Bullet trains are back on the agenda. But a new analysis shows that rather than helping cut emissions, such a project would drive them up for at least 24 years.
Federal Labor and the party’s current leader, Anthony Albanese, have been advocating high-speed rail since they were last in government.
Lukas Coch/AAP
The federal opposition’s idea for a bullet train from Melbourne to Brisbane is not a good use of a generation’s worth of infrastructure spending. It won’t even work as an economic stimulus.
While governments focus on how to ease congestion and make affordable housing more accessible for workers in our biggest cities, fast rail could be a mixed blessing for regional cities.
VLocity trains run at speeds of up to 160km/h on four Victorian regional lines.
Scott Martin
More than half a century after the first high-speed trains began running overseas, Australia is still waiting for the long-promised service. Right now, faster rail is a better short-term prospect.
Most of Australia’s population is concentrated in big cities like Sydney and Melbourne.
from shutterstock.com
Planners have long tried to determine the ideal city size, and ideas have evolved with changing circumstances. But a good city depends more on the way it’s managed than on how many people it holds.
Victoria has led the way in upgrading intercity rail services with medium-speed VLocity trains that have a cruising speed of 160km/h.
Joe Castro/AAP
High-speed rail for Australia has been on the drawing boards since the mid-1980s but has come to nothing. Three states are developing medium-speed rail with federal funding, but NSW is missing out.
The private consortium CLARA is proposing a high speed rail network between Sydney and Melbourne paid for by value capture but it still relies on the benefits outweighing the costs.
Connecting the city and regions, long-distance commuting is a significant factor in regional centres.
Peter Mackey/flickr
High-speed rail is now a well-established technology and Australia needs it, as long as the project ticks all the boxes needed to deliver both private and public benefits.
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LUONG THAI LINH/EPA
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Professsor in Transport and Supply Chain Management and Deputy Director, Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS) at the University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney