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Articles on rail transport

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The report criticises the state’s failure to adequately integrate the planning of land use development and transport priorities, but falls into the same trap itself. AAP/Melanie Foster

Australian Infrastructure Plan has some way to go to give our cities what they need

Infrastructure Australia’s latest report is substantial but, critically, it fails to incorporate the transport thinking needed to develop more compact cities that work better for everyone.
Right idea, wrong execution: the Ord River irrigation scheme needed better surrounding infrastructure. isthatdave/Wikimedia Commons

To grow agriculture in Australia, farmers need to think like miners

It’s perhaps fitting that mining magnate Andrew Forrest is in the vanguard of a move to position Australia as a major food supplier to China. Fitting, because if the plan is to work, Australian agriculture…
Stuck in the past: Sydney’s rail system is crying out for investment, but Australian approaches to fares and funding are out of date. Chris Hale

Public transport has been let down by our reluctance to pay for it

Public transport has a problem with money. Campaigners often argue that mass transit is a public good in its own right, and hence should be very cheap or even free. Mainstream media and even many self-proclaimed…
State-owned East Coast train pulling into London King’s Cross. Matt Buck

Renationalise the railways? That’s the last thing we need

So the mountain has rumbled and given forth its usual platitudinous mouse. Labour leader Ed Miliband’s pronouncements confirmed longstanding speculation that his party has plans for rail. In particular…
High-speed trains, such as this one on the Hangzhou-Shanghai route, will soon link China’s entire urban spine from Beijing to Hong Kong. Chris Hale

With a bullet: China’s high-speed rail dream begins to take flight

As a young university student, I first visited Guangzhou during the mid-1990s and found it a gloomy and unsettling place. The third world, undoubtedly. When I went back again in 2010, it was transformed…
Committing to new infrastructure is dangerous when political motivations are the driver. AAP/AAP Image/Alan Porritt)

Trains, planes and automobiles: how our cities get the mix wrong

It’s hard to get past the feeling that we are stuck in 1970s thinking when it comes to planning infrastructure such as airports. The Federal government has finally announced Badgerys Creek in Sydney’s…
The use of rail for freight can save lives. NSW Govt/AAP

Too many loads on our roads when rail is the answer

“Without trucks, Australia stops” is now a fact of modern life. But when all costs are considered, road freight is an expensive way of moving large amounts of freight. And, as shown by ongoing fatal crashes…

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