Something worth remembering for my fellow Australians: across all Government we are currently spending $30bn per year on roads which gets a very poor return and doesn't have much capacity. Meanwhile almost all our freight used to be taken by our rail networks but now the bulk of our freight is taken by truck on our highways, which costs more and is less safe. Our passenger rail lines outside the cities are extremely poorly used and expensive to run. There is no option NOT to build fast and faster rail, first bypassing slow sections of track out of the steam train era then separating freight and creating good land use around transport hubs. The other thing we need to look at is proper night trains as Europe is doing right now - there are so many corridors that are never going to be time competitive with aviation or motorised transport but run as night trains could do very well.
For Australia especially, freight trains should be very important in general given how much of the economy is dependent on heavy raw materials for exports, which makes truck reliance even worse in terms of profitability.
@@buda3d2007 To be fair the XPTs are about to be replaced with brand new trains; the track from Junee to Melbourne has just recieved significant upgrade due to Inland rail; and Inland rail will divert a bunch of freight off the main corridors.
As someone living in Hamburg, which is being served by ÖBB's new nightjets, I feel incredibly privileged and grateful for ÖBB providing such a great service to us and to central Europe. Thanks to our southern neighbors for having taken this important role in December 2016, when everyone else thought the era of night trains would be over. The foresight shown by ÖBB can not be overstated and you Austrians have every right to be proud of it!
Great video! One footnote. i have met Swiss people who think their railway system is rubbish. But usually they are people who have not traveled much outside Switzerland.
I can agree that the Swiss railways are the best in Europe. I’m Dutch and we are fighting to stay second, although I think we already slipped to third after Austria. Our railway infrastructure is heavily used and there is no room on the tracks for extra trains. If an international train wants to end their train in The Netherlands, an intercity or sprinter has to be cancelled in the schedule. That’s also the reason why international trains can only ride on Dutch tracks between rush hour in the morning and the afternoon. The busy tracks is also the reason why we are slipping in ranking. There only has to be one train late (more than 6minutes, the safety interval between trains) and the national rail system collapses like dominoes.
@@RealConstructor I visit both Austria and the Netherlands fairly regularly. In Austria's favour are two facts. Per head of population it is spending more on new railways than any other country in Europe. Secondly it has lead Europe (the world?) in the revival of night trains. Against it are two points which i regard as decisive. Firstly, on a number of important lines (eg Tauern, Mariazell, Slazkammergut) the basic service is only every two hours. Secondly the country is desperately short of rolling stock, and this leads to chaos on busier days. In the last two years that chaos has worsened because of the extremely cheap Klima-Ticket, which unlike the Deutschland Ticket is valid on Inter-City trains.
I have met people from about every European country who complain about their trains haha. Complaining about railways seems to be a very human instinct, it's a system that we can't control (unlike cars) and where every single issue usually has widespread consequences (unlike planes), so logically people get annoyed of its unpredictability and their impotence to do anything about it.
Was in Japan last month and had a brief conversation with a fellow train travelling tourist from Switzerland. He expressed the opinion that the Japanese system left the Swiss system in the dust. Having used both systems I admired them both.
@@osasunaitor I have too! Eg there are a lot of Dutch people who complain about their railways even though most visitors (especially from Britain) think they are wonderful.
Railways Explained did a history of high speed rail in Australia and came to the conclusion that all the money that we’ve spent since the 1970’s on “feasibility studies” could have netted to an amount that could build us sufficient high-speed rail between Melbourne and Sydney (inc. Canberra) as well.
@@AuJohnMmore exactly, the beuracracy behind the government doesn't move fast, they recommend things to the Labor government and costs go up under every government the liberals just don't build anything!
Adelaide (1.3 million) still has half its lines unelectrified and has no City Underground tunnel linking the North of the city with the South - would love to see you do a video on this Reece! Other big cities in Australia that don't have "fairly modern electrified rail systems" and need big improvement: -Canberra-Queanbeyan (490k) has only 1 electrified LR line; the InterCity line is diesel and only runs 3 trains a day to Goulburn+Sydney -Newcastle-Maitland (517k) has 1 diesel line, 1 electrified LR line and 1 electrified InterCity line only runs hourly all-stops in addition to hourly express trains; the old LR network was torn up in the mid-century car craze -Wollongong (300k) has 1 electrified InterCity line that only runs all-stopper trains once hourly in addition to hourly express trains. -Geelong (295k) is only 1 line and diesel, the old LR network was ripped up in the mid-century car craze. -Hobart (250k) has no rail of any form despite straddling the old rail line, the passenger services ceased in the 1970s but were significantly quicker than the bus services that replaced them. The rail corridor ceased freight operations in 2014 and is still there, it is possibly the biggest low-hanging fruit of anywhere I know of in the country. The former LR network was ripped up in the mid-century car craze.
@@Planetrainguy it isn't all bad though, the land use is poor and it runs too infrequently but it also has alot of higher speeds sections, the Gawler line is almost entirely 110kmh line speed and alot of the Outer Harbour and Seaford lines are too. It wouldn't take that much to make it way better, a city tunnel linking the north and south lines straight under the city frees up all the platforms at Adelaide Terminal, and you can then convert them to standard guage and run the Belair line as all standard gauge extending to Mount Barker and opening a new line to Virginia.
@@BigBlueMan118 I don't think standardisation is a good idea just because it is only beneficial for the Belair line, which would still need the rebuilding of many station platforms that got demolished and then ARTC traffic would interfere with metro services. I live on the Belair line so I don't get those speed benefits :(
Being at and around 500k is not being that large outside of the context of Europe so I don't see this as being terrible. Adelaide does need to do better though
@@RMTransit Re Canberra. For planning purposes, Queanbeyan can be ignored, it's literally a different state. The Australian Capital Territory's (ACT) rural population is a rounding error. The city and terr. populations can be used interchangeably. ACT population was 454K in 2021. 346K in 2008 (the year I last lived there) and not RL/tram then. 258K in 1986 (the year in first lived there). 137K in 1971. Given when cities like the Gold Coast got their first RL/trams, Canberra is about where you'ld expect, if not doing a bit better.
Agree. We don’t even a proper national highway network (dual carriageway). We have the Hume and 90% of the Pacfic but NOTHING else! Great shame. It’s the most difficult so-called developed country to get around by train/bus, and by car too. Imagine the economic productivity we can have with great transport links which will entice people to populate or visit other places outside of the capitals.
Yes, completely agree, as a person who legitimately cares about the environment and wants to see easier ways to go from city-to-city via rail, I think we need to give our pollies (politicians) a little extra nudge. As someone who has their pilots licence and cares about my future job prospects, I’m a little bit more conflicted/indifferent (selfish, I know). At the end of the day, aeroplanes are infinitely better than cars, but electric high-speed rail is infinitely better than aeroplanes. It’d probably be better to replace some of those Syd-Mel, Syd-Bris and Mel-Adel flights with a high-speed rail network that also does a better job serving smaller towns along the way as well as Canberra. People who say it’s unfeasible to build high-speed rail are ultimately being lazy when you look at places that have far more challenging terrain and still manage to pull it off. What I think is extremely important is it needs to be done correctly. I do not want a high speed rail line which connects some random far flung suburb in Sydney to some random far flung suburb in Melbourne (like what’s happening to the LA portion of the high speed rail between LA and Las Vegas. These need to be CBD-CBD services with intermediate stops in regional towns and some far flung suburbs as well (as long as it doesn’t add too much time to the journey). I reckon if you get travel times down to around 2-4hrs you’ll be pretty competitive with flying when you consider getting to the airport, checking in luggage, going through security, time spent on the ground taxiing or waiting for pushback, the train can be pretty competitive. Also, I absolutely love UTOPIA. Brilliant fast paced comedy which somehow manages to be subtle, yet really on-the-nose if you understand it.
Cars are not worse than planes (as far as emissions are concerned) and 2-4 hours would be REALLY expensive cf to lower speeds. Flight times don't have to be the goal if air travel is not viable for other reasons.
Australia getting HSR is kinda like Fusion Power. It's doable and technically feasible, but it's always 30 years away and the next governments issue. Even if we had a solid proposal presented to government right now, it would get lost in the red tape and politicized till it's killed by public opinion. A large part of it comes down to our incredibly short election cycles, not to mention the outsized influence Qantas has on our Federal politicians. Sydney to Melbourne is routinely one of the top 10 busiest air routes anywhere in the world, domestic or international. The demand is there, the tech exists and is cheap enough, we have the skills, brains and labour for it. The political will just doesn't exist.
@@AuJohnM As the video and many others have pointed out, we don't have to build an entirely new network from scratch. The trains would also carry 4-5 times the amount of people on each run, something planes will never be able to match efficiency wise. Not to mention the fact that on average, even the most expensive HSR trains cost around 50-100million USD. You'll be lucky to get an Airbus A220 or Boeing 737 for under 100million today, and that's before we mention the massive backlog of orders. If it was as easy as buying new planes and adding capacity at the airports, there would've been no need for a new airport in Sydney. I can't deny the fact that building a dedicated HSR network would cost upwards of $100billion for all the infrastructure work, but even if we spent half or a quarter of that in the next decade improving the rail network, we would see a marked drop in air travel; but Qantas fights everyday to make sure their effective monopoly isn't affected.
Sanuth It's 1hr and 10 mins from Brisbane city to helensvale then you transfer to a tram 30mins for Gold Coast centre. The main problem is not having direct rail to where people want to go such as Gold Coast, Kippa ring, Sunshine Coast,
Ok hate to do this but time for fact checking. 1) RailNSW have already announced replacement for the current train. Removing ALL sleeper options and replacing int with aircraft seating. 2) Any fast rail trains would by nessecity run on standard gauge. Incompatible with Melbourne Broad gauge rail network. (The line to Sydney is the only standard gauge track in the state) 3) the airport train will be running a Western route which is of course coming from the opposite direction from the N/S link which is East of the airport. 4)The loading gauge in Melbourne is mostly determined by the Melbourne loop. In fact double decker trains have been trialed and failed miserable. 5) The vic regional rail is actually pretty good with Velocity trains normally limited by rail and stopping patterns rather than high speed. 6) and finally the engineering issues are more significant than you may think it wasn’t that long ago the line was down to 60kph due to undermining of the trackbed. 7) oh and NSW recently CANCELLED fast rail projects within their own state In short to me it feels like it’s going to go backwards not forwards. Frustrating as there are ways forward just no pollies who want to step forward. It feels insane Someone can’t make it work.
Great video! A good summary of the issues and geography in Australia that impact our development of the likes of High Speed Rail. A good cameo too from Taitset, an excellent contributor
Thank you, I made an entire powerpoint apart of a competition on why we should have high speed rail on the east coast, our current priminister actually proposed it. I completely agree, it would be completely feasible. Our prime minister is actually currently proposing (this is unlikely) a highspeed line between Newcastle and sydney. I found tilting trains a feasible solution for a cheaper option on existing lines.
If we're insisting on upgrading the existing rail instead of a new segregated HSR between Sydney and Melbourne, another solution is Queensland Rail Tilt Trains. Not exactly HSR at 170kmh but close to the 200kmh HSR definition. You'll only need to straighten the rail around Mittagong, Yass and Cootamundra to achieve a theoretical 6hr Journey. An electric tilt train with an impressive and similar distance between Brisbane and Rockhampton running at speeds of 170kmh with a record of 210kmh using legacy rails already operates and has been since 1998.
Tilt Train is 160km/h in service. I think a better option, although basically the same concept, would be the Acela Epxress. Or at least a design based off of that. In service speeds of 240km/h. Could achieve Melbourne to Sydney in less than 5 hours, upgrading the sections north of Junee/Cootamundra as you had said. I think whatever option is used, it needs to have powercars separate to the trainset, similar to the XPT, Diesel Tilt Train, or Acela. This would allow it to be diesel powered initially, using either GEVO-8 or GEVO-6 (3000hp or 2300hp respectively), producing more power then the XPT power cars but at a lighter or similar weight. In the future the line can be electrified, and the trainsets still used with either new or rebuilt powercars. ETA: the track centres in a lot of areas would have to be widened to allow the tilting function of a train to operate. Hopefully this would be minimised or even not required on the larger radius curves found between Seymour - Albury (and possibly Melbourne-Seymour as well but I'm not confident there).
Don't forget the track between Sydney and Melbourne is own and operated by Australian Federal Government statutory corporation - Australian Rail Track Corporation. To upgrade the rail corridor to track speeds to up to 200kph would have to be funded by the Federal Government in association with New South Wales and Victorian State Governments. It would be cheaper than building a dedicated HSR rail corridor.
But it would still be pretty far from true HSR, and not competitive enough to replace the air bridge between Australia's largest cities. A true HSR solution would reduce travel times to 3 hours, or slightly less, between Sydney and Melbourne, offering a direct replacement for air travel. And such a route would include a light detour to run near Canberra without having too much tunneling. It's feasible and would remain under 900km, being run at an average of 285-305kph. It would require a better access to city centers though, where most tunneling would be. 200kph is the speed of some fast regional services in Europe, not HSR. The Acela solution was chosen in the NEC because there's plenty of traffic and the route has plenty of urban areas where it is difficult to build new dedicated tracks. Trains between Melbourne and Sydney are counted on one hand, and the route runs in pretty empty areas. This is a case for true HSR, like on the French / Spanish model, and not a Frankenstein's creature like the Acela.
@KyrilPG If you go via Canberra, you have to miss Cootamundra, Harden, Yass, and maybe Goulburn in order to achieve sub 4 hour journey times. This also means going from Wagga to Canberra in 1 leg, crossing some challenging terrain to do so. I see an Acela/Tilt Train on upgraded existing corridor as a near-mid term solution, with proper HSR on dedicated tracks and dedicated corridors a longer term solution. HSR would easily take decades to build, while MSR "Mid Speed Rail" could start implementing improvements immediately. Victoria could up the speed from 130kph to 160kph overnight, improving journey times on XPT and Vlocity services (on-time performances on the XPT needs some serious looking at, regardless). Upgrading of speeds in both NSW and VIC to 200km/h would require modifications to the Predictor level crossings (I would maintain 120km/h level crossings where they already exist). A lot of curves between Wagga and Melbourne could have speeds increased - some would need an increase in superelevation but others might be OK as is. Allow 1 month per curve to modify, with multiple being constructed concurrently, and within 5 years we would have a decent service for at least half of the Sydney Melbourne corridor.
@@johnleonard2202 Just answering your first paragraph in this reply : Nope, it's 3 hours *including* the detour near Yass between Wagga and Canberra. (3h would be non-stop of course). But, as I wrote, it's HSR on the French / Spanish model, which means NOT running through *any* other city in between, only running near them, with parallel spurs to serve them if need be. And it would be 3 hours, or just under 3, not "sub 4". I've mapped it several times, it's very similar to some French or Spanish routes : Paris Bordeaux, nearly 600km, run in 2h and 4 little minutes, with the first part on the second oldest French HSL limited to 300kph and a lengthy Paris exit. The second part is run at 320kph. Paris Strasburg, nearly 500km, run in 1h45 on a 320kph line with the first 35km on Paris' conventional suburban tracks that have incremental speeds. With the recent euro standards, at 320/330, (or even 350 but that might not even be needed), you can run Melbourne Sydney in 3h or slightly less, including a detour to graze Wagga, Yass and Canberra, going around the mountains instead of through them.
While less flashy regional hsr could also be considerd, here in victoria our two largest cities are just seperated by large amounts of flat land and the largerly low density western suburbs
The issue is that these places are a lot smaller than Melbourne or Sydney's cores which means you have to do a very cost effective project to make it work - which will be a challenge in Aus
@@RMTransitit sucks because there actually was a project between Melbourne and Geelong to build high speed rail, but it was cancelled in budget cuts. :( Absolutely terrible outcome, if it had been built it could have been used as an example to encourage Sydney to Newcastle, Sydney to Canberra, and eventually full connectivity down the coast. Political will to do anything is rock bottom and the only way HSR will happen is if people can see tangible real life benefits for themselves.
Also Melbourne and Sydney are going through a housing crisis, so high speed rail would be great not just for connecting these cities but building up the communities in between them (ideally in a way that’s not car dependent).
"They don't even have the snowy!" I love it. High Speed Rail is a no brainer for the Sydney-Melbourne corridor, however the airline industry has been assiduous in protecting the 5th busiest air corridor in the entire world.
HSRs would be way more comfortable, you won't have to go through security and wait for your bag to arrive. Trains are also better for the environment than planes.
Given the housing crisis, what would make more sense is to have HSR trains to Wollongong, Newcastle, Dubbo, Wagga, Tamworth ….. people can start living in these areas and commute to Sydney for work on regular basis.
Realistically HSR will need a new alignment through the Southern Highlands. If you’ve ever done the trip from Sydney to Canberra, the whole section from Campbelltown to Moss Vale is an old, very windy Victorian-era alignment that wouldn’t be very suitable even if you straightened certain sections. Also - I think Australians can get down on ourselves when it comes to trains. Our railways are generally excellent if you are travelling within our 5 major cities or to some regional towns (eg Ballarat, Newcastle, etc). However if you have to cross a state border our trains frankly aren’t good.
Kinda strange seeing them do a HSR project for Jakarta when they're in the process of abandoning Jakarta and moving the capital to a brand new city on Borneo.
@@mrvwbug4423it's not strange. Think of it as Jakarta as Sydney and IKN as Canberra. Jakarta will still be the nation's economic center and our biggest metropolitan region. The HSR will then going on Southern route, connecting several major cities (Bandung, Jogjakarta, Surakarta, and Surabaya).
That is feasible IMO, or at least they can finish the Bandung - Surakarta section first to complement the existing railway network and compete with Trans Java Toll Road and local airlines
Great video. I think you underplay the importance of the Sydney-Canberra stretch which could anchor the project... Canberra is small, but as the capital there is lots of high value traffic by politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyist, business etc. And Outer Sydney-Goulburn would be the trickiest and most expensive bit. Straightening, upgrading and electrifying to allow frequent service by NSW interurban double deckers at 150km/h woulb be a great first step.
Canberra to Newcastle is the bit that makes most sense. Reece is good, but the lack of knowledge of second cities means this video focuses too much on state capitals.
@@Secretlyanothername I agree, but starting with Canberra - Sydney is the best first step there in my view. The terrain is a lot easier to contend with, and build without too many cost issues from tunneling which could cause political pushback to bring the project unstuck. Once a single leg is done, people can finally see the benefits, which hopefully means we can start rolling out lines in earnest
I kind of agree, but the rest of the country dislikes both Sydney and the ACT. A NSW project with Federal support seems more likely to occur.@@rorythered1936
@@SecretlyanothernameThe biggest cities drive disproportionately more traffic because they are disproportionately larger than others. Worth looking into gravity models.
I'd very much agree with this. I think Sydney to Melbourne wiuld take slightly too long without some of the fastest speeds (900 km, or 3+ hours assuming an average of 300km/h and this does not include stopping times). Canberra to Sydney are definitely close enough to make higher speed services more viable. Note also the smaller towns such as Goulburn or Moss Vale that could be of interest to people who wants to do part-time wfh, or the potential of Canberra being Sydney's LCC or diversion airport.
I guess Canada and Australia (Where I'm living) have a lot in common, lack of political will to spend money on trains but are happy to be spend 350bn on nuclear subs which no one wants, but still put out a study every election cycle, just to please the public, somewhat. I think we should heavily take lessons from Spain, Italy & China (but China maybe a political death trap for government, and our foreign policy is increasingly becoming defacto US anti-china policy rather than our own nuanced policy) considering how cost effective those countries are at developing hsr, anyway, good video and good points on how a hsr should work to get the costs down and bring more public benefit.
I agree step 1 is to buy a load of the new NightJet carriages maybe with some Charger locos to start them off with while you get the electrification sorted. Then swap the chargers for Vectrons
I was thinking the eletrification could start first, before acquiring the trains. At the same time improvements to signally and communications. We want to make sure there is mobile connectivity along the line. The electrification is going to take some time. As for the NightJet they would be fantastic. Not sure our demand for the trains would fit into ÖBB’s demand for new trains.
As someone who was on a train between Albury and Goulburn yesterday, you were 100% right about how speed prohibitive the terrain on some parts of the route is, but interestingly enough the slowest part of the journey yesterday was actually just north of Wagga where, despite what looks like relatively kind terrain and no obvious track damage, the train slowed to a crawl for a good 5 or so kilometres. Infrastructure improvements to remove issues like that (even without anything else) will make the journey time more reliable rather than the current "an hour late is practically on time" reputation that the Sydney-Melbourne XPT in particular has.
Besides the Goulburn-Albury stretch, you have to also consider Campbelltown-Mittagong since that stretch is notoriously slow and windy. However, I reckon the suggestion from Goulburn-Albury should just be Goulburn-Wagga since Wagga-Albury is pretty straight
Wagga-Albury is single track though. In fact it is the only section of single track on the main line within NSW and it is also part of Inland Rail (the whole Standard Guage corridor from Melbourne to about 80km north of Wagga is all part of Inland Rail) so it would pretty quickly turn into a major bottleneck if you run more trains. That's why Reece is suggesting Goulburn to Wagga to upgraded, give passenger trains their own dedicated tracks separate from freight trains on Inland Rail. Goulburn to Macarthur would be the most important upgrade we could do because it would bring Canberra trains up to being faster than driving (currently 4 hour trip all up, but a 200kmh section from Campelltown to Goulburn alone would bring that under 3 hours then combined with a few minor upgrades of the Goulburn-Canberra line could be under 2 hours 30min). It would also be the start of a proper HSR network, because you would also build the Maldon-Dombarton line as high speed and send fast Wollongong trains via Macarthur-Glenfield-Parramatta-Epping-Hornsby to Central Coast and Newcastle-Maitland, allowing you to get express trains off the current Illawarra line and allow you to run proper frequent suburban trains in Wollongong.
That would work as long as you follow a new alignment from Wollongong-Sydney. However I don't see anyone getting approval to build a new railway through the Royal National Park. I do see the benefit, both for Melbourne-Sydney HSR, as well as Wollongong/South Coast commuters to improving this section. Average speed between Sydney and Wollongong is just 40km/h at the moment (2 hours to complete an 80km journey!). I don't think the single-track section between Junee-Wodonga is as big an issue initially. Without sitting down and working this out properly, I would suspect that you could run an hourly HSR service, plus all existing freight traffic, plus Inland Rail on this single track section with little issue. Everything would need to run on time though, and there would be a lot of sitting in sidings waiting compared to current timetables (for freight ideally, don't want to hold the HSR up). Remember that single track main lines can handle up to 90 trains per day, and double track up to 140 trains per day. We are nowhere near those numbers, but our system is also more optimised for transit times and train loadings, not for volume of traffic. Another thing to remember is that the standard gauge is single track from Melbourne to Seymour, the adjacent tracks are broad gauge. So a similar problem would also exist there. Just to finish, I'm not saying that the line shouldn't be duplicated or even triplicated, just that we can start running trains before the network is 100% optimised. A HSR project (or more freight-oriented projects for that matter) shouldn't be delayed while we try and convince politicians to build a second or third track.
@@johnleonard2202 Well first off the single-track is actually from just south of Junee until just south of the Murray so it's worse than that, and Albury also only has one through platform. There are also dozens of LXs which need to be rated for 200kmh+ running. If you are running hourly trains at that speed you are going to want bypass tracks or platform changes at Culcairn, Henty and The Rock. So there are obviously still upgrades that need doing to bring this section to its full potential, and it is probably the easiest, cheapest and most worthwhile section to build high speed rail in the whole country especially as it is used by lots of freight. The Junee/Wagga-Albury and Seymour-Melbourne sections of single track are often the source of delays to rail services along this line. More than anything, any potential upgrade has to be more resiliant to flooding and natural disasters. Converting the Shepparton line to standard guage would solve much of this, but then Junee-Albury would remain as single track. And obviously the more trains you want to run, the more difficult it becomes to reliably run fast trains.
You can't run high speed trains and freight trains on the same track. The speed difference is too big. HSTs will need their own separate, dedicated high speed line, whilst freight and any remaining slow passenger trains will use the existing line.
Some interference in the 1860's from influential landowners caused the Line to go through Menangle and Maldon using the steep Shepherd's Hill gradient, instead of through Camden.
When it comes to funding HSR, I think having a negligible tax on airfares would be the best way to approach funding. Adding a $1 HSR tax to any airfare in an identified HSR corridor that is to be used solely for corridor identification and land acquisition purposes would be a good way to at least begin funding any HSR project. This wouldn’t just apply to Sydney-Melbourne flights, but also routes like Sydney-Wagga and Melbourne-Canberra
It would be cheaper to upgrade the existing rail corridor between Sydney and Melbourne to track speeds up to 200kph with high capacity signally and train control systems like ETCS Level 2, and reconnect Camberra to the current rail corridor at Yass Junction, than building a dedicated HSR rail corridor.
@@chrismckellar9350 upgrading the speed of the existing line would require a lot of land acquisitions for realignment. That’s what I was talking about, we can’t build a separate HSR line for the reasons you mention
9:50 High grades only work if you are talking about new dedicated high speed passenger lines. If you are intending to upgrade existing tracks, you need flatter grades to carry freight which is more important on this line.
I agree that high speed rail is feasible but building the middle section first just won't work. You need to get people using it, which means starting with something like Melbourne to Seymour (or Shepparton or Benalla) and Sydney to Goulburn (or Canberra). Then you continue to add to the section bit by bit. Sydney to Newcastle and Melbourne to Geelong should also be prioritised.
Don't you want to aim for a single line that goes Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, taking in some smaller towns along the way? People probably won't generally travel the whole length of it unless they are creating footage to publish on TH-cam, but it doesn't open up a lot more potential station pairs. And even if the small towns are really small now, they will have a lot of growth potential if high speed rail comes to them.
The big cities have significantly more ridership potential, and a single line could be built over the long term, but the case is less strong. Most people on HSR in places like Japan and France today are making the long distance large city pair trips.
@@RMTransit If you take Tokyo-Osaka for example, the trains go to other places after Osaka, and call at other places before they reach Osaka. That is by far the most popular city pair, but their setup makes other less popular city pairs viable. It was a similar setup when I took the train between Madrid and Barcelona.
For Canberra I'd imagine the issue is the huge mass of mountains west of it. If you want to avoid tunneling through that but still run the main line through Canberra it's a 50+ km detour. And the angle would be sharp enough that a spur would add less track length. Given the population numbers I think prioritizing Sydney to Melbourne before extensions to Brisbane or Adelaide is fine.
You can't build a direct Syd-Can-Melb line unfortunately, because (a) Canberra is surrounded by mountains to the west and south that would require a base tunnel and (b) a direct route would bypass several large and important towns in Southern NSW, most notably Wagga Wagga (which is also the town where you would build the branch for a hypothetical Syd-Adl high speed line). Canberra will always be on a spur line, but Goulburn to Canberra is a good option for serious upgrading, especially if we extend the Canberra rail line and build a station in the CBD.
@@lachlanmcgowan5712 Yes, This line already exists for services with Explorer (rail motor) trains. It certainly should be extended to the city centre. Currently it ends at nowhere-in-particular far from the city centre, absurdly. HSR trains could use this spur at conventional speeds, as Royce suggested,
@@mt-mg7tt The Canberra rail station is in Kingston because a flood ~100 years ago washed out the rail bridge across the river into the CBD and it was never rebuilt. The station used to be roughly where Canberra Center is now. There are some overgrown remnants of the old track in some areas of Reid.
@@lachlanmcgowan5712 Some of the past HSR proposals (from all those studies that have never gone anywhere) have had Canberra on the mainline, others have used a spur. Most of the prior HSR plans have largely followed the Hume Highway, as the current mainline does. If they don't want to tunnel through the mountains to the west/south west of Canberra, they can run a HSR track into Canberra along the Barton and Federal highway corridors.
I lived in Perth 2006. I was impressed with the quality and ease of using the rail system there and Brisbane 2018. I found the professionalism of the staff very helpful.
1. European cities tend to take 10km or so to exit the city; it can take 40km of slow travel to exit Melb and Syd. 2. Saying there is a 10m person corridor is a bit misleading. There are 9.5m on the ends, but no demand in the middle. 3. Unlike some HSR that connects hubs, Melbourne is a terminus without onward demand. 4. People in the sprawling cities of Melb and Syd have an hour or more commute in many cases to get to the station at either end. The savings from not travelling to the airport and realised. It is an hour for me to the airport OR to Southern Cross station. 5. Saying the XPT meets demand for towns along the Melb-Syd route is misleading. There are other services from Melb-Alb and out of Sydney.
In June of this year, the Federal government formed the High Speed Rail Authority to oversee the development of the Australian high speed rail network on the east coast. The first leg to be built is the Sydney to Newcastle leg with an intermediate stop at Gosford. This is actually on the Sydney to Brisbane route rather than Sydney to Melbourne but Syd-Newc is a small achievable leg to get started with. A moderately circuitous Syd-Mel route should come in around 830 km. These days with 350 km/h top speed and 280 km/h average speed is becoming the norm for new HSR so I should think 3 hours should be the goal on that route.
The sad thing is that Qantas, Virgin Australia and Jetstar have an iron grip on politicians, as Melbourne to Sydney isn’t the second busiest plane route in the world (and one of the most profitable) for nothing. However we have more than enough money and labour to do it. And they call us one of the most developed countries in the world😢.
The main problem with urban rail in Australia (and transit in general) is frequency. Also, while Melbourne-Sydney gets the lion's share of the attention, I think we should be looking at routes like Adelaide-Melbourne. It's nowhere near as busy a corridor, but it's also a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to build, and it would be another way for us to increase local expertise before getting to the trickiest parts of the Melbourne-Sydney line.
My proposed Australian high speed line would go through Melbourne airport and Canberra as opposed to having branches and past Canberra, go via Wollongong. I’d also build a high speed rail to Newcastle around the same time, then extend that to Brisbane via coffee harbour and the gold coast
Not many people travel Canberra-Melbourne, so a branch to Canberra would work well. The alternative you either have to go from Wagga Wagga to Canberra, cutting out Cootamundra, Harden, and Yass, and all of their surrounding communities. Or retain those places, and Canberra, adding in additional route length and journey time. If trying to hit the regional towns and Canberra, journey time for Melbourne-Sydney pushes out to around 6 hours. At this point it becomes easier for the average person to drive (taking 8-9 hours). Remembering that depending on final destination, driving may actually be quicker point-to-point, plus has the added advantage of them having their own transport at their destination. High-speed rail journey time is actually made up of Transit (at least 1hr) + HSR (4-6 hours depending on route and speed) + Transit (at least 1hr again). For a long journey time, you won't attract air travellers or motorists. Personally I think that the HSR needs to be as fast as possible, and avoiding Canberra allows this while also serving more communities and a larger chunk of the state.
@@AuJohnMAny new rail line into Wollongong would tunnel under the escarpment, like the Maldon - Dombarton line, or the sometimes proposed Waterfall - Thirroul line.
Might have worked 10/15/25 years ago. Now imho, we have missed the boat. The maximum population density of Australia is the Adelaide/Melbourne/Sydney and Brisbane. With Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne and a number of in land centres such Wagga Wagga and Albury-Wodonga. Based on realistic costs if this route had been started in 1995/98 then it might have had a chance. Now, my opinion, the capital costs are just too high. Have a look at how the costs of the Melbourne/Brisbane inland freight line have exploded in the 10/15 years since it was first proposed. The other issue is fencing such a line. Australia has a number of animals that can destroy a train travelling at more than 200 kmph. So the rail line has to be fenced to a height of at least 2400mm and bet around 350 mm into the ground. I don’t have the figures such a fence would cost. So to close nice idea but imho no longer feasible.
Fun fact, the new CAF trains set to replace the XPTs will no longer have sleeper cars. Even with only 1 sleeper service, we still find a way to go backwards.
Further fun fact, CAF trains will operate to the lower speed limits imposed on XPT trains within the Sydney regions of 115km/h in sections where the XPT previously operated at 160km/h in the 80s,90s & 00s.......
Surprised you didn’t talk about the prospector train from Perth to Kalgoorlie as it is a great example of a “higher speed train” this service rarely stops and is well built to allow it to operate fast being the fastest “service”(not fastest train ie: distance/time) and operating in rather smart format. Would recommend looking In to this for more information then I could give but it is certainly a good case study.
I used to catch it twice a week, every week in the early 2000's. The mining boom was on and the train was critical. Mining money is great, mining towns are... the train was critical!
I think it's hard to explain just how empty Australia is. The five largest cities on the route from Sydney to Melbourne are Aulbury-Woodonga (pop 100,000), Wagga-Wagga (pop 50,000), and three other cities with a population around 20,000. After that, there's no town bigger than 5,000 people and even those are few and far between. Long story short, the only way HSR between Sydney and Melbourne gets any ridership is by stealing Sydney-Melbourne passengers from the airlines. This is where things always get shaky. Sydney airport is 12 minutes from Central Station by train. Melbourne is 30 minutes from Southern Cross by express bus. Flight time is about 1hr, so without checked bags the flight is as little as 2:40 CBD to CBD. Even with checked bags, it's not much over 3:15. Once fully complete HSR would be nearly 4 hours. That's not insurmountable. But it's tough. If there were some good intermediate destinations, then perhaps you could stand to only capture a moderate chunk of the market. But without any intermediates worth speaking of, it only stacks up if the train can grab something like the majority of the market. And with it being significantly slower (particularly in the interim), that seems unlikely. It's been studied ten ways to Sunday, and that is always the conclusion.
All rail stations need to have protected bicycle lanes going to them and safe, protected bicycle parking. Methods of transportation need to be connected with each other. Regular electric buses also need to be connected to bus stations.
Wish Adelaide and South Australia in general would take it's heavy passenger rail more seriously. Electrify all Adelaide lines, underground city loop that goes out (underground) to the airport, return of regional services but high speed. So much opportunity to revitalise and expand the network to support the growing outer suburbs and regional centres.
I think they should start with Bullet trains between Regional Cities. Ballarat, Bendigo, Albury, Shepparton, Gippsland. Once system in place, then it’s easier to expand to Interstate.
Yes, and that would make living in regional areas more appealing which in turn would help ease some of the population pressures Melbourne is experiencing.
Related to this topic. I really liked the idea that @City-Moose presented in the ‘Will Australia ever get High Speed Rail?’ video. He cited some study that said that improving/modernizing the existing line could reduce travel time between these cities by 5 hours without having to build an actual HSR line. Estimated construction time for this project is 4 years.
And as someone who recently travelled Melb-Ade via The Overland, I wholeheartedly agree with CM. Upgrade the lines out in the Mallee so a train can do 180 comfortably or so it competes with the car and suddenly you have more viability. If they could reduce that trip down to 8 hours, I would happily take it over a plane.
