The Question: Is Australia too big for a high-speed rail network? Read more: ht

[p858snake]

Article: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-question-is-australia-too-big-for-a-highspeed-rail-network-20110429-1e0ce.html

[ozbob]

Punters don't think so, and neither do I.   It is a matter of horses for courses, clearly Darwin to Katherine is not going to fly, but Sydney to Canberra to Melbourne will ...

[#Metro]

"Is Brisbane too big to get trains operating at higher frequency than dismal 30 minutes just 4 km from the CBD".

Spend the money on unblocking the suburban commuter network and feeder buses... not on people who are going on business trips or holidays...

Spending the money on that will do more for carbon emissions, and have higher benefits than HSR.


Any debate on HSR must get away from propaganda-style videos with trains zooming at 500 km/hour and actually tell us how much will it cost, what the net present value is, what the alternatives that money can be spent on, what the route is and importantly, what the frequency, travel time, time to construct, where will it stop in the cities and what the cost to ride it might be.

[somebody]

"Is Brisbane too big to get trains operating at higher frequency than dismal 30 minutes just 4 km from the CBD".

Spend the money on unblocking the suburban commuter network and feeder buses... not on people who are going on business trips or holidays...

Spending the money on that will do more for carbon emissions, and have higher benefits than HSR.


Any debate on HSR must get away from propaganda-style videos with trains zooming at 500 km/hour and actually tell us how much will it cost, what the net present value is, what the alternatives that money can be spent on, what the route is and importantly, what the frequency, travel time, time to construct, where will it stop in the cities and what the cost to ride it might be.

I tend to agree here.  HSR is a bit of a sideshow.  The main game is getting the urban/suburban PT systems working properly.  Melbourne and Perth have been making good inroads from all reports.  Sydney has done some work, but largely dropped the ball.  Brisbane has done some things with the bus system, but these haven't resulted in a good PT system.

[Jonno]

My support for HSR stems from it being part of the cultural change towards sustainable transport.  Agree 1000% that urban transit is the first priority but there us a massive behavioral change required and it is going to take a concentrated campaign to change it.  HSR is part of sexying up rail and removingbthe "its slow tag".

If the concern is one of lack of funding for both then the current expenditure on freeways and road expansions is plenty to cover them both. 

[#Metro]

I disagree.

I don't doubt the proponents' good intentions, but HSR will have the exact opposite effect to what proponents' intend IMHO. The primary and guiding purpose of public transport and rail freight is to move people and goods more efficiently and effectively than other means available at the time. The primary and guiding purpose of PT is not so that nations can create monuments for international publicity purposes or make engineering companies shareholders get paid high divident.

If you spend billions and billions on HSR and not fixing up all public transport systems in Australian capital cities, you are in effect prioritising HSR above, and more urgent and important than fixing up our current systems. A re-occurring theme I see is to confuse a symbol of mobility with actual mobility.

I am not convinced yet, and I would like to see high speed freight in the business case. HSR IMHO is not the best and highest purpose for spending billions. Things like Cross River Rail, elimination of single track, state of the art signalling to permit 30tph on our train network, fixing the sunshine coast line and a general move to converting commuter rail systems to operate more like metro systems (like Perth) should be the thrust IMHO.

The proponents want to replace an airplane with a train (basically switch the vehicle type), at the cost of billions, for no real net increase in speed and thus journey time. So no-one will be able to get between Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne any faster than they do today. How is this a mobility improvement?

This thing might not be delivered for many many decades. Decent networks take time to grow. It will take more than videos of speeding chinese/japanese trains to convince me.

[HappyTrainGuy]

As much as I like HSR I can't see it being successful here since its just for passengers. The population is just to far spead apart for the distances to be covered compared to Europe, China and Japan. While a Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne leg might be successful can the respective governments justify spending billions on it..... I don't think so when there are other matters of importance such as hospitals and education in the public eye.

[Stillwater]

High Speed Rail competes with air travel.  Melbourne-Sydney is the fourth busiest air route in the world.  A HSR network down the East Coast will be operated by the private sector, not governments.  Government money is likely to be involved in respect of land purchases.  The private operator would run into numerous issues with acquiring land, and would not have enough money to buy up the alignment.  The private operator will need to rely on governments buying the land, using the government's legislative ability to compulsory acquire land and pay market value, as they do now for major infrastructure projects such as the Ipswich Motorway widening or the Petrie-Kippa Ring Line.  Governments would subsidise the HSR operation the extent to which they charged the private operator a lease fee for the land on which the track is built.  Governments buy and own land, lease to private operator who would be given, say, a 50-year lease.  The private operator would build the track and stations.  Private operators would want the government to shoulder much of the investment and may even ask for the government to build and own the track.  That arrangement could mirror the ARTC arrangements for freight trains around the nation.

Governments would have to do all the heavy lifting when it came to route selection, EIS, planning and design etc and, of course, land purchase.  The route would have to be fenced to prevent kangaroos and cows wandering onto the track and becoming instant mince on impact with the HST.  Imagine the environmental consequences!  Habitats would be divided, maybe over time different species of animals would evolve because their cousins on the other side of the track would not be able to mate with them.

Governments could be entreprenurial by looking to developing whole new cities and towns along the route -- buying up land a farm prices, waiting until the HSR came through, then selling off to developers to grow new towns, or expand new ones.  Places such as Wagga Wagga would fall into this latter category.  Then again, it may be possible to grow a city between Canberra and Wollongong, depending on which way the route went.

There's lots of possibilities.  These are just a few.

[johnnigh]

I note that both Saul Eslake (Economist, Grattan Institute & Price Waterhouse Coopers) and Stephen Byron (CEO, Canberra Airport) were a bit confused about passenger and freight HSR. I support higher speed intercity freight rail, as do virtually all on BOT, but it's a very different animal from TGVs etc. Eslake might be correct that HSR might come into contention sometime in the future, but that doesn't alter the blindingly obvious: investment in rail in Australia is pathetically absent both in our cities and for intercity freight. The private and social returns to both these rail needs are far greater than to HSR. Priorities are obvious: freight and commuter rail first, HSR sometime, probably long after I'm dead. Infrastructure Australia would be mad to donate its imprimatur to HSR before getting east coast freight and urban rail into order.

Given that only a couple of HSRs anywhere in the world run without govt subsidy, it's pie-in-the-sky to imagine the private sector not putting its hand deep into the public purse, for more than just the land. Remember that even the great American railway age was heavily subsidized by the US govt and arguably skewed the development of the American west in directions that reduced the US's economic and social possibilities. Australia's public purse has more important things to do than subsidize private profits with smaller social returns than the alternatives.

[#Metro]

Melbourne-Sydney is the fourth busiest air route in the world.

I would like to see numbers. What is meant by "busiest" and how was this calculated? What are the units of this 'busi-ness'
Is this plane movements, the weight of passengers/cargo carried or passengers/direction/hour? What does this include/exclude?

What are the other three "busier" air routes?

I am looking up the price for airplane ticket between Sydney and Melbourne.
This is what I get (prices are for monday 30 May).

Virgin Blue - $ 88.00
Jetstar - $ 69.00
Jetstar "light" (low baggage) - $ 39

The time will be about 1 hour and a half. Check in and waiting might be another half hour- so 2 hours or so all up.

Now take all the figures and double them. Will HSR be faster and cheaper than a $100 - $150 plane ticket???

[O_128]

Melbourne-Sydney is the fourth busiest air route in the world.

I would like to see numbers. What is meant by "busiest" and how was this calculated? What are the units of this 'busi-ness'
Is this plane movements, the weight of passengers/cargo carried or passengers/direction/hour? What does this include/exclude?

What are the other three "busier" air routes?

I am looking up the price for airplane ticket between Sydney and Melbourne.
This is what I get (prices are for monday 30 May).

Virgin Blue - $ 88.00
Jetstar - $ 69.00
Jetstar "light" (low baggage) - $ 39

The time will be about 1 hour and a half. Check in and waiting might be another half hour- so 2 hours or so all up.

Now take all the figures and double them. Will HSR be faster and cheaper than a $100 - $150 plane ticket???

Check in is always an hour before the flight, I fly brisbane to sydney reguarly and in the last year out of 20 flights to sydney 80% have been delayed by at least 15 min, add to this parking time, check in, picking up your bag and its easily 3 hours. In the average cost for a HSR trip was around 40 euros.

[Mozz]

It's late so can't put forward an all encompassing response - but the equation below adds to the economic factors:

Time (waiting for connecting taxi or bus or other transport) PLUS cost of this journey

onto the value of the HSP ticket as HSP will generally traverse or terminate in a CBD type location.

[#Metro]

Parking is a constant for both types of transport. Parking in the middle of the city might be comparably as expensive as parking at the airport. My most recent flight on QANTAS had 30 minute check in IIRC and you checked in your bag yourself with a machine that prints the sticker and ticket and you just dump the bag on the conveyor belt and go.

