundagai and Goulburn in NSW to Sydney, could be bought for about $1000 per block and sold for about $150,000 a lot.

"That uplift gives you the capacity to fund the rail and civil infrastructure," Mr Cleary, a former dairy farmer and NSW Nationals vice-chairman, told reporters in Melbourne.

"It's a cities and sustainable development plan. It's not a high-speed-rail plan, but high-speed rail is essential."

Consolidated Land and Rail Australia (CLARA) has attracted former NSW premier Barry O'Farrell, former Victorian premier Steve Bracks and former US transport secretary Ray LaHood to its board.

But the company did not release findings of a pre-feasibility study or likely fares, saying this was "commercial in confidence". 

Fast rail has foundered on the challenges of funding expensive infrastructure to compete against a highly efficient, privately funded air transport system.

"The airlines will protect their market share aggressively and exercise their ability to price a fair proportion of seats at their marginal costs," Professor Bowditch said.

"This could make a Melbourne-Sydney fast train look more like a financial train wreck very quickly. "

The last federal Labor government costed a Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane fast rail at $114 billion but federal Major Projects Minister Paul Fletcher told The Australian Financial Review's National Infrastructure Summit last month this was "optimistically low" and the project wasn't a sensible priority.

Transport experts are sceptical of the plan. "You'd have to say it doesn't look like anything more than a property development idea," one expert said.

"It's very hard to see it being at no cost to the government. They [fast rail proposals] have required massive public subsidies and even if they don't, someone has to buy the property."

Brendan Lyon, chief executive of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, a lobby group, said, "High-speed rail has been on the table many times since the mid-'80s, but has always failed because of high costs and the complexity of getting the long, straight corridors needed for high-speed operations.

"High-speed rail is uniformly popular in the community but the economics make it hard."

Victorian Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said she hadn't been briefed on the plan and the government would have to look at it along with others. She said faster rail services had previously led to "a boom" in regional public transport but rail was expensive and financing it was challenging.

The Greens, which took a publicly funded fast rail plan to the election, said a cross-generational project like the fast rail should be built in the nation's interests, "not to suit the profits of private property developers", and be led by federal and state governments.

Yope!   

[ozbob]

Sent to all outlets:

16th July 2016

Maglev Melbourne to Sydney? I would like to see that ..

Good Morning,

So we now have a group of land speculators proposing a magnetic levitation high speed rail between Melbourne and Sydney, complete with 8 new regional centres.

Quite rightly, the AFR --> Land deal-funded $200b fast rail is 'potential trainwreck'  has identified the key problems with this nonsensical proposal.

Australia is struggling to put in place proper rail freight networks, is struggling to maintain let alone expand, suburban and and interurban rail.

It is time we got on with the basics.  Cross River Rail needs to proceed immediately.  The key national rail project is the Inland freight railway.  This is strongly supported by the Federal and State Governments and is proceeding, albeit at snail pace.

Australia simply does not have the demographics to support widespread high speed rail.  That not withstanding there is a real opportunity for rapid regional rail.  We have seen the beginnings of this in Victoria.  In Queensland true rapid regional rail would be achievable between the Gold Coast and Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane.  Other possibilities are between Sydney and Newcastle, Sydney and Canberra.  This is using rapid rail to meet existing demand.  The CLARA proposal is an attempt to generate demand then fit a high speed rail to it.  Will never happen as proposed.

Best wishes
Robert

Robert Dow
Administration
admin@backontrack.org
RAIL Back On Track http://backontrack.org

Reference:

Consolidated Land & Rail Australia (CLARA)  --> http://www.clara.com.au/

[ozbob]

Maglev Sydney <> Melbourne
> https://t.co/Vd73MIHTet#qldpol #nswpol #springst #auspol
come & join the party! O_o pic.twitter.com/16AEeq7kUj

— Robert Dow (@Robert_Dow) July 15, 2016

[#Metro]

Oh dear.

What this really shows is that a developer building a city, a railway, and selling value-improved land, and a government building a city, taxing value-improved land (i.e. rates and land value tax) are equivalent.

How about loosen up some of these planning restrictions on building heights within zones, fix up the land value tax regime and then the money will be there to really improve the area with better buses, rail, and so forth.

Why reinvent the wheel?

Excellent comment Ozbob about whether the city is for HSR for HSR is for the city.

[Stillwater]

The government officials may have to wear their sunnies when dealing with the CLARA executives, due to excessive glare from their white shoes.  The 'magic trick' being attempted is conversion of blocks of land worth $1000 into blocks worth $150,000.  Eight big country towns have been ring-fenced by a developer holding options to buy during the next four years.  That is eight viable towns in Australia, offering good lifestyle and economic advantage, can't build a new industrial estate, new school, food processing factory or big housing estate because CLARA has dibs on the dirt.

[#Metro]

They should risk their own funds.

My bets are on that his does not happen and there is some mechanism to transfer the risk back to gov't.

I mean, how else would one have the opportunity to have a $200 billion bankruptcy? Even the Commonwealth bank profit is only $9 BN per year, this project is 10x the finance. It is difficult to see any bank backing that kind of risk, perhaps some bank in China or a super-rich individual like Trump (but he only has a net worth of $5 BN, CBA is richer than him).

This is the reason why I think they would actually need access to the Reserve Bank somehow...

BTW, Gina Rinehart has only 10 BN under her belt apparently. About the same value as the Melbourne Metro tunnel. We would need 20 x Gina Rineharts to get this one off the ground.

[ozbob]

"... never quite as it seems ... "

Next ...

[ozbob]

Crikey --> Will business really pay for High Speed Rail (HSR)?

[Stillwater]

Maglev = unproven commercial technology and requires virtually flat operating surface.  How do you get the train from Sydney up to the Southern Highlands and Canberra?  Good AFR article, in contrast to The Australian promotional stories.

[ozbob]

Melbourne Age --> High-speed rail: Company's $200 billion plan must not override public interest