Worth a look is CityMoose’s coverage of this issue, where he talks about how it’s really just a handful of short(ish) stretches that stop the journey time being essentially halved by a tilt train. It really wouldn’t be that expensive or time consuming to fix.
Exactly, countries like Morocco and Uzbekistan have shown that building high-speed rail is very much possible no matter the obstacle. Uzbekistan's and Morocco's HSR networks were the first HSR networks in Central Asia and Africa respectively. In Uzbekistan, Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent, Qarshi, are all connected by HSR! And of course, Australia has built rail across their country whether it's the Indian Pacific route between Sydney and Perth via Adelaide, or right through the heart of the Outback like the Ghan corridor between Adelaide and Darwin. So Australia's giant size is no excuse, especially when China's HSR system has experienced massive growth across their country. Having new communities along new HSR routes is a great way to build more housing to meet demands. The US's historic railways helped immigrants move across the country from Ellis Island big time, and thus created so many communities. If you build it, they will come! So geography should never be used as an excuse to not build transit! Because if anything China's massive HSR system or the US's historic transcontinental railroad expansion has shown, is that geography can be worked around. Denver wanted a link to the West Coast but had the Continental Divide in the way, so what did they do? They built the Moffat Tunnel, and Denver prospered as a service and supply center.
Not really good examples. The Moroccan HSR is being partly built as part of the Chinese belt and road scam, which will leave Morocco nice and indebted to China, all the while riding on questionably made infrastructure. As for Uzbekistan, not exactly the bastion of freedom and democracy. Countries like this can of course churn out megaprojects on the cheap as wages and working conditions are horrible for the average worker. Realistically, it's never gonna happen unless Australia becomes a dictatorship where wages and freedoms plummet to Chinese levels.
Something that could help connect smaller regional towns/cities could be getting trains from the town to a connection point on the high speed line, then connect to the train that comes next (they would line it up properly so that there isn’t too much of a gap). The train that took the people to a connection point waits in sidings until trains going both ways have arrived, then comes back out, picks the people up and then goes back to the town. An example of this would be changing the Griffith (nsw) to Sydney service. Currently, there is a train that comes down from Sydney to Griffith twice a week then goes back to Sydney. Once on a Saturday/Sunday and then a Wednesday/Thursday. It then connects to the main corridor at Junee station and continues to Sydney. What could happen differently is that the train could leave from Griffith, stop at all the existing stations to Junee and drop everyone off there. The regional train waits in the sidings for a while. If passengers are continuing to Sydney or Melbourne, they get on an XPT that comes by Junee at some point. Then after both trains heading to Sydney or Melbourne, the regional train comes back out from the sidings and goes back to Griffith that same day. They repeat this process every day, and everyone’s happy. The only Hickup I could think of would be that there is no maintenance place in or near Griffith to my knowledge. But it would still be worth looking into. I hope this makes sense and thanks for reading.
It feels like a pipe dream that our state and federal governments will ever build a HSR. The flight corridor from Melbourne to Sydney is one of the busiest in the world, so it only makes more sense to build a HSR. Building the HSR can also create some competition from the aviation industry. But the lack of political will and possible lobbying from the aviation industry (I'm speculating) are hindrances to getting the job done.
Parramatta should serve as a central terminal in Sydney. Linking future connections North to Brisbane, East to the CBD, West to Penrith and beyond, South to Melbourne
Answer to the title question: Sadly, NO!! The resistence against high speed rail (and many conventional railway projects) is simply too strong. Australia's political and economical elites absolutely HATE passenger railways and resist it by all means. Australia's "war on trains" started in the early 1960s and pretty much continues till this very day. Firstly, there is the usual suspects who resist infrastructure investmens in general because they want the state to invest in one thing only: TAX CUTS. We all know who they are. Secondly, there are the airlines who benefit extremely from the sheer lack of fast railway connections. And last, but not least, construction costs have exploded over the last three decades making it even more unlikely to ever happen. These higher costs drive up the price the beneficiaries of the current lack of high speed rail would have to pay. In other words: High speed rail in Australia would only be possible if you take away money from those exact people who oppose it. Those people however are exactly the people in power. You get it? It's not gonna happen. Unfortunately. The only realistic chance to get a high speed rail line built would be a referendum. Good Luck with that when several political parties, the Murdoch Media and various other powerfull forces would clearly join the "No"-side (and fund it). ZERO CHANCE!!
What tax cuts are you talking about? I'm living in Victoria and every tax has gone up. Maybe HSR might be more of a reality if governments stopped wasting money on useless things like Abo welfare ($40B/yr) & NDIS ($40B/yr). Thanks Labor!
After visiting Australia for the first time this past year (Brisbane, Cairns, and Sydney, specifically), I would love to see some high-speed rail connecting Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney-Gold Coast-Brisbane and possibly up to Cairns and over to Adelaide, too. That's still over half the country you're servicing through just that corridor.
You'd have to add standard gauge to the Queensland rail network from Cairns all the way down to the Goldie. Then you would have to extend the track to the Gold Coast Airport. Then extend into NSW and connect the line up to the old Northern Rivers branch, which has been turned into a rail trail. The NR branch line itself would need work for flood proofing.
@@Authurious85 Can't you just use the East Coast Mainline corridor for most of it? With deviations when required for grade. Make that corridor dual track, can upgrade the original track to HSR if the economics work out in the future, that means with points between the sets of tracks you can share with freight.
I live in Melbourne - would love high speed rail to Sydney, ideally via Canberra as I also travel there. It takes me 2-3 hours on public transport to get to the airport in Melbourne, it's ridiculous (I don't even live that far from the airport, but the lack of cross town services means either going all the way into the city and out again on two trains and two buses or 4-5 bus transfers across town). By the time you add that to the flight time, rail looks very attractive.
@@MisterTMH In the 1950s there were several trains a day between Sydney and Melbourne (despite the break in gauge) and trains to just about every town in the country.
NSW NEEDS high speed rail. Sydney CBD -> Woolongong/Newcastle/Orange. Start there and expand down and up to different states if it's successful. We need to unlock enormous amounts of amazing coastline as housing developments. Two birds with one stone!
As well as being a transport enthusiast I was by profession an English University Law Lecturer specializing in Land Law. All countries, whether their legal system is based on the English Common or on Roman Law, have problems with Nimbies. Probably the worse country for Nimbies is Germany, where Nimbies often resort to endless litigation. Farmers are not the main problem, provided you offer them fair compensation.
@@Fan652w not Nimbies. In most countries Eminent domain rules. No easements are required to run a non stop line that only benefits city people. In Canada you basically have to get permission to cut farms in half from r 500km. Look at the Chunnel train TVG in France super slow in Kent for almost 40 years.
In New South Wales (Aus), the State Government can designate a project to be of "State Significance", and override local objections. There are some hoops they have to jump through, but it certainly doesn't seem to be much of a problem for them - Metro and light rail, and rezoning for medium/high density (particularly for transit-oriented development - TOD) are more recent things that have occurred. Some local councils have probably been smart enough to at least get some modifications. Like Sydney City Council getting 3rd rail for part of the light rail down George St.
@@BB-xx3dv Thank you. In Britain we use the term compulsory purchase. The landowners are forced to sell, but the there are rules in place to ensure that the farmers or other landowners are adequately compensated. The North American phrase 'Eminent Domain' actually means compulsory purchase/acquisition.
I reckon the first section to be upgraded to HSR should be on the Brisbane-Sydney route as trains currently take about 18hrs to finish that trip, and leave Brisbane at about 4:30am in the summer which is before the suburban trains even start properly
The alignment of that Line was built to suit the speed and power of 50 Class freight engines, a class introduced in 1896. (Heavier types were not allowed on that line until the 59 Class came along in 1953). Hence the numerous curves to ease the gradients wherever possible.
the problem with Australia isn't the general populations view on public investment into rail. its the outrageous politicians who don't want to do anything radical so they can hold onto their jobs for as long as possible
If there is opposition to transmission towers there is no way a surface rail is possible in a democracy and because Japan does not know how to use modern TBM people always look at their huge cost per kilometer. With an income of $16,000,000,000 p/a both parties will agree for once.
My view is that the first 300km or so out of Sydney would be the most difficult, and there's likely some decent intermediate gains with smaller projects to straighten out existing lines. A bunch of small line improvements may be more achievable and potentially lay the foundation for HSR. Even if it only brings line speeds of 160 or even 130km/h. I wonder if elevated lines are the go for straightening out routes? A two tier stopping/express service pattern may be useful too. Especially as overnight passengers are more likely to undertake the full journey. Although I think HSR would be very useful as a catalyst for decentralisation and regional development along the route. Success breeds success. The V/Line service today is very different to 20 years ago and it's continuing to see improvements on most lines. It'll just need to be incremental rather than one single mega project. Especially as a mega project is likely to be changed and half arsed with a change of government (see: the NBN).
Much of the Newcastle-Sydney line could have curves eased to meet 130-160km/h at current standards, especially north of Ourimbah there are high speed sections, it's just the individual curves that limit line speeds. There is however, very little appetite for these types of projects, i'm unsure how Victoria got these over the line.
1:13 is so true oh my god. spoke to my friend who used to live in FRANCE about how the rail network was back home and he was like "eh, it's alright". like are you serious? i just don't get it at all.
Thanks for covering more Au stuff, I always love your insight. I love the idea of overnight sleepers between Sydney and Melbourne and would certainly use such a service, so much untapped potential.
In 2010, I travelled from Sydney to Byron Bay by train in three steps. I loved... but it was slow. It was not an issue for because I was a French tourist in working holidays!
The existing service used to take an hour less 30 years ago between Melbourne and Sydney. The biggest problem is that they've let a large portion of the line in NSW degrade to a maximum permissible speed of just 80kmh between Goulburn and Cootamundra. If they maintained the lines to the standard of the 160kmh permitted speed in NSW and 130kmh in Vic, standard service time of 8 hours is achievable. Improve the alignments in NSW, and you could cut it even further. That's before you invest in new trains or dedicated high speed rail. As you say, high speed rail doesn't have to be expensive, and the embarrassing reality is that there's massive scope for improvement in our existing network and services.
Whats more embarassing is that in Sydney, where the track is arguably more maintained all the metropolitan speed limits have been reduced to 115km/h (from 160km/h) which means the millions spent on purchasing NIF's & the new regional XPT will operated sub-optimaly where it counts the most.... just my 2 cents. The track sections of (Penrith - Blacktown), (Glenfield- Panania) had decent 13kmh+ sections of 160kmh/. Other areas have similarly sutiable alignments at THE PRESENT, which are capable of exploiting the new rolling stock (ie. Waterfall - Sutherland), (Macarthur-East Hills is capable to 130-160 in many areas)....... Getting this info to the people in power is almost impossible.
Canberra is an interesting place. It is extremely dispersed. The population is about 400k but the official measure of land area is larger than the 5 boroughs of New York and half the size of Greater London. It might be a bit aspirational as it includes a lot of green space and a few local farms but it reflects the low population density. In the last few years, we've built a shortish stretch of light rail but it will be many years until a significant proportion of the population has access to a convenient stop. I live in a relatively central location and would still need to drive 15km to the nearest station. The main "heavy" rail station is about 6km from the cbd. The line extended all the way to the city centre in the 1920s but was a bridge was washed out about 2 years later. The line was dismantled and never rebuilt. Even then, the antiquated line takes about 4 hours to get to Sydney compared to a bus from the cbd that takes about 3. This is the capital city that houses parliament and government where all the relevant decisions are made.
I think it's possible, but you want a train that can travel at around 320 km/h (199 mph) to make the journey between Sydney and Melbourne viable, especially with Canberra in between. (EDIT: I should add it won't be cheap. Because of the low mountains between Sydney and Melbourne, if you really want high-speed trains between these two cities you will need a *LOT* of very expensive tunnel boring. Ask the Japanese the exorbitant cost of all that tunnel boring building the Hokuriku Shinkansen between Nagano to Toyama.)
Oh, it's such a lovely idea. As a 70 year old who used to catch the Southern Aurora in a SINGLE SLEEPER CABIN, sorry, I hate that they no longer have them, I would use high speed in a flash but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. There's always hope. 😊 Also, there seems to be zero effort made to make the XPT attractive to customers, almost like they want it to fade away.
Thanks, Reece, great video, as always! Building on some themes in this video, I think we'd all love to get your thoughts on the art of rail alignment reservation... It'd be great to know how to advocate for our governmental leaders to commit to setting aside land for future rail/transit infrastructure, even if it's "too expensive" to start laying track immediately. Whenever you say that "line four was built after line two, because it was all part of a five-line plan" I always get the impression that we don't do that sort of planning very well in my city... And the same seems to be true for Canadian, Australian, and perhaps also USA high speed rail plans.
Highspeed rail is probably the most logical mode of intercity transport for Australia. Because the way our cities are located, it is pretty much just a single line. With a single line you cold cover the Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Bundaburg, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong, Canberra, Albury and Melbourne. The entire line would also be almost entirely flat as mountains are a few hundred kilometres away from the coast where the line would be and there is a massive gap in the victorian mountains we would have to go through anyway in order to service Canberra. It could serve basically the entire nation, and with a modern system it could reach extremely high speeds. Our intercity rail sucks and planes suck, we need to implement it and we absolute can. I hope our government one day finally commits to a HSR line, maybe starting from Sydney to Newcastle, or Sydney to Brisbane/Melbourne or something like that.
I once took a train trip from Melbourne to Sydney and it was 11.5 hours long. From 8:00 in the morning to 19:30 in the evening. So most of the day used just for the trip. Technically it could be done within three hours including a stop in Canberra. Imagine what such a connection would do to Canberra. The city would be booming and probably grow by a million residents within a decade. In Germany the Deutsche Bahn changed its schedule this month. Now there is a high speed (ICE) connection between Hannover and Berlin in each direction every 30 minutes during the day. They announced that in 2026 there will be trains every 30 minutes on all high speed routes. Imagine something like that in Australia. It should be possible.
But then, in Germany the higher population density and the shorter distance between major population centers make the whole idea financial viable. The issue of financial viability is an important one, as the initial success of the Tokaidō Shinkansen showed. Sure, that project went way over budget, but it was going to make its money back because the demand for train travel between Tokyo and Osaka was already gigantic even before 1964 and the Shinkansen moved all that demand to the Shinkansen.
@@Sacto1654 Connecting two population centers with over 4 million people each should be financially viable. And the low density between them means that construction of a track is much cheaper there.
@@skyscraperfan The big question: how much tunneling will be needed? A possible HSR line between Canberra and Melbourne could get really expensive on a per-kilometer construction basis if a lot of long tunneling is needed in the mountains geographically southwest of Canberra.
@@Sacto1654 In Germany we have a 327 kilometre high speed track which contains 121 kilometres of tunnels. The cost was about 6 billion Euros, but that was over 30 years ago. So I wonder what it would cost today. I was surprised when I learned what the track from Melbourne city centre to Melbourne Airport will cost if it is ever built.
Exactly, and this IMO is the issue with trying to include Canberra. To do so journey-time-efficiently, the line would have to go directly from Wagga to Canberra. This would require tunnelling for around 100km (not necessarily 1 continuous tunnel) out of a 150km leg.
Thanks for another great video on a very relevant issue in Australia. Commenting here because there are no comments on Nebula - PLEASE do a video on Melbourne's incredible tram network, it definitely deserves its own video.
This Pom (Australian slang for an Englishman) laughed out loud when I read this comment. But then I thought 'Will Qantas exist in twenty years time?' The last minute of this video suggests 'No!'
100% they have just about every politicians in there pockets. Use threats to regional representatives that they will stop services to there area if they go against there interests. Australia’s really need to start kicking up a fuss over corporate and political corruption
Speaking of intermediate lines, funding has been made available for yet another business case for HSR between Sydney and Newcastle (first proposed in 1980).
It is worth mentioning that Australian cities are slightly further apart than the typically recommended ~600km range for HSR. Sydney to Melbourne is a similar distance as Boston to DC, with only Allentown in between. I still think it would work, and that the approach you mention is the right one as Australian politicians don’t have the political capital to build HSR in one go
Yeah but on the other hand you have Beijing and Shanghai with a distance of more than 1000km cover in less than five hours, so it is feasible to have a competition with air travel (ok in China this is quite easy because airlines have a lot of delays due to airspace restrictions by the military).
@@nicknickbon22China has way more people and higher population density, the Shanghai-Beijing corridor in particular is filled with cities with millions of people that have many times more people than Australia. Because of the low population, low density and the fact that cities in Australia are far apart, high speed rail in Australia is not happening anytime soon
@@nicknickbon22 Yes, it’s definitely a feasible project imo, but the distance is still something worth considering, especially as the airlines can take a direct route over the mountains
@@MarcoAntonio-hw7si it is actually a good advantage, you don’t have to add many stops. And if you think about it, the countries with more hsls are countries where cities are quite spread apart, like France Spain and Italy, while countries like Germany didn’t developed many hsls till the most recent years because you simply have too many cities to cover over a span of hundreds of kilometers.
The real issue holding high speed back is an absolute lack of political will. Yea, it's expensive. But the TGV services have proven that intercity high speed can be profitable. The other half of the issue is feature creep. Every time high speed rail is even half-seriously considered, the first thing they do is state that it will serve every town along the current corridor. This basically means the train is effectively no longer high dpeed, as there are so many smaller towns and cities along the way. It either needs to be set up as a tiered service, with every 2nd train doing very few stops - something like melb-albury-can-syd - and having the following train providing an all-stops service, or completely seperating the high speed from local services, which considering the abysmal track conditions of the current corridor isn't such a bad idea. It needs to happen. It won't be cheap, but it'll be worth it, and if we can nail melb-syd in under 4 hours, then it's quicker than flying if you account for driving to & from airports, and all the wait time in the airports themselves.
Inland Australia is quite flat. The Great Dividing Range may not rate that highly as one of the Worlds great mountain ranges, but it would still require a lot of tunneling and bridges. And the north coast of NSW (Sydney-Brisbane) has a lot of decent sized rivers and flood plains to cross. It's why the new freight line between Melbourne and Brisbane (Inland Rail - 1,600km) is bypassing Sydney and taking an inland route through New South Wales. And even then, it seems they are having difficulties. Europe wouldn't have the rail system it has now if it only had 5 cities over 1 million (and only 20 in total over 100,000 if we include Albury-Wodonga) on a landmass that is actually bigger than Europe. That's not to say that I am against HSR, although I seriously doubt I will see it in my lifetime. The best thing to do would be get a section built. Sydney-Newcastle could be a possibility. Plenty of engineering problems to solve over not too great a distance between the biggest and second biggest cities in NSW. Or Melbourne to Goulburn - a much greater distance, but a much bigger win.
Thank you for talking about the climate crisis- I feel like that's something that's somehow left out by a lot of urbanists or transit enthusiasts. We can't afford to rely on car and plane travel in the future, even if it is a little faster. We need to face the problems and figure out real long-term solutions instead of worrying about convenience right now.
Also may I add, the current plans for an Australian high speed rail network start between Newcastle & Sydney, not Sydney and Melbourne. This short link would be a good building block for bigger projects in the future
For some reason or another, I as an American see posts about "progressive" transportation agenda items (public transportation, bike infrastructure, EV infrastructure, etc.) being talked about by Australian politicians on FB all the time. I couldn't help but notice how the amount of people laughing and bashing the ideas in the comments section is overwhelming. I'm used to seeing pushback everywhere, but Australia seems to really be over the top when it comes to having a negative attitude towards these things.
It's because Murdoch (who basically have a monopoly on news in this country are opposed to anything done slightly progressive and support the Liberal (conservative) party) and his opinions are brought down to the public spiting constant hate and aggression towards anything progressive done by the Labor party.
Hi Australian here. Essentially the reason why many of us are cynical about any new public transport project (no matter how good it is) is based on the following reasons: Over-budget, delayed, have numerous teething problems, governments tend to contract to the lowest bidder, primarily service areas that already have connections, airlines have a lot of political power, so does road transport, trains are seen as a 'poor people option,' numerous governments have promised high-speed rail only to back out because of money, Transport worker unions being stubborn, we're a 'revhead society,' to the point where Mad Max is more a documentary than a movie series, in rich suburbs most people don't like the idea of any construction changing the local aesthetic and when you add up different responses everything is a waste of tax payers money.
Great video, cost is also an issue though. A sleeper one way Sydney to Melbourne costs $288. A one way flight costs $74 (I picked Wed Jan 17 to get these prices). A one way sleeper cabin Adelaide to Sydney costs $1205. A one way flight costs $145. I can literally fly Adelaide to Sydney 8 times for the cost of one sleeper cabin
Hope for a better future for rail infrastructure is simply a dream in Australia, nothing more. Better rail operations between Sydney and Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney and other routes will never happen. If anything country rail routes will shrink and be downgraded, as has been done over the years throughout Australia. Governments and politicians are good at selling dreams, appealing to the minds of the gullible and naive, selling hope where there is none. But to dream sometimes, and hope, to escape reality, can be nice - but then you wake up and you are on a busy road or motorway, bumper to bumper, lost in an ocean of motor vehicles. Sydney once had the largest tram network in the world until the politicians shut it down over night in the early 1960s.
Okay, hear me out. What if, we electrified air travel? What if we just plugged airliners into really REALLY long extension cords that would allow them to fly from Sydney to Melbourne?
can you imagine going from 375kph doing a screeching halt right in the Terminal then an announcement comes on *sing dong* "we're hear y'all, GET OFF and thanks for using budget speedy"
It’s not going to happen. You need a 2 way ticket Mel -> Syd to be below $350 AUD to be competitive with airlines. The initial cost of building a high speed line and the lack of people travelling by train would see costs both ways to be completely uncompetitive against airlines. I think in 30 years it may be feasible with our population increases but air travel being under an hour and costing less than any proposed system makes it difficult to see any possibility of HSR. So in the meantime I’ve got to take a train that takes 5 hours to go CBR -> SYD at a top speed of 80kph, a route I can drive in 3 hours.
@@jack2453 it’s not though. If people don’t use it. It won’t run. If cost estimates per ticket are to be believed a 2 way ticket MEL -> SYD on a HSR line would be over $1000 compared to $350 flying. No one is looking at net zero and thinking of that over such a huge cost difference.
@@MetisGaming To meet net zero, domestic flights will have to be taken out of the equation by regulation or tax well before a high speed rail line is finished. Airfares will not figure in fhe economics of train v. other modes.
I recently used EuroNight/NightJet service between Poland & Austria and I liked how they mixed & matched coaches based on destination. I left Krakow in a Polish sleeper car coupled with some other Polish coaches as well as Czech, Hungarian & other Eastern European coaches all hauled by a Polish Siemens locomotive. I woke up the next morning in Austria and my coach was now coupled with some Austrian night train coaches pulled by an ÖBB locomotive.
Of course we can have high-speed rail in Australia. But instead, we are wasting taxpayer funds on nuclear submarines that we don't need, in order to "protect" ourselves from our main business partner and the main source of our wealth and economic growth of the last 20 years. For the $362 billion so nonsensically wasted, we could have high-speed rail between Melbourne and Brisbane three times over.
The issue with Australia is that it costs soooo much more to build anything because the unions hold the government to ransom. Take any build estimate and triple it, that'll be the final cost.
This was a nice video, but i think you have fallen into the same trap a little bit as many proponents. Sydney To Melbourne should NOT be the objective. It is too far to be competitive and as a result its just too big of a project and too big of a risk politically and financially, will take far too long to build leading to lost goodwill. Realistically the best solution is for Sydney and Melbourne to build HSR networks at first that focus on connecting regional centers to the CBDs in under 60 minutes. This would greatly benefit regional areas and the cities and massivley help the house price crisis that these cities are facing. For Sydney the main focus should be a HSR service that goes Sydney Central > Campbelltown > Goulburn as well as Sydney > Bathurst, Orange. These projects are far smaller and simpler to acomplish, and can eventually form part of a network once people are adapted to HSR and there is far more goodwill to undertake a megaproject like Sydney to Melbourne. Personally i don't think the European approach is the right one, its not fast enough, its messy and not being able to speed into the city centre adds an easy hour to any trip. The best solution is to contract Japan to come in and build us an entirely seperate Shinkansen network. Its the best system in the world and Australia needs to focus on working with its regional partners to build up its position in Asia - where its located, not Europe, which is a million miles away.
Sydney-Bowral-Goulburn-Canberra-Albury-Wangaratta-Melbourne as Phase 1. Sydney-Newcastle-Taree-Port Macquarie-Coffs Harbour-Grafton-Ballina-Gold Coast-Brisbane as Phase 2. Melbourne-Ballarat-Stawell-Horsham-...somewhere on A8...-Murraybridge-Adelaide as Phase 3.
Are you quoting King Charles III? He is a keen environmentalist! And his three biggest kingdoms, Britain (where I live), Australia (where you live), and Canada (where Reece lives) all need much better railways!
The conversation around HSR in Australia is increasingly moving away from linking Sydney and Melbourne (and maybe Brisbane) with a full scale HSR and more towards more local region focused HSR,(or at least services capable of consistently running 160km/h+/Very Fast Trains), designed to better improve the links between the towns immediately surrounding the capitals rather then linking the capitals themselves. Australia's HSR saga is a clear case of why it's important to remember that you build infrastructure to solve transport problems, as more often then not the HSR case in Australia feels like a transport solution looking for a problem. The HSR proposal typically presented is usually the huge task of linking Melbourne and Sydney, focused on the benefits of such a link against air travel, when in reality the current flight situation isn't really struggling (climate concerns aside). Despite the busy air route, it is usually presented as a solution to future urban development issues, as a means to basically export the demand for housing in the capitals out to the regions. These HSR proposals are typically dependent on changing development patterns across regional Australia. However there are different ways to solve the urban development problems these HSR proposals highlight that have different consequences in comparison to HSR. The important takeaway though is that there are multiple ways Australia can tackle the sort of problems HSR is presented as a solution too, and increasingly it seems that a stronger focus on more basic fundamentals is taking centre stage over the idea of a large HSR system. To put it as succinctly as possible, the East coast capital linking HSR concept is typically presented as an attempt to export growing development pressures, primarily in housing, out of the capital regions and into rural regions. Essentially building a Melbourne to Sydney HSR is a commitment to promoting huge amounts of urban development in regional Australia instead of in existing urban Australia. This is already a loaded option that isn't inherently good or bad, but it runs into the issue that our capitals aren't exactly over-developed to begin with, and that there are a lot of more local projects that could be done to alleviate the development pressures in our capitals. There are also major consequences to dumping the residential overflows of the capitals on regional Australia. Such a system would be built on the concept of living in rural communities and commuting the the capitals for business, which has risk of further draining business investment out of the rural communities. This is in contrast to the concept of more self-contained communities, where people live and work within a smaller local area. Essentially, the inter-capital HSR would be inflating the populations of regional towns well beyond what would occur otherwise, largely so that an inner city suburb in Melbourne doesn't have to have as many apartment blocks as it otherwise would (we'll come back to this). It's not inherently right or wrong to go down that path. It's a strategic planning decision. Bigger regional towns have their pros, but its not always an easy sell for the established communities. The sticking point for the capital linking HSR concept is that we do have other options for easing the development demands on our capital regions. The two big ones being a focus on more immediately surrounding areas for better transport links and increased development, and the other being a stronger push to promote a more denser urban environment in the capitals themselves. We have existing inter-city services that serve the more immediate surrounds of the capital regions, with a lot of scope for improvement. Sydney already has regular rail services between Newcastle, Norwa and Lithgow, representing towns about 150km out in each direction with reasonably consistent established urban area in between them. This represents an urban footprint already very much tied to Sydney with a lot of potential for internal development. A train to Newcastle currently takes about 2 and a half hrs. There is a huge scope for improvement there. Services that could run to the stations already served by the regional network, maintaining an average speed of at least 100km/h would be a game changer for urban development in the boarder Sydney Basin region. You'd still be exporting housing needs to neighbouring towns, but the effect is much more contained. And then of course there is the option to just properly densify our capitals as is. When all is said and done, for all our housing shortfall drama, we're still extremely low in terms of population density. A lot more could be done to promote denser development within Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane as is (including improvements to the PT networks). Australian cities are increasingly reaching a point where their growth is clashing with the 'Australian dream'. We're at a point where we need to accept as a society that not everyone is going to grow up and live in a detached house with a backyard and pool, and frankly, we aren't handling that super well. Many inner city suburbs in the capitals are still predominantly dethatched single household dwellings. These are areas that are prime for higher density development, and the existing residents typically fight against it to an extreme degree (which is understandable, but not ideal from a bigger picture perspective). In many ways the push for HSR can be perceived as a push to 'spare' these suburbs from that densification. If there is a train to ship in and out the workers from towns 100s of km away then there is no need to build apartments in the leafy inner city suburbs! That is a big part of what HSR proposals in Australia represent, an alternative to the ongoing densification of our capitals. Basically, a full HSR from Sydney to Melbourne is a huge leap that involves a very firm commitment to how we want the country to look over the next century. In contrast, improving more local rail networks can achieve similar overall outcomes without such firm commitment, while just changing how we manage the existing urban spaces in the capitals would go a long way. Building a 'Very Fast Train' from Sydney to Canberra would be significantly more achievable then a HSR from Sydney to Melbourne and likely have all the same benefits for those living along that corridor. Likewise, getting the Melbourne to Albury service that currently exist running at least 1 tph (as opposed to the current 5ish return services a day) with an average speed above the 120km/h mark (which the current rollingstock is very much capable of), would likely have all the same benefits as HSR for those living along that corridor. Both could also become building blocks for a HSR link between Sydney and Melbourne down the line. Every time HSR becomes a major talking point in Australia, it is usually in the form of a 1000km+ long system that just isn't going to happen due to the sheer scale and specific-ness of it. It's far too much in one go and doesn't provide us with much of anything we couldn't achieve with smaller, more practical projects. Which is why the conversation has moved increasingly away from having a HSR link between Melbourne and Sydney and more towards getting our existing inter-city links up to a better standard. If we're going to get HSR in Australia it'll take the form of something like Newcastle - Sydney, Melbourne - Geelong etc long before it does Melbourne - Sydney. The existing intra-state networks need to be the backbone of such a system, rather then a focus on linking the capitals.
A lot of good points here. As much as it would be great to see HSR in Australia the key question has to be what problem is it trying to solve and what is the cost vs return of that strategy versus other infrastructure projects. Public spending is a finite resource and always has an opportunity cost (whether that is a new hospital, school or railway line). There is a reason so many feasibility studies over the years have concluded the costs of HSR from Sydney to Melbourne are not justified relative to other infrastructure projects.
Thanks for having me on the show Reece!
Always a pleasure Martin.
I feel sorry for dou in Australia. How you can turn it around.
Glad to see you getting more recognition, Martin! You deserve it.
The best Collaboration ever!
Would love to see more collaborations between you two.
Something worth remembering for my fellow Australians: across all Government we are currently spending $30bn per year on roads which gets a very poor return and doesn't have much capacity. Meanwhile almost all our freight used to be taken by our rail networks but now the bulk of our freight is taken by truck on our highways, which costs more and is less safe. Our passenger rail lines outside the cities are extremely poorly used and expensive to run. There is no option NOT to build fast and faster rail, first bypassing slow sections of track out of the steam train era then separating freight and creating good land use around transport hubs. The other thing we need to look at is proper night trains as Europe is doing right now - there are so many corridors that are never going to be time competitive with aviation or motorised transport but run as night trains could do very well.
For Australia especially, freight trains should be very important in general given how much of the economy is dependent on heavy raw materials for exports, which makes truck reliance even worse in terms of profitability.
Just feels like it’s never going to happen. As logical as it definitely is
We had more night trains 20 years ago in Australia, but I disagree, I’ve traveled Amtrack in the USA and it’s a better run service than XPT
@@buda3d2007 To be fair the XPTs are about to be replaced with brand new trains; the track from Junee to Melbourne has just recieved significant upgrade due to Inland rail; and Inland rail will divert a bunch of freight off the main corridors.
A high speed passenger service will not add anything to freight capacity.
3:45 "except for Adelaide"
Yeah that line basically sums up where Adelaide stands with public transport compared to other big cities in Australia.
as someone that is in Adelaide, I felt that, I want more rail, I wouldn't care if I have to move my letterbox just to get it to my front door.
As an Austrian (not Australian), seeing ÖBB's new nighjets covered on this channel makes me proud 😊
As someone living in Hamburg, which is being served by ÖBB's new nightjets, I feel incredibly privileged and grateful for ÖBB providing such a great service to us and to central Europe. Thanks to our southern neighbors for having taken this important role in December 2016, when everyone else thought the era of night trains would be over. The foresight shown by ÖBB can not be overstated and you Austrians have every right to be proud of it!
I need to do a more in-depth video! They are awesome
@@RMTransit Really looking forward to the video :)
Great video! One footnote. i have met Swiss people who think their railway system is rubbish. But usually they are people who have not traveled much outside Switzerland.
I can agree that the Swiss railways are the best in Europe. I’m Dutch and we are fighting to stay second, although I think we already slipped to third after Austria. Our railway infrastructure is heavily used and there is no room on the tracks for extra trains. If an international train wants to end their train in The Netherlands, an intercity or sprinter has to be cancelled in the schedule. That’s also the reason why international trains can only ride on Dutch tracks between rush hour in the morning and the afternoon. The busy tracks is also the reason why we are slipping in ranking. There only has to be one train late (more than 6minutes, the safety interval between trains) and the national rail system collapses like dominoes.
@@RealConstructor I visit both Austria and the Netherlands fairly regularly. In Austria's favour are two facts. Per head of population it is spending more on new railways than any other country in Europe. Secondly it has lead Europe (the world?) in the revival of night trains. Against it are two points which i regard as decisive. Firstly, on a number of important lines (eg Tauern, Mariazell, Slazkammergut) the basic service is only every two hours. Secondly the country is desperately short of rolling stock, and this leads to chaos on busier days. In the last two years that chaos has worsened because of the extremely cheap Klima-Ticket, which unlike the Deutschland Ticket is valid on Inter-City trains.
I have met people from about every European country who complain about their trains haha. Complaining about railways seems to be a very human instinct, it's a system that we can't control (unlike cars) and where every single issue usually has widespread consequences (unlike planes), so logically people get annoyed of its unpredictability and their impotence to do anything about it.
Was in Japan last month and had a brief conversation with a fellow train travelling tourist from Switzerland. He expressed the opinion that the Japanese system left the Swiss system in the dust. Having used both systems I admired them both.
@@osasunaitor I have too! Eg there are a lot of Dutch people who complain about their railways even though most visitors (especially from Britain) think they are wonderful.
Railways Explained did a history of high speed rail in Australia and came to the conclusion that all the money that we’ve spent since the 1970’s on “feasibility studies” could have netted to an amount that could build us sufficient high-speed rail between Melbourne and Sydney (inc. Canberra) as well.
Heads up, that video was an almost exact copy-paste from the Wikipedia article
Usually under Labor governments and they have a poor record in figuring out the costs of large infrastructure projects.
@@AuJohnM They ren't the only ones who get it wrong. Snowy 2.0 is similar to building railway infrastructure.
@@AuJohnM - Liberal government's don't like spending money on rail infrastructure projects, as they see rail as so Victorian.
@@AuJohnMmore exactly, the beuracracy behind the government doesn't move fast, they recommend things to the Labor government and costs go up under every government the liberals just don't build anything!
Adelaide (1.3 million) still has half its lines unelectrified and has no City Underground tunnel linking the North of the city with the South - would love to see you do a video on this Reece!
Other big cities in Australia that don't have "fairly modern electrified rail systems" and need big improvement:
-Canberra-Queanbeyan (490k) has only 1 electrified LR line; the InterCity line is diesel and only runs 3 trains a day to Goulburn+Sydney
-Newcastle-Maitland (517k) has 1 diesel line, 1 electrified LR line and 1 electrified InterCity line only runs hourly all-stops in addition to hourly express trains; the old LR network was torn up in the mid-century car craze
-Wollongong (300k) has 1 electrified InterCity line that only runs all-stopper trains once hourly in addition to hourly express trains.
-Geelong (295k) is only 1 line and diesel, the old LR network was ripped up in the mid-century car craze.
-Hobart (250k) has no rail of any form despite straddling the old rail line, the passenger services ceased in the 1970s but were significantly quicker than the bus services that replaced them. The rail corridor ceased freight operations in 2014 and is still there, it is possibly the biggest low-hanging fruit of anywhere I know of in the country. The former LR network was ripped up in the mid-century car craze.
Adelaide’s rail network is so embarrassing
@@Planetrainguy it isn't all bad though, the land use is poor and it runs too infrequently but it also has alot of higher speeds sections, the Gawler line is almost entirely 110kmh line speed and alot of the Outer Harbour and Seaford lines are too. It wouldn't take that much to make it way better, a city tunnel linking the north and south lines straight under the city frees up all the platforms at Adelaide Terminal, and you can then convert them to standard guage and run the Belair line as all standard gauge extending to Mount Barker and opening a new line to Virginia.
@@BigBlueMan118 I don't think standardisation is a good idea just because it is only beneficial for the Belair line, which would still need the rebuilding of many station platforms that got demolished and then ARTC traffic would interfere with metro services. I live on the Belair line so I don't get those speed benefits :(
Being at and around 500k is not being that large outside of the context of Europe so I don't see this as being terrible. Adelaide does need to do better though
@@RMTransit Re Canberra. For planning purposes, Queanbeyan can be ignored, it's literally a different state. The Australian Capital Territory's (ACT) rural population is a rounding error. The city and terr. populations can be used interchangeably. ACT population was 454K in 2021. 346K in 2008 (the year I last lived there) and not RL/tram then. 258K in 1986 (the year in first lived there). 137K in 1971. Given when cities like the Gold Coast got their first RL/trams, Canberra is about where you'ld expect, if not doing a bit better.
As an Australian, I am so angry that Australia does still not have at least one state of the art high speed rail link
Agree. We don’t even a proper national highway network (dual carriageway). We have the Hume and 90% of the Pacfic but NOTHING else! Great shame. It’s the most difficult so-called developed country to get around by train/bus, and by car too.
Imagine the economic productivity we can have with great transport links which will entice people to populate or visit other places outside of the capitals.
@@josephj6521it’s so disappointing that more money is being spent into feasibility studies than actual progress..
@@Detrabot true. Time to build the infrastructure we NEED! Same for our awful internet NBN. Politics destroying this nation.
@@josephj6521I agree, but High Speed Rail is not something we need,
Don't be angry! Start advocating!
Yes, completely agree, as a person who legitimately cares about the environment and wants to see easier ways to go from city-to-city via rail, I think we need to give our pollies (politicians) a little extra nudge.
As someone who has their pilots licence and cares about my future job prospects, I’m a little bit more conflicted/indifferent (selfish, I know). At the end of the day, aeroplanes are infinitely better than cars, but electric high-speed rail is infinitely better than aeroplanes.
It’d probably be better to replace some of those Syd-Mel, Syd-Bris and Mel-Adel flights with a high-speed rail network that also does a better job serving smaller towns along the way as well as Canberra. People who say it’s unfeasible to build high-speed rail are ultimately being lazy when you look at places that have far more challenging terrain and still manage to pull it off.
What I think is extremely important is it needs to be done correctly. I do not want a high speed rail line which connects some random far flung suburb in Sydney to some random far flung suburb in Melbourne (like what’s happening to the LA portion of the high speed rail between LA and Las Vegas. These need to be CBD-CBD services with intermediate stops in regional towns and some far flung suburbs as well (as long as it doesn’t add too much time to the journey).
I reckon if you get travel times down to around 2-4hrs you’ll be pretty competitive with flying when you consider getting to the airport, checking in luggage, going through security, time spent on the ground taxiing or waiting for pushback, the train can be pretty competitive.
Also, I absolutely love UTOPIA. Brilliant fast paced comedy which somehow manages to be subtle, yet really on-the-nose if you understand it.
Cars are not worse than planes (as far as emissions are concerned) and 2-4 hours would be REALLY expensive cf to lower speeds. Flight times don't have to be the goal if air travel is not viable for other reasons.
I think long haul flights are more profitable anyways? Seems like a helpful pivot for a lot of airlines!
Australia getting HSR is kinda like Fusion Power. It's doable and technically feasible, but it's always 30 years away and the next governments issue. Even if we had a solid proposal presented to government right now, it would get lost in the red tape and politicized till it's killed by public opinion. A large part of it comes down to our incredibly short election cycles, not to mention the outsized influence Qantas has on our Federal politicians. Sydney to Melbourne is routinely one of the top 10 busiest air routes anywhere in the world, domestic or international. The demand is there, the tech exists and is cheap enough, we have the skills, brains and labour for it. The political will just doesn't exist.
I recall seeing in an Australian video that Qantas has a big role preventing HSR between Sydney and Melbourne.
It's a lot easier to buy new planes and, if necessary, modify the routes they fly than to build a fixed transport system like rail.
@@ctalcantara1700 Yes, they are most likely engaging in illegal behaviour to make sure HSR never gets built.
@@AuJohnM As the video and many others have pointed out, we don't have to build an entirely new network from scratch. The trains would also carry 4-5 times the amount of people on each run, something planes will never be able to match efficiency wise. Not to mention the fact that on average, even the most expensive HSR trains cost around 50-100million USD. You'll be lucky to get an Airbus A220 or Boeing 737 for under 100million today, and that's before we mention the massive backlog of orders. If it was as easy as buying new planes and adding capacity at the airports, there would've been no need for a new airport in Sydney.
I can't deny the fact that building a dedicated HSR network would cost upwards of $100billion for all the infrastructure work, but even if we spent half or a quarter of that in the next decade improving the rail network, we would see a marked drop in air travel; but Qantas fights everyday to make sure their effective monopoly isn't affected.
Pre covid, the corridor was the second busiest overland air route in the world (Hanoi to HCMC was the busiest)
truly a shame that a 75 km journey between brisbane and the gold coast with 3.3 million people living in this corridor takes almost 2 hours by train
It used to be quick, then there was infill and not enough tracks for express trains.
We have the worse infrastructure of all developed nations. Disgraceful. When will we wake up?
Takes 2 hours, or longer to drive it, on the M1 as well. It seems like a crash, or vehicle breakdown occurs every hour on the M1.
It’s one of many examples of where money should be spent on infrastructure rather than the Sydney to Melbourne HSR Unicorn
Sanuth
It's 1hr and 10 mins from Brisbane city to helensvale then you transfer to a tram 30mins for Gold Coast centre.
The main problem is not having direct rail to where people want to go such as Gold Coast, Kippa ring, Sunshine Coast,
Ok hate to do this but time for fact checking.
1) RailNSW have already announced replacement for the current train. Removing ALL sleeper options and replacing int with aircraft seating.
2) Any fast rail trains would by nessecity run on standard gauge. Incompatible with Melbourne Broad gauge rail network.
(The line to Sydney is the only standard gauge track in the state)
3) the airport train will be running a Western route which is of course coming from the opposite direction from the N/S link which is East of the airport.
4)The loading gauge in Melbourne is mostly determined by the Melbourne loop. In fact double decker trains have been trialed and failed miserable.
5) The vic regional rail is actually pretty good with Velocity trains normally limited by rail and stopping patterns rather than high speed.
6) and finally the engineering issues are more significant than you may think it wasn’t that long ago the line was down to 60kph due to undermining of the trackbed.
7) oh and NSW recently CANCELLED fast rail projects within their own state
In short to me it feels like it’s going to go backwards not forwards. Frustrating as there are ways forward just no pollies who want to step forward. It feels insane Someone can’t make it work.
Great video! A good summary of the issues and geography in Australia that impact our development of the likes of High Speed Rail.
A good cameo too from Taitset, an excellent contributor
8:41 AC/DC Locomotives would be fittingly Australian.
But we don't want a railway to hell - just Melbourne.
@@francisboyle1739whats the difference
@@francisboyle1739 Probably why Canberra isn't part of the corridor hypothesised in the video
Nah, too Thunderstruck
Thank you, I made an entire powerpoint apart of a competition on why we should have high speed rail on the east coast, our current priminister actually proposed it. I completely agree, it would be completely feasible. Our prime minister is actually currently proposing (this is unlikely) a highspeed line between Newcastle and sydney.
I found tilting trains a feasible solution for a cheaper option on existing lines.
Yea, every election cycle there's a mention or perhaps a bill or study enacted for hsr, but not nothing ever transpires.
You have do much room and the tracks are a 100 years old built by the British. Your right you should built your own system. Thank you for sharing
@@marcbeebee6969 Don't mean to nitpick, but Australia was formed in 1901 so 100 years old would be 1923, 22 years after Australia became a country.
@@bloat1235 mate not sure who you stung more with that. Good luck though.
🤣 got me there
@@marcbeebee6969 Australians definitely getting stung the most with no high speed rail though
If we're insisting on upgrading the existing rail instead of a new segregated HSR between Sydney and Melbourne, another solution is Queensland Rail Tilt Trains. Not exactly HSR at 170kmh but close to the 200kmh HSR definition. You'll only need to straighten the rail around Mittagong, Yass and Cootamundra to achieve a theoretical 6hr Journey. An electric tilt train with an impressive and similar distance between Brisbane and Rockhampton running at speeds of 170kmh with a record of 210kmh using legacy rails already operates and has been since 1998.
Tilt Train is 160km/h in service. I think a better option, although basically the same concept, would be the Acela Epxress. Or at least a design based off of that. In service speeds of 240km/h. Could achieve Melbourne to Sydney in less than 5 hours, upgrading the sections north of Junee/Cootamundra as you had said.
I think whatever option is used, it needs to have powercars separate to the trainset, similar to the XPT, Diesel Tilt Train, or Acela. This would allow it to be diesel powered initially, using either GEVO-8 or GEVO-6 (3000hp or 2300hp respectively), producing more power then the XPT power cars but at a lighter or similar weight.
In the future the line can be electrified, and the trainsets still used with either new or rebuilt powercars.
ETA: the track centres in a lot of areas would have to be widened to allow the tilting function of a train to operate. Hopefully this would be minimised or even not required on the larger radius curves found between Seymour - Albury (and possibly Melbourne-Seymour as well but I'm not confident there).
Don't forget the track between Sydney and Melbourne is own and operated by Australian Federal Government statutory corporation - Australian Rail Track Corporation. To upgrade the rail corridor to track speeds to up to 200kph would have to be funded by the Federal Government in association with New South Wales and Victorian State Governments. It would be cheaper than building a dedicated HSR rail corridor.
But it would still be pretty far from true HSR, and not competitive enough to replace the air bridge between Australia's largest cities.
A true HSR solution would reduce travel times to 3 hours, or slightly less, between Sydney and Melbourne, offering a direct replacement for air travel.
And such a route would include a light detour to run near Canberra without having too much tunneling.
It's feasible and would remain under 900km, being run at an average of 285-305kph.
It would require a better access to city centers though, where most tunneling would be.
200kph is the speed of some fast regional services in Europe, not HSR.
The Acela solution was chosen in the NEC because there's plenty of traffic and the route has plenty of urban areas where it is difficult to build new dedicated tracks.
Trains between Melbourne and Sydney are counted on one hand, and the route runs in pretty empty areas.
This is a case for true HSR, like on the French / Spanish model, and not a Frankenstein's creature like the Acela.
@KyrilPG If you go via Canberra, you have to miss Cootamundra, Harden, Yass, and maybe Goulburn in order to achieve sub 4 hour journey times. This also means going from Wagga to Canberra in 1 leg, crossing some challenging terrain to do so.
I see an Acela/Tilt Train on upgraded existing corridor as a near-mid term solution, with proper HSR on dedicated tracks and dedicated corridors a longer term solution. HSR would easily take decades to build, while MSR "Mid Speed Rail" could start implementing improvements immediately.
Victoria could up the speed from 130kph to 160kph overnight, improving journey times on XPT and Vlocity services (on-time performances on the XPT needs some serious looking at, regardless). Upgrading of speeds in both NSW and VIC to 200km/h would require modifications to the Predictor level crossings (I would maintain 120km/h level crossings where they already exist). A lot of curves between Wagga and Melbourne could have speeds increased - some would need an increase in superelevation but others might be OK as is. Allow 1 month per curve to modify, with multiple being constructed concurrently, and within 5 years we would have a decent service for at least half of the Sydney Melbourne corridor.
@@johnleonard2202 Just answering your first paragraph in this reply :
Nope, it's 3 hours *including* the detour near Yass between Wagga and Canberra. (3h would be non-stop of course).
But, as I wrote, it's HSR on the French / Spanish model, which means NOT running through *any* other city in between, only running near them, with parallel spurs to serve them if need be.
And it would be 3 hours, or just under 3, not "sub 4".
I've mapped it several times, it's very similar to some French or Spanish routes :
Paris Bordeaux, nearly 600km, run in 2h and 4 little minutes, with the first part on the second oldest French HSL limited to 300kph and a lengthy Paris exit. The second part is run at 320kph.
Paris Strasburg, nearly 500km, run in 1h45 on a 320kph line with the first 35km on Paris' conventional suburban tracks that have incremental speeds.
With the recent euro standards, at 320/330, (or even 350 but that might not even be needed), you can run Melbourne Sydney in 3h or slightly less, including a detour to graze Wagga, Yass and Canberra, going around the mountains instead of through them.
While less flashy regional hsr could also be considerd, here in victoria our two largest cities are just seperated by large amounts of flat land and the largerly low density western suburbs
The issue is that these places are a lot smaller than Melbourne or Sydney's cores which means you have to do a very cost effective project to make it work - which will be a challenge in Aus
@@RMTransitit sucks because there actually was a project between Melbourne and Geelong to build high speed rail, but it was cancelled in budget cuts. :(
Absolutely terrible outcome, if it had been built it could have been used as an example to encourage Sydney to Newcastle, Sydney to Canberra, and eventually full connectivity down the coast. Political will to do anything is rock bottom and the only way HSR will happen is if people can see tangible real life benefits for themselves.
Also Melbourne and Sydney are going through a housing crisis, so high speed rail would be great not just for connecting these cities but building up the communities in between them (ideally in a way that’s not car dependent).
"They don't even have the snowy!" I love it.
High Speed Rail is a no brainer for the Sydney-Melbourne corridor, however the airline industry has been assiduous in protecting the 5th busiest air corridor in the entire world.
Happy to hear that landed for someone
FKNQANTAS
@@RMTransitBut Reece, Air travel is faster and cheaper than HSR.And aircrafts are fqr more efficient than cars.
HSRs would be way more comfortable, you won't have to go through security and wait for your bag to arrive. Trains are also better for the environment than planes.
@@makisekurisu4674Qantas cheaper than HSR? I doubt that 😂
Given the housing crisis, what would make more sense is to have HSR trains to Wollongong, Newcastle, Dubbo, Wagga, Tamworth ….. people can start living in these areas and commute to Sydney for work on regular basis.
Realistically HSR will need a new alignment through the Southern Highlands. If you’ve ever done the trip from Sydney to Canberra, the whole section from Campbelltown to Moss Vale is an old, very windy Victorian-era alignment that wouldn’t be very suitable even if you straightened certain sections.
Also - I think Australians can get down on ourselves when it comes to trains. Our railways are generally excellent if you are travelling within our 5 major cities or to some regional towns (eg Ballarat, Newcastle, etc). However if you have to cross a state border our trains frankly aren’t good.
i just hope in 2030s the Jakarta-Surabaya HSR is completed and properly give a race in HSR building in the pasific
Kinda strange seeing them do a HSR project for Jakarta when they're in the process of abandoning Jakarta and moving the capital to a brand new city on Borneo.