Trains also have bag drop I am sure as well. So that's a constant on both sides too. Trains also make intermediate stops where baggage has to be offloaded... Sydney-Brisbane-Melbourne planes generally do not do this...

Is bag drop avoidance and parking worth spending billions and billions on to avoid?... because of parking and bag drop.. much better things to spend the cash on IMHO.

Oh, and it seems that every time I go to Brisbane Airport there is a new lane, a widening, a new bridge and a new overpass. It is getting scary all the roadworks, it is like some ashphalt fantasy land. And the really weird thing-- it actually feels like it is taking longer to get to the airport...

Train frequency is bad as ever of course.

[Stillwater]

TT, here is the information you had sought to back up my assertion.  However, please do not start comparing the costs of HSR and airline tickets between Sydney and Melbourne, because we simply do not have credible figures for HSR passengers costs between Sydney and Melbourne.

Rather, the critical factor is the cost of a Second Sydney Airport versus the cost of a HSR network.  (See below).

But, in the meantime, here is some food for thought.

http://au.whichairline.com/news/Sydney-Melbourne-being-the-fourth-busiest-air-route-in-the-world

http://www.ausbt.com.au/sydney-melbourne-is-world-s-fourth-busiest-air-route

http://www.switzer.com.au/business-news/news-stories/melbourne-sydney-worlds-third-busiest-air-route/

http://www.safeclimate.org.au/node/146

http://www.nomadicnotes.com/travel-blog/mel-syd-the-fourth-busiest-air-route-in-the-world/

http://www.canberrabusinesscouncil.com.au/submissions/files/7jz1c2_7990_High%20Speed%20Rail%20for%20Australia2.pdf

Now, the real debate.

Could HSR relieve pressure at Sydney's existing airport such that we can delay building a second airport, which is needed to be built almost immediately.

Now, I am sure TT, that you will ask me to justify that claim.

In anticipation, check this:

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/second-airport-rises-again-20110404-1cyoc.html
(Check the Albanese vid)

Number crunching on both the cost of a second Sydney Airport and a HSR connection will allow direct comparisons.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/number-crunching-on-second-airport-20101004-164ep.html

If the second airport becomes a political hot potato, politicians may be in favour of the rail option to reduce domestic plane throughput through Sydney.

http://southern-courier.whereilive.com.au/news/story/airport/

That is happening already.  See this article:

http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/news/local/news/general/ofarrell-calls-for-highspeed-trains-instead-of-second-sydney-airport/2125599.aspx

To do nothing is not an option, TT.  Read this:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/news/long-delays-unless-new-sydney-airport-found/story-e6frg8ro-1226033772092

But, you are correct in saying that all options should be investigated:

http://www.aviationbusiness.com.au/news/airports-association-says-second-sydney-airport-not-needed

Something has to give TT:

http://www.theage.com.au/travel/blogs/travellers-check/australias-airport-circus-starts-again-20110321-1c2zt.html

All of which, brings us back to the start ... that HSR competes directly with air travel – a matter discussed by a source that I think you quote in this forum from time to time:

http://melbourneurbanist.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/do-the-numbers-support-the-very-fast-train/

I hope that satisfies your request TT.

[#Metro]

TT, here is the information you had sought to back up my assertion.  However, please do not start comparing the costs of HSR and airline tickets between Sydney and Melbourne, because we simply do not have credible figures for HSR passengers costs between Sydney and Melbourne.

Rather, the critical factor is the cost of a Second Sydney Airport versus the cost of a HSR network.  (See below).

Yes, thanks for this. Second Sydney Airport must be the mother of all procrastinations. This might only get you one piece of the proposed HSR network though. My thinking would be that if Sydney airport reached capacity as people claim, the price of air tickets would be simply increased to control demand. Which would have two effects (1) give the airport more money for capacity expansion, maybe make HSR look more attractive (but also make other airports such as newcastle attractive too, similar to how avalon in melbourne is).

The business case is coming out soon apparently.

The study by the Department of Infrastructure and Transport will draw on international experience, public and private sector expertise, growth forecasts and other contemporary data. The initial focus, to be completed by July 2011, will be to identify requirements for a viable HSR network, including consideration of route and station options and costing.

WATCH THIS SPACE
http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/rail/trains/high_speed/index.aspx

[Stillwater]

Yes, we haven't long to wait.  Remember also that Sydney is subject to a curfew, unusual for a major international airport.  It closes overnight for 6-7 hours.

