Train

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GUEST OBSERVATION
More than half a century has passed since high-speed rail (HSR) effectively began operating, in Japan in 1964, and it has been mooted for Australia since 1984. I estimate that the cost of all HSR studies by the private and public sectors in Australia exceeds $125 million, in today’s dollars. But the federal government is now less interested in high-speed rail (now defined as electric trains operating on steel rails at maximum speeds of above 250km per hour), and instead favours “faster rail” or medium-speed rail.
The 2017 federal budget provided $20 billion over the next 10 years for rail, with more allocated in the 2018 budget. It is now time for Australia to commit to medium-speed rail (trains operating on new or existing tracks at speeds of between 160km and 250km/h).
Indeed, three states have made progress in developing trains at 160km/h, with Victoria leading the way. New South Wales has failed to keep up with these states.
What happened to high-speed rail in Australia?
The first high-speed rail system dates back to 1964 when the Tokaido Shinkansen started operating between Tokyo and Osaka. At first, it took four hours to travel 515 kilometres; now some trains take two-and-a-half hours. Japan’s system has an impeccable safety record and the network extends for over 3,000km.
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218530/original/file-20180511-34006-1a32kgw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="">
An image prepared in 1984 by the late Phil Belbin of what the Very Fast Train south of Canberra could look like. Courtesy of Railway Digest (ARHS/NSW) June 2004, Author provided
France was next in 1981 with its TGV trains. In 1984, high-speed rail was first proposed for Australia. This was the CSIRO’s Very Fast Train proposal to link Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne using TGV trains.
At all levels, government was not supportive. The private sector, after a series of studies, found it was viable and could work with different taxation arrangements. This was not forthcoming and work stopped in 1991.
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218529/original/file-20180511-34027-1ouout.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="">
An image from the 1990s of a SpeedRail train at Central Station. Courtesy of Railway Digest (ARHS/NSW), Author provided
A more modest proposal, called Speedrail, to connect Sydney and Canberra was proposed in the mid-1990s. With some federal government encouragement, it was studied, with detailed design. It was costed at about $4.5 billion, with finance arranged for some $3.5 billion. The Howard government would not fund the balance and commissioned yet another HSR study.
More studies have followed. One study in 2013 put a price tag of $23 billion on a Sydney-Canberra line involving much tunnelling in Sydney. This was part of a 1,750km high-speed rail corridor linking Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. The total estimated cost was A$114 billion.
Despite many studies recommending the need to identify and protect a corridor for a future high-speed rail network, government has failed to reserve any land corridors (with the exception of part of a future Melbourne outer metropolitan ring road).
What about the alternatives?
Many countries do not have high-speed rail, but have medium-speed rail (MSR) instead. These countries include Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and Canada.
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218535/original/file-20180511-34015-vv508a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218535/original/file-20180511-34015-vv508a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt=""></a>
Queensland’s Tilt Train intercity service has been running for nearly 20 years. <a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:City_of_Rockhampton_train_(Sunshine_railway_station,_Brisbane).jpg">QRtrains/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a>
Three Australian states have trains operating at 160km/h. These are Queensland, starting in 1998 with its Electric Tilt Train service between Brisbane and Rockhampton, Victoria, with its Regional Fast Rail project using V/Locity diesel multiple units, and Western Australia, with the Prospector train.
Victoria’s service originated in 1999 when the then Labor opposition promised a new deal for regional Victoria, which included new trains and upgraded tracks on four lines to Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong and Gippsland. The ALP won government that year. By 2006 the track upgrades were delivered along with new trains made in Victoria.
People liked the faster trains. Patronage went up by more than 15% in each of the first three years of operation. More trains were ordered and further major track upgrades followed.
Victoria was assisted by $3 billion in federal funding for a Regional Rail Link program. This was to provide new intercity tracks in Melbourne so suburban trains did not slow down regional trains.
Due to good ongoing planning attracting more federal funding, further track upgrades are under way. The 2017 Victorian Infrastructure Plan outlines priorities and funding for projects over the next five years, with longer-term policy directions.
So what’s going on in NSW?
Questions are now being asked as to why Victoria and WA are doing do well with federal funding for passenger rail at the expense of NSW.
The rail situation in Australia’s most populated state is not good for its regions. By far the most NSW government attention and funding has gone into the Greater Sydney region.
Between the 2011 and the 2016 Censuses, Greater Sydney’s population (including Gosford) grew some 10% from 4.39 to 4.82 million. Rail patronage on the Sydney and intercity network had even stronger growth of some 15% from 2011 to 2016.
To try to cope with this increasing demand for rail a new Metro section is due to be completed in 2019. Light rail is also being introduced in Sydney, Newcastle and Parramatta.
Sydney continues to have serious road traffic problems, which are unlikely to be solved by WestConnex Stages 1 and 2 that are now under construction. The proposed Stage 3 received over 7,000 objections, including a sensible alternative proposal by the City of Sydney, but the NSW government has approved Stage 3 and even more motorways. This is despite overseas experience for cities the size of Sydney pointing to the best solution being a much-improved rail system with road congestion pricing.
Regional NSW is also growing in population, albeit not as quickly as Sydney. In spring 2017, Transport for NSW released a draft regional servicea and infrastructure plan not for the next five years, but out to 2056. However, these plans were very vague as to what may be delivered in the next five or even ten years.
The plans also omitted earlier Infrastructure NSW goals for Sydney-Gosford and Sydney-Wollongong trains to take one hours (instead of one-and-a-half) and Sydney-Newcastle trains to take two hours. In addition, there are calls for more and faster trains linking to each of Goulburn/Canberra and the Central West of NSW.
Clearly, NSW is facing major transport challenges to overcome rail infrastructure backlogs and meet the needs of a growing population.
The state government is getting new intercity electric trains and has committed to buying new regional trains. But it’s yet to commit to track upgrades to help the new trains go faster than the present slow ones.
The NSW ALP opposition is also yet to present detailed policies of how it would meet the transport challenges in Sydney and in regional NSW.
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95854/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1">The people of NSW must hope the state budget due June 19 and the opposition leader’s reply will address these issues.
Philip Laird, Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Wollongong
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/lets-get-moving-with-the-affordable-medium-speed-alternatives-to-the-old-dream-of-high-speed-rail-95854" target="_blank">original article</a>.
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j.ballantyne1990-6AQqhLzZaK