@@mrvwbug4423it's not strange. Think of it as Jakarta as Sydney and IKN as Canberra. Jakarta will still be the nation's economic center and our biggest metropolitan region. The HSR will then going on Southern route, connecting several major cities (Bandung, Jogjakarta, Surakarta, and Surabaya).
That is feasible IMO, or at least they can finish the Bandung - Surakarta section first to complement the existing railway network and compete with Trans Java Toll Road and local airlines
small island short trip cheap built railway 200 million people cause land sinkhole
Great video. I think you underplay the importance of the Sydney-Canberra stretch which could anchor the project... Canberra is small, but as the capital there is lots of high value traffic by politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyist, business etc. And Outer Sydney-Goulburn would be the trickiest and most expensive bit. Straightening, upgrading and electrifying to allow frequent service by NSW interurban double deckers at 150km/h woulb be a great first step.
Canberra to Newcastle is the bit that makes most sense. Reece is good, but the lack of knowledge of second cities means this video focuses too much on state capitals.
@@Secretlyanothername I agree, but starting with Canberra - Sydney is the best first step there in my view. The terrain is a lot easier to contend with, and build without too many cost issues from tunneling which could cause political pushback to bring the project unstuck. Once a single leg is done, people can finally see the benefits, which hopefully means we can start rolling out lines in earnest
I kind of agree, but the rest of the country dislikes both Sydney and the ACT. A NSW project with Federal support seems more likely to occur.@@rorythered1936
@@SecretlyanothernameThe biggest cities drive disproportionately more traffic because they are disproportionately larger than others. Worth looking into gravity models.
I'd very much agree with this. I think Sydney to Melbourne wiuld take slightly too long without some of the fastest speeds (900 km, or 3+ hours assuming an average of 300km/h and this does not include stopping times). Canberra to Sydney are definitely close enough to make higher speed services more viable. Note also the smaller towns such as Goulburn or Moss Vale that could be of interest to people who wants to do part-time wfh, or the potential of Canberra being Sydney's LCC or diversion airport.
I guess Canada and Australia (Where I'm living) have a lot in common, lack of political will to spend money on trains but are happy to be spend 350bn on nuclear subs which no one wants, but still put out a study every election cycle, just to please the public, somewhat. I think we should heavily take lessons from Spain, Italy & China (but China maybe a political death trap for government, and our foreign policy is increasingly becoming defacto US anti-china policy rather than our own nuanced policy) considering how cost effective those countries are at developing hsr, anyway, good video and good points on how a hsr should work to get the costs down and bring more public benefit.
I agree step 1 is to buy a load of the new NightJet carriages maybe with some Charger locos to start them off with while you get the electrification sorted. Then swap the chargers for Vectrons
I was thinking the eletrification could start first, before acquiring the trains. At the same time improvements to signally and communications. We want to make sure there is mobile connectivity along the line. The electrification is going to take some time. As for the NightJet they would be fantastic. Not sure our demand for the trains would fit into ÖBB’s demand for new trains.
As someone who was on a train between Albury and Goulburn yesterday, you were 100% right about how speed prohibitive the terrain on some parts of the route is, but interestingly enough the slowest part of the journey yesterday was actually just north of Wagga where, despite what looks like relatively kind terrain and no obvious track damage, the train slowed to a crawl for a good 5 or so kilometres. Infrastructure improvements to remove issues like that (even without anything else) will make the journey time more reliable rather than the current "an hour late is practically on time" reputation that the Sydney-Melbourne XPT in particular has.
Besides the Goulburn-Albury stretch, you have to also consider Campbelltown-Mittagong since that stretch is notoriously slow and windy. However, I reckon the suggestion from Goulburn-Albury should just be Goulburn-Wagga since Wagga-Albury is pretty straight
Wagga-Albury is single track though.
In fact it is the only section of single track on the main line within NSW and it is also part of Inland Rail (the whole Standard Guage corridor from Melbourne to about 80km north of Wagga is all part of Inland Rail) so it would pretty quickly turn into a major bottleneck if you run more trains. That's why Reece is suggesting Goulburn to Wagga to upgraded, give passenger trains their own dedicated tracks separate from freight trains on Inland Rail.
Goulburn to Macarthur would be the most important upgrade we could do because it would bring Canberra trains up to being faster than driving (currently 4 hour trip all up, but a 200kmh section from Campelltown to Goulburn alone would bring that under 3 hours then combined with a few minor upgrades of the Goulburn-Canberra line could be under 2 hours 30min). It would also be the start of a proper HSR network, because you would also build the Maldon-Dombarton line as high speed and send fast Wollongong trains via Macarthur-Glenfield-Parramatta-Epping-Hornsby to Central Coast and Newcastle-Maitland, allowing you to get express trains off the current Illawarra line and allow you to run proper frequent suburban trains in Wollongong.
That would work as long as you follow a new alignment from Wollongong-Sydney. However I don't see anyone getting approval to build a new railway through the Royal National Park. I do see the benefit, both for Melbourne-Sydney HSR, as well as Wollongong/South Coast commuters to improving this section. Average speed between Sydney and Wollongong is just 40km/h at the moment (2 hours to complete an 80km journey!).
I don't think the single-track section between Junee-Wodonga is as big an issue initially. Without sitting down and working this out properly, I would suspect that you could run an hourly HSR service, plus all existing freight traffic, plus Inland Rail on this single track section with little issue. Everything would need to run on time though, and there would be a lot of sitting in sidings waiting compared to current timetables (for freight ideally, don't want to hold the HSR up). Remember that single track main lines can handle up to 90 trains per day, and double track up to 140 trains per day. We are nowhere near those numbers, but our system is also more optimised for transit times and train loadings, not for volume of traffic.
Another thing to remember is that the standard gauge is single track from Melbourne to Seymour, the adjacent tracks are broad gauge. So a similar problem would also exist there. Just to finish, I'm not saying that the line shouldn't be duplicated or even triplicated, just that we can start running trains before the network is 100% optimised. A HSR project (or more freight-oriented projects for that matter) shouldn't be delayed while we try and convince politicians to build a second or third track.
@@johnleonard2202 Well first off the single-track is actually from just south of Junee until just south of the Murray so it's worse than that, and Albury also only has one through platform. There are also dozens of LXs which need to be rated for 200kmh+ running. If you are running hourly trains at that speed you are going to want bypass tracks or platform changes at Culcairn, Henty and The Rock. So there are obviously still upgrades that need doing to bring this section to its full potential, and it is probably the easiest, cheapest and most worthwhile section to build high speed rail in the whole country especially as it is used by lots of freight.
The Junee/Wagga-Albury and Seymour-Melbourne sections of single track are often the source of delays to rail services along this line. More than anything, any potential upgrade has to be more resiliant to flooding and natural disasters. Converting the Shepparton line to standard guage would solve much of this, but then Junee-Albury would remain as single track. And obviously the more trains you want to run, the more difficult it becomes to reliably run fast trains.
You can't run high speed trains and freight trains on the same track. The speed difference is too big. HSTs will need their own separate, dedicated high speed line, whilst freight and any remaining slow passenger trains will use the existing line.
Some interference in the 1860's from influential landowners caused the Line to go through Menangle and Maldon using the steep Shepherd's Hill gradient, instead of through Camden.
When it comes to funding HSR, I think having a negligible tax on airfares would be the best way to approach funding. Adding a $1 HSR tax to any airfare in an identified HSR corridor that is to be used solely for corridor identification and land acquisition purposes would be a good way to at least begin funding any HSR project. This wouldn’t just apply to Sydney-Melbourne flights, but also routes like Sydney-Wagga and Melbourne-Canberra
It would be cheaper to upgrade the existing rail corridor between Sydney and Melbourne to track speeds up to 200kph with high capacity signally and train control systems like ETCS Level 2, and reconnect Camberra to the current rail corridor at Yass Junction, than building a dedicated HSR rail corridor.
@@chrismckellar9350 upgrading the speed of the existing line would require a lot of land acquisitions for realignment. That’s what I was talking about, we can’t build a separate HSR line for the reasons you mention
@@chrismckellar9350 that's pretty much what the Fastrack proposal aims to do.
9:50 High grades only work if you are talking about new dedicated high speed passenger lines. If you are intending to upgrade existing tracks, you need flatter grades to carry freight which is more important on this line.
I agree that high speed rail is feasible but building the middle section first just won't work. You need to get people using it, which means starting with something like Melbourne to Seymour (or Shepparton or Benalla) and Sydney to Goulburn (or Canberra). Then you continue to add to the section bit by bit. Sydney to Newcastle and Melbourne to Geelong should also be prioritised.
The fact Australia neighborhood, Indonesia, just launching High Speed Railway this year make me sure Australia should deserve had high speed railway
Don't you want to aim for a single line that goes Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, taking in some smaller towns along the way? People probably won't generally travel the whole length of it unless they are creating footage to publish on TH-cam, but it doesn't open up a lot more potential station pairs. And even if the small towns are really small now, they will have a lot of growth potential if high speed rail comes to them.
The big cities have significantly more ridership potential, and a single line could be built over the long term, but the case is less strong. Most people on HSR in places like Japan and France today are making the long distance large city pair trips.
@@RMTransit If you take Tokyo-Osaka for example, the trains go to other places after Osaka, and call at other places before they reach Osaka. That is by far the most popular city pair, but their setup makes other less popular city pairs viable.
It was a similar setup when I took the train between Madrid and Barcelona.
@@katrinabryceyeah but we don’t want to go to Canberra in the first place 😅
@@turtlelazers476 People from Canberra might want to escape though? 🤷🏻♀, I've never been to Australia, so I can't comment.
For Canberra I'd imagine the issue is the huge mass of mountains west of it. If you want to avoid tunneling through that but still run the main line through Canberra it's a 50+ km detour. And the angle would be sharp enough that a spur would add less track length.
Given the population numbers I think prioritizing Sydney to Melbourne before extensions to Brisbane or Adelaide is fine.
Canberra needs to be included in a Sydney - Melbourne high-speed rail line.
You can't build a direct Syd-Can-Melb line unfortunately, because (a) Canberra is surrounded by mountains to the west and south that would require a base tunnel and (b) a direct route would bypass several large and important towns in Southern NSW, most notably Wagga Wagga (which is also the town where you would build the branch for a hypothetical Syd-Adl high speed line). Canberra will always be on a spur line, but Goulburn to Canberra is a good option for serious upgrading, especially if we extend the Canberra rail line and build a station in the CBD.
@@lachlanmcgowan5712 Yes,
This line already exists for services with Explorer (rail motor) trains. It certainly should be extended to the city centre. Currently it ends at nowhere-in-particular far from the city centre, absurdly. HSR trains could use this spur at conventional speeds, as Royce suggested,
@@mt-mg7tt The Canberra rail station is in Kingston because a flood ~100 years ago washed out the rail bridge across the river into the CBD and it was never rebuilt. The station used to be roughly where Canberra Center is now. There are some overgrown remnants of the old track in some areas of Reid.
@@lachlanmcgowan5712 Some of the past HSR proposals (from all those studies that have never gone anywhere) have had Canberra on the mainline, others have used a spur.
Most of the prior HSR plans have largely followed the Hume Highway, as the current mainline does. If they don't want to tunnel through the mountains to the west/south west of Canberra, they can run a HSR track into Canberra along the Barton and Federal highway corridors.
Really should start in Newcastle
I lived in Perth 2006. I was impressed with the quality and ease of using the rail system there and Brisbane 2018.
I found the professionalism of the staff very helpful.
1. European cities tend to take 10km or so to exit the city; it can take 40km of slow travel to exit Melb and Syd.
2. Saying there is a 10m person corridor is a bit misleading. There are 9.5m on the ends, but no demand in the middle.
3. Unlike some HSR that connects hubs, Melbourne is a terminus without onward demand.
4. People in the sprawling cities of Melb and Syd have an hour or more commute in many cases to get to the station at either end. The savings from not travelling to the airport and realised. It is an hour for me to the airport OR to Southern Cross station.
5. Saying the XPT meets demand for towns along the Melb-Syd route is misleading. There are other services from Melb-Alb and out of Sydney.
In June of this year, the Federal government formed the High Speed Rail Authority to oversee the development of the Australian high speed rail network on the east coast. The first leg to be built is the Sydney to Newcastle leg with an intermediate stop at Gosford. This is actually on the Sydney to Brisbane route rather than Sydney to Melbourne but Syd-Newc is a small achievable leg to get started with.
A moderately circuitous Syd-Mel route should come in around 830 km. These days with 350 km/h top speed and 280 km/h average speed is becoming the norm for new HSR so I should think 3 hours should be the goal on that route.
The sad thing is that Qantas, Virgin Australia and Jetstar have an iron grip on politicians, as Melbourne to Sydney isn’t the second busiest plane route in the world (and one of the most profitable) for nothing. However we have more than enough money and labour to do it. And they call us one of the most developed countries in the world😢.
Jetstar is Qantas
The main problem with urban rail in Australia (and transit in general) is frequency. Also, while Melbourne-Sydney gets the lion's share of the attention, I think we should be looking at routes like Adelaide-Melbourne. It's nowhere near as busy a corridor, but it's also a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to build, and it would be another way for us to increase local expertise before getting to the trickiest parts of the Melbourne-Sydney line.
My proposed Australian high speed line would go through Melbourne airport and Canberra as opposed to having branches and past Canberra, go via Wollongong. I’d also build a high speed rail to Newcastle around the same time, then extend that to Brisbane via coffee harbour and the gold coast
Not many people travel Canberra-Melbourne, so a branch to Canberra would work well. The alternative you either have to go from Wagga Wagga to Canberra, cutting out Cootamundra, Harden, and Yass, and all of their surrounding communities. Or retain those places, and Canberra, adding in additional route length and journey time. If trying to hit the regional towns and Canberra, journey time for Melbourne-Sydney pushes out to around 6 hours. At this point it becomes easier for the average person to drive (taking 8-9 hours). Remembering that depending on final destination, driving may actually be quicker point-to-point, plus has the added advantage of them having their own transport at their destination. High-speed rail journey time is actually made up of Transit (at least 1hr) + HSR (4-6 hours depending on route and speed) + Transit (at least 1hr again). For a long journey time, you won't attract air travellers or motorists. Personally I think that the HSR needs to be as fast as possible, and avoiding Canberra allows this while also serving more communities and a larger chunk of the state.
I take it that geography is not one of your strengths. Going down the escarpment to Wollongong would be ridiculous.
@@AuJohnMAny new rail line into Wollongong would tunnel under the escarpment, like the Maldon - Dombarton line, or the sometimes proposed Waterfall - Thirroul line.
Might have worked 10/15/25 years ago. Now imho, we have missed the boat. The maximum population density of Australia is the Adelaide/Melbourne/Sydney and Brisbane. With Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne and a number of in land centres such Wagga Wagga and Albury-Wodonga. Based on realistic costs if this route had been started in 1995/98 then it might have had a chance. Now, my opinion, the capital costs are just too high. Have a look at how the costs of the Melbourne/Brisbane inland freight line have exploded in the 10/15 years since it was first proposed. The other issue is fencing such a line. Australia has a number of animals that can destroy a train travelling at more than 200 kmph. So the rail line has to be fenced to a height of at least 2400mm and bet around 350 mm into the ground. I don’t have the figures such a fence would cost. So to close nice idea but imho no longer feasible.
Always can add a branch later, putting mainlines through tricky environments makes building the foundation much more challenging.
In Victoria the issue currently happening is that every high speed rail proposal proposed usually gets cut in budget cuts.
Fun fact, the new CAF trains set to replace the XPTs will no longer have sleeper cars. Even with only 1 sleeper service, we still find a way to go backwards.
That's neo-liberalism for you.
Further fun fact, CAF trains will operate to the lower speed limits imposed on XPT trains within the Sydney regions of 115km/h in sections where the XPT previously operated at 160km/h in the 80s,90s & 00s.......
Surprised you didn’t talk about the prospector train from Perth to Kalgoorlie as it is a great example of a “higher speed train” this service rarely stops and is well built to allow it to operate fast being the fastest “service”(not fastest train ie: distance/time) and operating in rather smart format. Would recommend looking In to this for more information then I could give but it is certainly a good case study.
I used to catch it twice a week, every week in the early 2000's. The mining boom was on and the train was critical. Mining money is great, mining towns are... the train was critical!
I think it's hard to explain just how empty Australia is. The five largest cities on the route from Sydney to Melbourne are Aulbury-Woodonga (pop 100,000), Wagga-Wagga (pop 50,000), and three other cities with a population around 20,000. After that, there's no town bigger than 5,000 people and even those are few and far between.
Long story short, the only way HSR between Sydney and Melbourne gets any ridership is by stealing Sydney-Melbourne passengers from the airlines. This is where things always get shaky. Sydney airport is 12 minutes from Central Station by train. Melbourne is 30 minutes from Southern Cross by express bus. Flight time is about 1hr, so without checked bags the flight is as little as 2:40 CBD to CBD. Even with checked bags, it's not much over 3:15. Once fully complete HSR would be nearly 4 hours.
That's not insurmountable. But it's tough. If there were some good intermediate destinations, then perhaps you could stand to only capture a moderate chunk of the market. But without any intermediates worth speaking of, it only stacks up if the train can grab something like the majority of the market. And with it being significantly slower (particularly in the interim), that seems unlikely. It's been studied ten ways to Sunday, and that is always the conclusion.
All rail stations need to have protected bicycle lanes going to them and safe, protected bicycle parking.
Methods of transportation need to be connected with each other. Regular electric buses also need to be connected to bus stations.