[#Metro]

Yes. I wonder if the report will broach the subject of NIMBY...

[Gazza]

iven that only a couple of HSRs anywhere in the world run without govt subsidy, it's pie-in-the-sky to imagine the private sector not putting its hand deep into the public purse, for more than just the land.

We already subsidise intercity rail...a lot. At least when HSR comes in then stuff like the XPT can finally be tossed into the bin.

TBH, I think the best start for HSR in Australia will be not necessarily to do the big runs between cities, but start off with say:
Southern Cross to Melbourne airport in Vic,
Sydney to Newcastle in NSW,
Sunshine Coast to Gold Coast via Brisbane.

Do the heavy lifting and get the difficult suburban sections done first (which might require tunneling), and have them serving a useful local function

In Qld, we can forget the proposed 160 km/h coastlink services on current tracks, and instead use the HSR services to provide this. Do a new coridoor (with appropriate interchange with the existing network), and design the stations as they are on the TGV and High Speed one in the UK, where you can have high speed commuter on the outside tracks and long distance HSR straight down the middle. Run it like a premium commuter service with higher fares than the normal TL ones.

In Vic, HSR solves the solution of a time effective service to the airport.

In NSW, they can fix the diabolical 3 hour journey time to Newcastle, and perhaps have that airport acting as a relief for Sydney, with people taking HSR in.

So eventually, the intercity HSR becomes an excercise in joining up the 3 systems built in the 3 states.

The idea is that the infrastructure is serving a dual function.
For example, in the case of Tullamarine, instead of building the airport link to Suburban network standards, and then in the future building dedicated HSR lines, you can just build the one set of lines, but properly, and thats how you make the numbers stack up.

In Queensland, doing things this way means we can cut a bit off the cost of the 2031 plan.

In NSW, it perhaps could mean

[p858snake]

Some discussions about this arose on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/h16v4/is_australia_too_big_for_a_highspeed_rail_network/

[somebody]

Melbourne-Sydney is the fourth busiest air route in the world.

I would like to see numbers. What is meant by "busiest" and how was this calculated? What are the units of this 'busi-ness'
Is this plane movements, the weight of passengers/cargo carried or passengers/direction/hour? What does this include/exclude?

What are the other three "busier" air routes?

I am looking up the price for airplane ticket between Sydney and Melbourne.
This is what I get (prices are for monday 30 May).

Virgin Blue - $ 88.00
Jetstar - $ 69.00
Jetstar "light" (low baggage) - $ 39

The time will be about 1 hour and a half. Check in and waiting might be another half hour- so 2 hours or so all up.

Now take all the figures and double them. Will HSR be faster and cheaper than a $100 - $150 plane ticket???

Check out this link: http://www.oag.com/oag/website/com/en/PopUps/Print/Press+Releases/OAG+reveals+latest+industry+intelligence+on+the+busiest+routes+2109072

It should be noted that these figures are for 2007, and BCN-MAD now has a high speed train service.  Don't know about CGH-SDU, but it would seem to be an obvious move for the 366km involved.

Figures are based on weekly flights.  Note that almost every other top ten route is all 737/A320, while SYD-MEL is around 50% 767-300.  SYD-AVV also provides competition which isn't counted.

Check in is always an hour before the flight, I fly brisbane to sydney reguarly and in the last year out of 20 flights to sydney 80% have been delayed by at least 15 min, add to this parking time, check in, picking up your bag and its easily 3 hours. In the average cost for a HSR trip was around 40 euros.

Incorrect, it is usually half an hour, but Tiger require 45 minutes.  Qantas allow 15 minutes without bags (used to be 5mins).  You can also get around these rules by web-checking so long as you aren't checking bags.

I also fairly regularly make this trip and I have not seen anything like that unreliability.  Official figures from 2007 are around 80% of flights in Australia within 15 minutes of schedule.

I do it in about 5 hours door to door.  CBD to CBD would be about 4 hours.

Parking is a constant for both types of transport. Parking in the middle of the city might be comparably as expensive as parking at the airport. My most recent flight on QANTAS had 30 minute check in IIRC and you checked in your bag yourself with a machine that prints the sticker and ticket and you just dump the bag on the conveyor belt and go.

Trains also have bag drop I am sure as well. So that's a constant on both sides too. Trains also make intermediate stops where baggage has to be offloaded... Sydney-Brisbane-Melbourne planes generally do not do this...

Parking would be a no-go item for an intercity train service.  Better to get a limo drop off.

I understand HSR has carried on baggage by pax, rather than checked baggage.  It's not like they need to load it in the belly of an aircraft.

[#Metro]

I can't remember if Colin W once wrote something about this blog, but this was a reply piece from a guy down in Melbourne to the article...
http://melbourneurbanist.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/are-we-too-smart-for-high-speed-rail/

Mr Davies claims that the Barcelona-Seville-Madrid service is supported by a third city and casts doubt as to whether Canberra is big enough.

As usual, all sorts of benefits are claimed for HSR, such as greater comfort, quicker check-in times and the ability to use laptops and mobile phones in-journey. Saul Eslake brings a new perspective — he reckons the conventional wisdom that HSR only works over short to medium distances is outdated. He cites the Barcelona-Madrid-Sevilla AVE system which runs over 900 km, considerably further than the 700 km airline distance between Sydney and Melbourne.

As I've pointed out before, most of these sorts of claims are exaggerated or misapply foreign examples — and Saul Eslake's argument is no exception. Spain's AVE system is in effect two medium-distance services, not one long one.

The airline distance between Barcelona and Madrid is 506 km and thence from Madrid to Sevilla is 391 km. The population of metropolitan Barcelona is 4.2 million and Sevilla 1.5 million. But most importantly, Madrid is in between these two and has a population of 5.8 million. The prospects for HSR in the Sydney-Melbourne corridor would be a lot more attractive if Canberra or Albury/Wodonga were the same size as Madrid!

And also points out that, as usual with almost all PT projects, a lot of the problems are political and to do with governance rather than the engineering:

It is also sometimes argued that the difficulty of expanding airport capacity in Sydney is a valid justification for building an HSR system along the eastern seaboard. The problem with that argument is that it is a political, not a practical, constraint. The fact is there is still an option to locate a second airport within 60-100 km of Sydney. There could well be a case for providing HSR to such an airport but political failure is not a good reason for building an entire HSR system along the eastern seaboard.

Personally, I'm really skeptical. I'd rather CRR and our suburban networks were given the royal treatment than holiday makers and tourists. Far higher social benefits by fixing up our current urban train and bus services IMHO.

Think twice before we go ahead and copy Paris China, USA and Europe. Does it make sense here? Does it need to be applied differently? What is more important- frequent trains on QR CityTrain or a HSR to Sydney?

[colinw]

I can't remember if Colin W once wrote something about this blog, but this was a reply piece from a guy down in Melbourne to the article...
http://melbourneurbanist.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/are-we-too-smart-for-high-speed-rail/

Nice link.  I don't recall ever writing about the blog, but I think I have referenced another Melbourne centric blog (Transport Textbook), which is what you may be thinking of.

Count me as somewhat ambivalent toward HSR. I can see its use, but rank it way down the list of national priorities.

IMHO there should be, and probably will be HSR in Australia, in about 20 to 25 years time, as peak oil starts to really put the bite on air travel.  Starting with a Newcastle - Sydney - Canberra route, then extending to Melbourne, and eventually Brisbane & Adelaide but much later (probably after I'm pushing up daisies).

I do not expect to board a 300 km/h+ train at Roma St in my lifetime, nor do I think it would be a sensible investment at this stage.

HSR  Newcastle - Sydney - Canberra makes a certain amount of sense within the next 20 or so years, replacing woefully slow and inadequate existing rail services, and potentially allowing Canberra and Newcastle to serve as second airports for Sydney.  A moderate speed (160km/h to 200 km/h) spur to Wollongong also would fit in with this vision, as the current route to Wollongong is a "legacy alignment" that is barely fit for purpose. Even without HSR, there will still be a need for better intercity routes from Wollongong and Newcastle to Sydney. The alignments and journey times of both routes are both substandard.

I do not, however, think that now is the time to be embarking on an expensive program of large scale HSR construction.  None of our city public transport systems are more than a "conceded pass" level of service.  Our interstate and many important intrastate freight rail links are also of very poor quality, and deserving of serious investment ahead of HSR.

I therefore would rank HSR as well below urban public transport and efficient freight rail in the list of priorities.  Until such time as people in most major cities can access a frequent and reasonably fast train, tram or bus, and until such time as the key freight rail routes are upgraded to modern, efficient alignments, I don't want to see anything spent on high speed rail routes other than possibly some money towards corridor preservation.

It would be an absolute travesty if you could board a high speed train at Roma St before the Nambour line is fixed and CAMCOS built!

cheers,
Colin