Let's get moving with the affordable alternatives to the old dream of high-speed rail

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GUEST OBSERVER
The front-page headlines generated this week by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s promise to link Australia’s major eastern cities by fast rail may be seen by many voters as yet another major infrastructure pledge made hurriedly in the run-up to a federal election that is likely to evaporate just as quickly afterwards.
Fast intercity rail certainly has form when it comes to being put on the table only to be whipped away again. Linking Australia’s two biggest cities by rail would be in the same nation-building category as the Snowy Mountains Scheme, yet we have been talking about it for decades without actually doing it.
How different might things be now if Australia had built the Very Fast Train (VFT), first proposed in 1984 by the then CSIRO chairman, Paul Wild. The plan (on which I worked) attracted the support of leading companies of the day, including BHP and Elders IXL, but was bogged down in taxation issues and eventually scrapped in 1991.
If it had gone ahead, we would have had an infrastructure capable of shaping the new century for Australia’s densely populated east coast, instead of still waiting for it today.
<h2>The route</h2>
The first choice was a coastal route running from Melbourne through the Latrobe Valley (and what a boost that would have been to a region that even then was struggling with its over-reliance on brown coal), the Gippsland lakes (with a branch line to the mountain resorts), the southern New South Wales coastal towns and into Sydney via Wollongong (a rust-belt city at that time that would also have benefited from this investment).
This was later replaced by an inland route identified by the CSIRO and the VFT consortium, after a series of localised environmental protests. Canberra became one of the designated stations on the inland route and the rest is history – there has never been a return to the original route, despite the fact that more than 90 percent of Australians live near the coast.
<h4><a href="/images/2016/04/19/image-20160413-18122-w2r2vx.png" target="_blank">Click to enlarge</a></h4>
<img src="/images/2016/04/19/image-20160413-18122-w2r2vx.png" alt="">
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Fast rail route proposed in 1987, after being diverted inland via Canberra. <a class="source" href="https://www.repositoryofideas.com/resources/VFT-route-map-from-June-1987-pre-feasibility-report.pdf" target="_blank">VFT consortium</a>, Author provided
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<h2>The funding</h2>
Perhaps unsurprisingly, finance was the original project’s downfall. It became a private-sector joint venture in 1987 but collapsed in 1991 when the federal government decided against easing the tax burden on the project’s initial major outlays in return for higher tax overall.
Australian governments have struggled ever since to find ways for public-private partnerships to fund big projects. Until now, perhaps.
This time around, Turnbull has touted the prospect of “value capture”: the financial benefit that the private sector could gain from the boost to urban development around stations – as seen, for example, near Japan’s Shinkansen (bullet train) stations.
In tax increment financing (TIF) schemes, which are more common in the United States for financing infrastructure projects, value capture by governments via increased property rates and taxes has provided a basis for public sector funding. But this has not proved popular in Australia.
<h2>The challenge</h2>
We have even more urban and regional challenges than we did three decades ago. Sydney and Melbourne are each facing rapid population growth and will need to avoid the damaging consequences of urban sprawl and car dependence. Both cities will need to redirect growth inwards, to brownfield and greyfield sites.
Another consideration is how to disperse the population into regional cities, so these areas can also benefit from improved economic activity. Fast rail can potentially help regional cities become part of a “mega-metropolitan” economic region.
For example, a 350 km per hour service connecting Melbourne with Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Warragul would transform these provincial centres into the equivalent of Melbourne’s middle-ring suburbs, where 30-minute commutes are the norm.
<h4><a href="/images/2016/04/19/image-20160413-15868-hprsf4.png" target="_blank">Click to enlarge</a></h4>
<img src="/images/2016/04/19/image-20160413-15868-hprsf4.png" alt="">
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Travel times in minutes from Melbourne. CSIRO/Australia State of the Environment Report, 1997, Author provided
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This route would also be the beginning of an inter-capital fast rail route, from Melbourne to Canberra (possibly via Shepparton), and then running through various population centres, via Badgery’s Creek (Sydney’s proposed second international airport) to the Sydney CBD.
<h2>The carbon case… and a bump in the track</h2>
Almost 8 million passengers flew between Melbourne and Sydney in 2015, making this route the world’s fourth busiest (ahead of Beijing-Shanghai). The carbon savings from a Melbourne-Sydney fast rail link therefore represent a major potential reduction in greenhouse emissions, especially if it is powered significantly by renewable energy.
This obviously wasn’t part of the business case back in the 1980s. But in 2016 it is surely a candidate for the federal government’s Emissions Reduction Fund.
The government’s proposed value capture funding model has a sting in the tail. Privately held land near the rail link and its stations will need to be rezoned and handed to private firms to build facilities (and surrounding developments) that they would then own and operate.
Land acquisition, even with compensation at market value, is generally not welcome in Australian cities. This is just one example of what makes transformational urban change so hard. But this kind of transformation will be critical to the creation of 21st-century cities that are productive, competitive, sustainable and liveable.
 
Peter Newton is research professor in Sustainable Urbanism, Swinburne University of Technology and author for The Conversation. He can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/peter-newton-2278" target="_blank">here</a>.
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