I am British. I am afraid my home country is nowhere near your ideal system. I would add that it must be easy to walk to the station.
Wish Adelaide and South Australia in general would take it's heavy passenger rail more seriously. Electrify all Adelaide lines, underground city loop that goes out (underground) to the airport, return of regional services but high speed. So much opportunity to revitalise and expand the network to support the growing outer suburbs and regional centres.
I think they should start with Bullet trains between Regional Cities. Ballarat, Bendigo, Albury, Shepparton, Gippsland.
Once system in place, then it’s easier to expand to Interstate.
Yes, and that would make living in regional areas more appealing which in turn would help ease some of the population pressures Melbourne is experiencing.
We’re spending $360bn on nuclear submarines instead
My two favourite transit TH-camrs on the same video it’s a perfect Christmas gift
Related to this topic. I really liked the idea that @City-Moose presented in the ‘Will Australia ever get High Speed Rail?’ video. He cited some study that said that improving/modernizing the existing line could reduce travel time between these cities by 5 hours without having to build an actual HSR line. Estimated construction time for this project is 4 years.
And as someone who recently travelled Melb-Ade via The Overland, I wholeheartedly agree with CM.
Upgrade the lines out in the Mallee so a train can do 180 comfortably or so it competes with the car and suddenly you have more viability.
If they could reduce that trip down to 8 hours, I would happily take it over a plane.
Something around Wollongong Sydney CBD, Parramatta, Gosford.
And up north Coolangatta (airport) to Brisbane.
Worth a look is CityMoose’s coverage of this issue, where he talks about how it’s really just a handful of short(ish) stretches that stop the journey time being essentially halved by a tilt train. It really wouldn’t be that expensive or time consuming to fix.
If you are an Aussie that wants to live in a more liveable, walkable and transit friendly city. Moving overseas is the best option.
We are getting there though ha ha
Exactly, countries like Morocco and Uzbekistan have shown that building high-speed rail is very much possible no matter the obstacle. Uzbekistan's and Morocco's HSR networks were the first HSR networks in Central Asia and Africa respectively. In Uzbekistan, Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent, Qarshi, are all connected by HSR! And of course, Australia has built rail across their country whether it's the Indian Pacific route between Sydney and Perth via Adelaide, or right through the heart of the Outback like the Ghan corridor between Adelaide and Darwin. So Australia's giant size is no excuse, especially when China's HSR system has experienced massive growth across their country.
Having new communities along new HSR routes is a great way to build more housing to meet demands. The US's historic railways helped immigrants move across the country from Ellis Island big time, and thus created so many communities. If you build it, they will come! So geography should never be used as an excuse to not build transit! Because if anything China's massive HSR system or the US's historic transcontinental railroad expansion has shown, is that geography can be worked around. Denver wanted a link to the West Coast but had the Continental Divide in the way, so what did they do? They built the Moffat Tunnel, and Denver prospered as a service and supply center.
The Bullet Train In Uzbekistan is amazing. I travelled on it.Hold on people. It goes faster than 200 KPH.
Not really good examples.
The Moroccan HSR is being partly built as part of the Chinese belt and road scam, which will leave Morocco nice and indebted to China, all the while riding on questionably made infrastructure.
As for Uzbekistan, not exactly the bastion of freedom and democracy.
Countries like this can of course churn out megaprojects on the cheap as wages and working conditions are horrible for the average worker.
Realistically, it's never gonna happen unless Australia becomes a dictatorship where wages and freedoms plummet to Chinese levels.
Something that could help connect smaller regional towns/cities could be getting trains from the town to a connection point on the high speed line, then connect to the train that comes next (they would line it up properly so that there isn’t too much of a gap). The train that took the people to a connection point waits in sidings until trains going both ways have arrived, then comes back out, picks the people up and then goes back to the town.
An example of this would be changing the Griffith (nsw) to Sydney service. Currently, there is a train that comes down from Sydney to Griffith twice a week then goes back to Sydney. Once on a Saturday/Sunday and then a Wednesday/Thursday. It then connects to the main corridor at Junee station and continues to Sydney. What could happen differently is that the train could leave from Griffith, stop at all the existing stations to Junee and drop everyone off there. The regional train waits in the sidings for a while. If passengers are continuing to Sydney or Melbourne, they get on an XPT that comes by Junee at some point. Then after both trains heading to Sydney or Melbourne, the regional train comes back out from the sidings and goes back to Griffith that same day. They repeat this process every day, and everyone’s happy. The only Hickup I could think of would be that there is no maintenance place in or near Griffith to my knowledge. But it would still be worth looking into.
I hope this makes sense and thanks for reading.
It feels like a pipe dream that our state and federal governments will ever build a HSR. The flight corridor from Melbourne to Sydney is one of the busiest in the world, so it only makes more sense to build a HSR. Building the HSR can also create some competition from the aviation industry. But the lack of political will and possible lobbying from the aviation industry (I'm speculating) are hindrances to getting the job done.
Parramatta should serve as a central terminal in Sydney. Linking future connections North to Brisbane, East to the CBD, West to Penrith and beyond, South to Melbourne
Answer to the title question: Sadly, NO!! The resistence against high speed rail (and many conventional railway projects) is simply too strong. Australia's political and economical elites absolutely HATE passenger railways and resist it by all means. Australia's "war on trains" started in the early 1960s and pretty much continues till this very day. Firstly, there is the usual suspects who resist infrastructure investmens in general because they want the state to invest in one thing only: TAX CUTS. We all know who they are. Secondly, there are the airlines who benefit extremely from the sheer lack of fast railway connections. And last, but not least, construction costs have exploded over the last three decades making it even more unlikely to ever happen. These higher costs drive up the price the beneficiaries of the current lack of high speed rail would have to pay. In other words: High speed rail in Australia would only be possible if you take away money from those exact people who oppose it. Those people however are exactly the people in power. You get it? It's not gonna happen. Unfortunately. The only realistic chance to get a high speed rail line built would be a referendum. Good Luck with that when several political parties, the Murdoch Media and various other powerfull forces would clearly join the "No"-side (and fund it). ZERO CHANCE!!
What tax cuts are you talking about? I'm living in Victoria and every tax has gone up. Maybe HSR might be more of a reality if governments stopped wasting money on useless things like Abo welfare ($40B/yr) & NDIS ($40B/yr). Thanks Labor!
After visiting Australia for the first time this past year (Brisbane, Cairns, and Sydney, specifically), I would love to see some high-speed rail connecting Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney-Gold Coast-Brisbane and possibly up to Cairns and over to Adelaide, too. That's still over half the country you're servicing through just that corridor.
You'd have to add standard gauge to the Queensland rail network from Cairns all the way down to the Goldie. Then you would have to extend the track to the Gold Coast Airport. Then extend into NSW and connect the line up to the old Northern Rivers branch, which has been turned into a rail trail. The NR branch line itself would need work for flood proofing.
@@Authurious85 Can't you just use the East Coast Mainline corridor for most of it? With deviations when required for grade. Make that corridor dual track, can upgrade the original track to HSR if the economics work out in the future, that means with points between the sets of tracks you can share with freight.
@@stephen_1987 You could. You would need to branch to the Gold Coast if you don't plan on using the Beenleigh / GC lines.
I live in Melbourne - would love high speed rail to Sydney, ideally via Canberra as I also travel there. It takes me 2-3 hours on public transport to get to the airport in Melbourne, it's ridiculous (I don't even live that far from the airport, but the lack of cross town services means either going all the way into the city and out again on two trains and two buses or 4-5 bus transfers across town). By the time you add that to the flight time, rail looks very attractive.
We live in hope.
We are stuck in the 1950's in more ways than one.
@@MisterTMH In the 1950s there were several trains a day between Sydney and Melbourne (despite the break in gauge) and trains to just about every town in the country.
If a $20 taxi ride can save you 2 hours, it's worth considering.
@@IndigoIndustrial It's unfortunately $65 to the airport. Don't have much choice but to pay that often though, depending on the flight time.
NSW NEEDS high speed rail.
Sydney CBD -> Woolongong/Newcastle/Orange.
Start there and expand down and up to different states if it's successful.
We need to unlock enormous amounts of amazing coastline as housing developments. Two birds with one stone!
Everybody wants a station in their town but if it is going to make a profit it must just be a tunnel from Sydney to Melbourne via Canberra and Albury.
You are right. It has same reason that most English land law countries. It gives massive power to farmers to block.HSR
As well as being a transport enthusiast I was by profession an English University Law Lecturer specializing in Land Law. All countries, whether their legal system is based on the English Common or on Roman Law, have problems with Nimbies. Probably the worse country for Nimbies is Germany, where Nimbies often resort to endless litigation. Farmers are not the main problem, provided you offer them fair compensation.
@@Fan652w not Nimbies. In most countries Eminent domain rules. No easements are required to run a non stop line that only benefits city people. In Canada you basically have to get permission to cut farms in half from r 500km.
Look at the Chunnel train TVG in France super slow in Kent for almost 40 years.
In New South Wales (Aus), the State Government can designate a project to be of "State Significance", and override local objections. There are some hoops they have to jump through, but it certainly doesn't seem to be much of a problem for them - Metro and light rail, and rezoning for medium/high density (particularly for transit-oriented development - TOD) are more recent things that have occurred. Some local councils have probably been smart enough to at least get some modifications. Like Sydney City Council getting 3rd rail for part of the light rail down George St.
@@BB-xx3dv Thank you. In Britain we use the term compulsory purchase. The landowners are forced to sell, but the there are rules in place to ensure that the farmers or other landowners are adequately compensated. The North American phrase 'Eminent Domain' actually means compulsory purchase/acquisition.
I reckon the first section to be upgraded to HSR should be on the Brisbane-Sydney route as trains currently take about 18hrs to finish that trip, and leave Brisbane at about 4:30am in the summer which is before the suburban trains even start properly
The alignment of that Line was built to suit the speed and power of 50 Class freight engines, a class introduced in 1896. (Heavier types were not allowed on that line until the 59 Class came along in 1953). Hence the numerous curves to ease the gradients wherever possible.
the problem with Australia isn't the general populations view on public investment into rail. its the outrageous politicians who don't want to do anything radical so they can hold onto their jobs for as long as possible
If there is opposition to transmission towers there is no way a surface rail is possible in a democracy and because Japan does not know how to use modern TBM people always look at their huge cost per kilometer.
With an income of $16,000,000,000 p/a both parties will agree for once.
HI Reece living in South East Queensland, I loved your comments about rail gagues and metro which isn't metro, keep up the great work
My view is that the first 300km or so out of Sydney would be the most difficult, and there's likely some decent intermediate gains with smaller projects to straighten out existing lines. A bunch of small line improvements may be more achievable and potentially lay the foundation for HSR. Even if it only brings line speeds of 160 or even 130km/h. I wonder if elevated lines are the go for straightening out routes?
A two tier stopping/express service pattern may be useful too. Especially as overnight passengers are more likely to undertake the full journey. Although I think HSR would be very useful as a catalyst for decentralisation and regional development along the route.
Success breeds success. The V/Line service today is very different to 20 years ago and it's continuing to see improvements on most lines.
It'll just need to be incremental rather than one single mega project. Especially as a mega project is likely to be changed and half arsed with a change of government (see: the NBN).
Much of the Newcastle-Sydney line could have curves eased to meet 130-160km/h at current standards, especially north of Ourimbah there are high speed sections, it's just the individual curves that limit line speeds. There is however, very little appetite for these types of projects, i'm unsure how Victoria got these over the line.
Never would I thought the day RMtransit mentions Aus HSR rail come 🎉. Thank you for the video
1:13 is so true oh my god. spoke to my friend who used to live in FRANCE about how the rail network was back home and he was like "eh, it's alright". like are you serious? i just don't get it at all.
Thanks for covering more Au stuff, I always love your insight. I love the idea of overnight sleepers between Sydney and Melbourne and would certainly use such a service, so much untapped potential.
In 2010, I travelled from Sydney to Byron Bay by train in three steps. I loved... but it was slow. It was not an issue for because I was a French tourist in working holidays!
The existing service used to take an hour less 30 years ago between Melbourne and Sydney. The biggest problem is that they've let a large portion of the line in NSW degrade to a maximum permissible speed of just 80kmh between Goulburn and Cootamundra.
If they maintained the lines to the standard of the 160kmh permitted speed in NSW and 130kmh in Vic, standard service time of 8 hours is achievable.
Improve the alignments in NSW, and you could cut it even further. That's before you invest in new trains or dedicated high speed rail.
As you say, high speed rail doesn't have to be expensive, and the embarrassing reality is that there's massive scope for improvement in our existing network and services.
Whats more embarassing is that in Sydney, where the track is arguably more maintained all the metropolitan speed limits have been reduced to 115km/h (from 160km/h) which means the millions spent on purchasing NIF's & the new regional XPT will operated sub-optimaly where it counts the most.... just my 2 cents. The track sections of (Penrith - Blacktown), (Glenfield- Panania) had decent 13kmh+ sections of 160kmh/. Other areas have similarly sutiable alignments at THE PRESENT, which are capable of exploiting the new rolling stock (ie. Waterfall - Sutherland), (Macarthur-East Hills is capable to 130-160 in many areas)....... Getting this info to the people in power is almost impossible.
nice australia, indonesian video when?
the first HST in the southren hemisphere? hello?
Canberra is an interesting place. It is extremely dispersed. The population is about 400k but the official measure of land area is larger than the 5 boroughs of New York and half the size of Greater London. It might be a bit aspirational as it includes a lot of green space and a few local farms but it reflects the low population density.
In the last few years, we've built a shortish stretch of light rail but it will be many years until a significant proportion of the population has access to a convenient stop. I live in a relatively central location and would still need to drive 15km to the nearest station.
The main "heavy" rail station is about 6km from the cbd. The line extended all the way to the city centre in the 1920s but was a bridge was washed out about 2 years later. The line was dismantled and never rebuilt. Even then, the antiquated line takes about 4 hours to get to Sydney compared to a bus from the cbd that takes about 3.
This is the capital city that houses parliament and government where all the relevant decisions are made.
most of the ACT is national park and Mountains, it may be the official area but most of ACT is undeveloped. It is still pretty spread out though
@@peepeetrain8755 you are correct, but I said Canberra not the ACT. Look it up.
I think it's possible, but you want a train that can travel at around 320 km/h (199 mph) to make the journey between Sydney and Melbourne viable, especially with Canberra in between.
(EDIT: I should add it won't be cheap. Because of the low mountains between Sydney and Melbourne, if you really want high-speed trains between these two cities you will need a *LOT* of very expensive tunnel boring. Ask the Japanese the exorbitant cost of all that tunnel boring building the Hokuriku Shinkansen between Nagano to Toyama.)
Oh, it's such a lovely idea. As a 70 year old who used to catch the Southern Aurora in a SINGLE SLEEPER CABIN, sorry, I hate that they no longer have them, I would use high speed in a flash but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. There's always hope. 😊 Also, there seems to be zero effort made to make the XPT attractive to customers, almost like they want it to fade away.
Thanks, Reece, great video, as always!
Building on some themes in this video, I think we'd all love to get your thoughts on the art of rail alignment reservation... It'd be great to know how to advocate for our governmental leaders to commit to setting aside land for future rail/transit infrastructure, even if it's "too expensive" to start laying track immediately.
Whenever you say that "line four was built after line two, because it was all part of a five-line plan" I always get the impression that we don't do that sort of planning very well in my city... And the same seems to be true for Canadian, Australian, and perhaps also USA high speed rail plans.
Highspeed rail is probably the most logical mode of intercity transport for Australia. Because the way our cities are located, it is pretty much just a single line. With a single line you cold cover the Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Bundaburg, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong, Canberra, Albury and Melbourne. The entire line would also be almost entirely flat as mountains are a few hundred kilometres away from the coast where the line would be and there is a massive gap in the victorian mountains we would have to go through anyway in order to service Canberra.
It could serve basically the entire nation, and with a modern system it could reach extremely high speeds. Our intercity rail sucks and planes suck, we need to implement it and we absolute can. I hope our government one day finally commits to a HSR line, maybe starting from Sydney to Newcastle, or Sydney to Brisbane/Melbourne or something like that.
I once took a train trip from Melbourne to Sydney and it was 11.5 hours long. From 8:00 in the morning to 19:30 in the evening. So most of the day used just for the trip. Technically it could be done within three hours including a stop in Canberra. Imagine what such a connection would do to Canberra. The city would be booming and probably grow by a million residents within a decade.
In Germany the Deutsche Bahn changed its schedule this month. Now there is a high speed (ICE) connection between Hannover and Berlin in each direction every 30 minutes during the day. They announced that in 2026 there will be trains every 30 minutes on all high speed routes. Imagine something like that in Australia. It should be possible.
But then, in Germany the higher population density and the shorter distance between major population centers make the whole idea financial viable.
The issue of financial viability is an important one, as the initial success of the Tokaidō Shinkansen showed. Sure, that project went way over budget, but it was going to make its money back because the demand for train travel between Tokyo and Osaka was already gigantic even before 1964 and the Shinkansen moved all that demand to the Shinkansen.
@@Sacto1654 Connecting two population centers with over 4 million people each should be financially viable. And the low density between them means that construction of a track is much cheaper there.
@@skyscraperfan The big question: how much tunneling will be needed? A possible HSR line between Canberra and Melbourne could get really expensive on a per-kilometer construction basis if a lot of long tunneling is needed in the mountains geographically southwest of Canberra.
