Beoz

I seriously don't get why successive governments keep persisting with this.

Fast train Melbourne to Sydney: New proposal by CLARA released

OK I get the idea of expanding inland cities, that would be nice, I get the idea of the privateers funding the project, happy days, but its a piece of piss to jump on a plane between Sydney and Melbourne, Sydney and Albury, Melbourne and Canberra, etc.

The country needs medium speed trains between its major hubs and nearby minor hubs. Where the population lives, where there is already infrastructure built, where there are jobs. The current slow train approach is a farce and leaves people with no alternative but to drive.

The above proposal is competing with air travel. Who is going to jump on a train from Sydney to Melbourne for what 5 hours, when you can be door to door in 5 or less already, for what is likely to be a cheaper price.

GarryP

Well, a few points :

1. This isn't governments, this a private consortium. Which means you should like it and I have problems.
2. High speed really needs to be HIGH speed, Hyperloop type, not a few hundred kmh. Not sure what they are talking, but if its not transonic at least, its too slow.
3. The whole point of this is not the journey, its the linear city (a concept I had about a decade back). Lots of space to grow, but still not far in time from everything else.

Amazulu

Yes, a ridiculous idea but if it gives me and my colleagues a spot on the thick, creamy gravy train of contract work that it will create then I also say choo choo!

Taxpayer funded gravy trains are the best

All aboard!

Beoz

It is private as I mentioned and Garry repeated

Still someone has to design and build it so yep .... more jobs.

Beoz

That's the point. Let private go nuts, but not practical in its proposition.

GarryP

The main reason it's not practical is because it would need to be done by governments.

The whole idea is that the price of the line would be paid for by 'value capture' from the land around the line (those new satellite cities). However, if you are a farmer and own x thousand acres of land where they want to build one of their cities, why are you going to let it go for $1000 per lot when the consortium are going to make $150,000 per lot? Answer, you're not unless much more of the value goes your way, which makes the concept not viable.

The only way you can go 'value capture funding' is if you can use laws to steal the land from it's current owner - which means it needs to be governments doing it for the public's interest (and the libtards would scream anyway).

Smarter move would be to get that $200bn number down (which I think would make a lot of sense), and to view it in vision rather than financial terms.

Amazulu

Something like HSR cannot be built effectively by the private sector - governments have to get involved and at the very least, guarantee the funding

The value capture model that they are talking about can work, but only in densely populated areas with high demand for the service provided. It's the way the metro is funded in Hong Kong for instance. As Garry says, the owners in this case would want to maximise their return (who wouldn't?), making the land too expensive

Ticket prices would have to the price of business-class flights in order to even come close to making a profit

A non-starter unfortunately - as the gravy on offer would be hot, thick and creamy

ozzieeagle

I think the futurologists are barking up the wrong tree with this one. I would have been right on this bandwagon uptil 2 years ago. Now I'm not convinced. I think they're not realising the potential of Autonomous vehicles.... I can see them coupling and decoupling and heading up purpose built roads at 300k's plus sometime in the distant future.... Thing is they are door to door not city to city.

We could be heading up the obsolete technology path with this concept.