@@Sacto1654 In Germany we have a 327 kilometre high speed track which contains 121 kilometres of tunnels. The cost was about 6 billion Euros, but that was over 30 years ago. So I wonder what it would cost today. I was surprised when I learned what the track from Melbourne city centre to Melbourne Airport will cost if it is ever built.
Exactly, and this IMO is the issue with trying to include Canberra. To do so journey-time-efficiently, the line would have to go directly from Wagga to Canberra. This would require tunnelling for around 100km (not necessarily 1 continuous tunnel) out of a 150km leg.
Thanks for another great video on a very relevant issue in Australia. Commenting here because there are no comments on Nebula - PLEASE do a video on Melbourne's incredible tram network, it definitely deserves its own video.
Five words to explain why Australia won’t get High Speed Rail:
Qantas does not want it.
This Pom (Australian slang for an Englishman) laughed out loud when I read this comment. But then I thought 'Will Qantas exist in twenty years time?' The last minute of this video suggests 'No!'
100% they have just about every politicians in there pockets.
Use threats to regional representatives that they will stop services to there area if they go against there interests.
Australia’s really need to start kicking up a fuss over corporate and political corruption
Speaking of intermediate lines, funding has been made available for yet another business case for HSR between Sydney and Newcastle (first proposed in 1980).
It is worth mentioning that Australian cities are slightly further apart than the typically recommended ~600km range for HSR. Sydney to Melbourne is a similar distance as Boston to DC, with only Allentown in between. I still think it would work, and that the approach you mention is the right one as Australian politicians don’t have the political capital to build HSR in one go
Yeah but on the other hand you have Beijing and Shanghai with a distance of more than 1000km cover in less than five hours, so it is feasible to have a competition with air travel (ok in China this is quite easy because airlines have a lot of delays due to airspace restrictions by the military).
@@nicknickbon22China has way more people and higher population density, the Shanghai-Beijing corridor in particular is filled with cities with millions of people that have many times more people than Australia. Because of the low population, low density and the fact that cities in Australia are far apart, high speed rail in Australia is not happening anytime soon
@@nicknickbon22 Yes, it’s definitely a feasible project imo, but the distance is still something worth considering, especially as the airlines can take a direct route over the mountains
@@MarcoAntonio-hw7si it is actually a good advantage, you don’t have to add many stops. And if you think about it, the countries with more hsls are countries where cities are quite spread apart, like France Spain and Italy, while countries like Germany didn’t developed many hsls till the most recent years because you simply have too many cities to cover over a span of hundreds of kilometers.
The real issue holding high speed back is an absolute lack of political will.
Yea, it's expensive. But the TGV services have proven that intercity high speed can be profitable.
The other half of the issue is feature creep. Every time high speed rail is even half-seriously considered, the first thing they do is state that it will serve every town along the current corridor. This basically means the train is effectively no longer high dpeed, as there are so many smaller towns and cities along the way.
It either needs to be set up as a tiered service, with every 2nd train doing very few stops - something like melb-albury-can-syd - and having the following train providing an all-stops service, or completely seperating the high speed from local services, which considering the abysmal track conditions of the current corridor isn't such a bad idea.
It needs to happen. It won't be cheap, but it'll be worth it, and if we can nail melb-syd in under 4 hours, then it's quicker than flying if you account for driving to & from airports, and all the wait time in the airports themselves.
Australia is perfect for high speed rail, it's largely flat, there are few natural barriers and there are only six cities that actually matter.
Which can also help alleviate the housing crisis. Need more housing? Build an entire city around new railway stations along the corridor.
Inland Australia is quite flat. The Great Dividing Range may not rate that highly as one of the Worlds great mountain ranges, but it would still require a lot of tunneling and bridges. And the north coast of NSW (Sydney-Brisbane) has a lot of decent sized rivers and flood plains to cross. It's why the new freight line between Melbourne and Brisbane (Inland Rail - 1,600km) is bypassing Sydney and taking an inland route through New South Wales. And even then, it seems they are having difficulties. Europe wouldn't have the rail system it has now if it only had 5 cities over 1 million (and only 20 in total over 100,000 if we include Albury-Wodonga) on a landmass that is actually bigger than Europe. That's not to say that I am against HSR, although I seriously doubt I will see it in my lifetime. The best thing to do would be get a section built. Sydney-Newcastle could be a possibility. Plenty of engineering problems to solve over not too great a distance between the biggest and second biggest cities in NSW. Or Melbourne to Goulburn - a much greater distance, but a much bigger win.
It’s currently 1:42am in australia, was about to sleep but saw this upload
11:42pm TYVM 😎
Thank you for talking about the climate crisis- I feel like that's something that's somehow left out by a lot of urbanists or transit enthusiasts. We can't afford to rely on car and plane travel in the future, even if it is a little faster. We need to face the problems and figure out real long-term solutions instead of worrying about convenience right now.
Also may I add, the current plans for an Australian high speed rail network start between Newcastle & Sydney, not Sydney and Melbourne. This short link would be a good building block for bigger projects in the future
For some reason or another, I as an American see posts about "progressive" transportation agenda items (public transportation, bike infrastructure, EV infrastructure, etc.) being talked about by Australian politicians on FB all the time. I couldn't help but notice how the amount of people laughing and bashing the ideas in the comments section is overwhelming. I'm used to seeing pushback everywhere, but Australia seems to really be over the top when it comes to having a negative attitude towards these things.
It's because Murdoch (who basically have a monopoly on news in this country are opposed to anything done slightly progressive and support the Liberal (conservative) party) and his opinions are brought down to the public spiting constant hate and aggression towards anything progressive done by the Labor party.
@@samsam21amb iirc Murdoch the devil incarnate owns Sky News and a few other media outlets.
Hi Australian here. Essentially the reason why many of us are cynical about any new public transport project (no matter how good it is) is based on the following reasons: Over-budget, delayed, have numerous teething problems, governments tend to contract to the lowest bidder, primarily service areas that already have connections, airlines have a lot of political power, so does road transport, trains are seen as a 'poor people option,' numerous governments have promised high-speed rail only to back out because of money, Transport worker unions being stubborn, we're a 'revhead society,' to the point where Mad Max is more a documentary than a movie series, in rich suburbs most people don't like the idea of any construction changing the local aesthetic and when you add up different responses everything is a waste of tax payers money.
@@samsam21amb Murdoch, and the fact that we're a nation of knockers.
Great video, cost is also an issue though. A sleeper one way Sydney to Melbourne costs $288. A one way flight costs $74 (I picked Wed Jan 17 to get these prices). A one way sleeper cabin Adelaide to Sydney costs $1205. A one way flight costs $145. I can literally fly Adelaide to Sydney 8 times for the cost of one sleeper cabin
A study should be done to explain why no English-speaking country can build high-speed trains. 😅
This Englishman strongly agrees.
Hope for a better future for rail infrastructure is simply a dream in Australia, nothing more. Better rail operations between Sydney and Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney and other routes will never happen. If anything country rail routes will shrink and be downgraded, as has been done over the years throughout Australia. Governments and politicians are good at selling dreams, appealing to the minds of the gullible and naive, selling hope where there is none. But to dream sometimes, and hope, to escape reality, can be nice - but then you wake up and you are on a busy road or motorway, bumper to bumper, lost in an ocean of motor vehicles.
Sydney once had the largest tram network in the world until the politicians shut it down over night in the early 1960s.
Okay, hear me out. What if, we electrified air travel? What if we just plugged airliners into really REALLY long extension cords that would allow them to fly from Sydney to Melbourne?
yer on to something mate
can you imagine going from 375kph doing a screeching halt right in the Terminal then an announcement comes on *sing dong* "we're hear y'all, GET OFF and thanks for using budget speedy"
It’s not going to happen. You need a 2 way ticket Mel -> Syd to be below $350 AUD to be competitive with airlines. The initial cost of building a high speed line and the lack of people travelling by train would see costs both ways to be completely uncompetitive against airlines.
I think in 30 years it may be feasible with our population increases but air travel being under an hour and costing less than any proposed system makes it difficult to see any possibility of HSR.
So in the meantime I’ve got to take a train that takes 5 hours to go CBR -> SYD at a top speed of 80kph, a route I can drive in 3 hours.
To get to net zero, we need to stop flying domestically... so the cost and speed of flights is irrelevant.
@@jack2453 it’s not though. If people don’t use it. It won’t run. If cost estimates per ticket are to be believed a 2 way ticket MEL -> SYD on a HSR line would be over $1000 compared to $350 flying. No one is looking at net zero and thinking of that over such a huge cost difference.
@@MetisGaming To meet net zero, domestic flights will have to be taken out of the equation by regulation or tax well before a high speed rail line is finished. Airfares will not figure in fhe economics of train v. other modes.
@@MetisGaming There's no way it would be allowed to cost that much, it would be subsidised as required to be competitive with air.
I recently used EuroNight/NightJet service between Poland & Austria and I liked how they mixed & matched coaches based on destination. I left Krakow in a Polish sleeper car coupled with some other Polish coaches as well as Czech, Hungarian & other Eastern European coaches all hauled by a Polish Siemens locomotive. I woke up the next morning in Austria and my coach was now coupled with some Austrian night train coaches pulled by an ÖBB locomotive.
Of course we can have high-speed rail in Australia. But instead, we are wasting taxpayer funds on nuclear submarines that we don't need, in order to "protect" ourselves from our main business partner and the main source of our wealth and economic growth of the last 20 years. For the $362 billion so nonsensically wasted, we could have high-speed rail between Melbourne and Brisbane three times over.
Have to appease the imperial masters...
The issue with Australia is that it costs soooo much more to build anything because the unions hold the government to ransom. Take any build estimate and triple it, that'll be the final cost.
Should import Asian labor to do the job and keep out the CFMEU.
This was a nice video, but i think you have fallen into the same trap a little bit as many proponents. Sydney To Melbourne should NOT be the objective. It is too far to be competitive and as a result its just too big of a project and too big of a risk politically and financially, will take far too long to build leading to lost goodwill. Realistically the best solution is for Sydney and Melbourne to build HSR networks at first that focus on connecting regional centers to the CBDs in under 60 minutes. This would greatly benefit regional areas and the cities and massivley help the house price crisis that these cities are facing.
For Sydney the main focus should be a HSR service that goes Sydney Central > Campbelltown > Goulburn as well as Sydney > Bathurst, Orange.
These projects are far smaller and simpler to acomplish, and can eventually form part of a network once people are adapted to HSR and there is far more goodwill to undertake a megaproject like Sydney to Melbourne.
Personally i don't think the European approach is the right one, its not fast enough, its messy and not being able to speed into the city centre adds an easy hour to any trip. The best solution is to contract Japan to come in and build us an entirely seperate Shinkansen network. Its the best system in the world and Australia needs to focus on working with its regional partners to build up its position in Asia - where its located, not Europe, which is a million miles away.
Sydney-Bowral-Goulburn-Canberra-Albury-Wangaratta-Melbourne as Phase 1.
Sydney-Newcastle-Taree-Port Macquarie-Coffs Harbour-Grafton-Ballina-Gold Coast-Brisbane as Phase 2.
Melbourne-Ballarat-Stawell-Horsham-...somewhere on A8...-Murraybridge-Adelaide as Phase 3.
My kingdom, my kingdom for a decent interstate railway network.
Are you quoting King Charles III? He is a keen environmentalist! And his three biggest kingdoms, Britain (where I live), Australia (where you live), and Canada (where Reece lives) all need much better railways!
@@Fan652w I was going for Shakespeare’s Richard III.
@@Vitally_Trivial I realized that. But I would love to think that the current king of Britain/Australia/Canada had said it!
Which kingdom is yours precisely?
@@baymanaustralia Metroland
The conversation around HSR in Australia is increasingly moving away from linking Sydney and Melbourne (and maybe Brisbane) with a full scale HSR and more towards more local region focused HSR,(or at least services capable of consistently running 160km/h+/Very Fast Trains), designed to better improve the links between the towns immediately surrounding the capitals rather then linking the capitals themselves.
Australia's HSR saga is a clear case of why it's important to remember that you build infrastructure to solve transport problems, as more often then not the HSR case in Australia feels like a transport solution looking for a problem. The HSR proposal typically presented is usually the huge task of linking Melbourne and Sydney, focused on the benefits of such a link against air travel, when in reality the current flight situation isn't really struggling (climate concerns aside). Despite the busy air route, it is usually presented as a solution to future urban development issues, as a means to basically export the demand for housing in the capitals out to the regions. These HSR proposals are typically dependent on changing development patterns across regional Australia. However there are different ways to solve the urban development problems these HSR proposals highlight that have different consequences in comparison to HSR. The important takeaway though is that there are multiple ways Australia can tackle the sort of problems HSR is presented as a solution too, and increasingly it seems that a stronger focus on more basic fundamentals is taking centre stage over the idea of a large HSR system.
To put it as succinctly as possible, the East coast capital linking HSR concept is typically presented as an attempt to export growing development pressures, primarily in housing, out of the capital regions and into rural regions. Essentially building a Melbourne to Sydney HSR is a commitment to promoting huge amounts of urban development in regional Australia instead of in existing urban Australia. This is already a loaded option that isn't inherently good or bad, but it runs into the issue that our capitals aren't exactly over-developed to begin with, and that there are a lot of more local projects that could be done to alleviate the development pressures in our capitals. There are also major consequences to dumping the residential overflows of the capitals on regional Australia. Such a system would be built on the concept of living in rural communities and commuting the the capitals for business, which has risk of further draining business investment out of the rural communities. This is in contrast to the concept of more self-contained communities, where people live and work within a smaller local area. Essentially, the inter-capital HSR would be inflating the populations of regional towns well beyond what would occur otherwise, largely so that an inner city suburb in Melbourne doesn't have to have as many apartment blocks as it otherwise would (we'll come back to this). It's not inherently right or wrong to go down that path. It's a strategic planning decision. Bigger regional towns have their pros, but its not always an easy sell for the established communities.
The sticking point for the capital linking HSR concept is that we do have other options for easing the development demands on our capital regions. The two big ones being a focus on more immediately surrounding areas for better transport links and increased development, and the other being a stronger push to promote a more denser urban environment in the capitals themselves.
We have existing inter-city services that serve the more immediate surrounds of the capital regions, with a lot of scope for improvement. Sydney already has regular rail services between Newcastle, Norwa and Lithgow, representing towns about 150km out in each direction with reasonably consistent established urban area in between them. This represents an urban footprint already very much tied to Sydney with a lot of potential for internal development. A train to Newcastle currently takes about 2 and a half hrs. There is a huge scope for improvement there. Services that could run to the stations already served by the regional network, maintaining an average speed of at least 100km/h would be a game changer for urban development in the boarder Sydney Basin region. You'd still be exporting housing needs to neighbouring towns, but the effect is much more contained.
And then of course there is the option to just properly densify our capitals as is. When all is said and done, for all our housing shortfall drama, we're still extremely low in terms of population density. A lot more could be done to promote denser development within Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane as is (including improvements to the PT networks). Australian cities are increasingly reaching a point where their growth is clashing with the 'Australian dream'. We're at a point where we need to accept as a society that not everyone is going to grow up and live in a detached house with a backyard and pool, and frankly, we aren't handling that super well. Many inner city suburbs in the capitals are still predominantly dethatched single household dwellings. These are areas that are prime for higher density development, and the existing residents typically fight against it to an extreme degree (which is understandable, but not ideal from a bigger picture perspective). In many ways the push for HSR can be perceived as a push to 'spare' these suburbs from that densification. If there is a train to ship in and out the workers from towns 100s of km away then there is no need to build apartments in the leafy inner city suburbs! That is a big part of what HSR proposals in Australia represent, an alternative to the ongoing densification of our capitals.
Basically, a full HSR from Sydney to Melbourne is a huge leap that involves a very firm commitment to how we want the country to look over the next century. In contrast, improving more local rail networks can achieve similar overall outcomes without such firm commitment, while just changing how we manage the existing urban spaces in the capitals would go a long way. Building a 'Very Fast Train' from Sydney to Canberra would be significantly more achievable then a HSR from Sydney to Melbourne and likely have all the same benefits for those living along that corridor. Likewise, getting the Melbourne to Albury service that currently exist running at least 1 tph (as opposed to the current 5ish return services a day) with an average speed above the 120km/h mark (which the current rollingstock is very much capable of), would likely have all the same benefits as HSR for those living along that corridor. Both could also become building blocks for a HSR link between Sydney and Melbourne down the line.
Every time HSR becomes a major talking point in Australia, it is usually in the form of a 1000km+ long system that just isn't going to happen due to the sheer scale and specific-ness of it. It's far too much in one go and doesn't provide us with much of anything we couldn't achieve with smaller, more practical projects. Which is why the conversation has moved increasingly away from having a HSR link between Melbourne and Sydney and more towards getting our existing inter-city links up to a better standard. If we're going to get HSR in Australia it'll take the form of something like Newcastle - Sydney, Melbourne - Geelong etc long before it does Melbourne - Sydney. The existing intra-state networks need to be the backbone of such a system, rather then a focus on linking the capitals.
A lot of good points here. As much as it would be great to see HSR in Australia the key question has to be what problem is it trying to solve and what is the cost vs return of that strategy versus other infrastructure projects.
Public spending is a finite resource and always has an opportunity cost (whether that is a new hospital, school or railway line).
There is a reason so many feasibility studies over the years have concluded the costs of HSR from Sydney to Melbourne are not justified relative to other infrastructure projects.