(Sydney) - High-speed rail too costly, study finds (27 September 2010)

Jacob Saulwick
September 28, 2010

A high-speed rail line linking Sydney and Melbourne is not viable, the federal Department of Transport has told the government, claiming it is too expensive and will not attract enough passengers.

But the government should start locking up land now on which high-speed rail can be built in the future, it says.

''Australian cities are not predisposed to high-speed train linkages,'' the department told the Transport Minister, Anthony Albanese, in March.

The brief on the fast train was requested by the Seven Network under freedom of information laws.

But the department refused to release the document, saying it was completed in a short time-frame and would distort public debate on whether a high-speed rail line was possible.

It was only after Mr Albanese intervened that the document - a 19-page study of international fast rail lines and their costs - was released.

Mr Albanese said the public had a right to the information and, if it was to be convinced about the idea of a very fast train, needed to be aware of the challenges involved.

''We know that there's massive public support for high-speed rail,'' Mr Albanese said.

During the election campaign the government matched a Greens promise to spend $10 million on a study into a fast train linking Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. This study will still go ahead.

The department's brief, however, says that viable high-speed rail lines need about 6 million passengers a year to be viable when construction costs are low. More typically, they need about 12 to 20 million passengers to be able to recover their costs.

And while Sydney and Melbourne have large populations, an average speed of 250 km/h still demands a journey of three hours or more - which ''is the upper limit for the train to be competitive with airlines.''

''Other cities are more competitively distanced from each other but do not have the passenger and population base to warrant a new line,'' the brief says. For instance, fast trains linking Sydney with Newcastle and Canberra would have trip times well under two hours, but would be ''highly unviable'' due to their construction costs.

The briefing cites international construction costs for very fast trains rising from $16 million per kilometre on a rail link in Spain to $110 million per kilometre for the Channel Tunnel rail link into London. More densely populated areas produce higher costs, due to the price of buying land.

Until the numbers added up for a fast train, the department said the government could try and limit the future costs of fast trains by locking up land.

''Safeguarding such corridors now would deliver significant dividends at a time in the future when a high-speed rail line might be viable.''

In refusing to release the document, the Department of Transport told the Seven Network it was an ''incomplete picture unlikely to make a valuable contribution to public debate.

''Indeed, its nature is such that release would likely lead to confusion and unnecessary debate about issues that are not settled within government,'' the department said

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• sydney
• nsw
• railway
• train
• New South Wales

[jamesarongray]

The actual service wont make a great deal of money for the operator but the economic benifit over all for the nation will be tremendous.

[MrChowTheTroll]

Costly..... hahaha...... the money will be payed back easily, dude to toursim.... and guess what, vietinam is planning a high speed rail, which i find funny

[SuperUSmilitary]

@tri400 LMAO ha ha ha!! I think they wont go ahead until it becomes the busiest air route and leaves some miles between it and 2nd place.

[cambjones]

Crazy Australia falls so far behind the rest of the world. High Speed Rail is 90% less pollutant that air travel as Eurostar has documented on the London-Paris route, it bumps GDP by 2.7% for cities connected on the route as London School of Economics found in a 2010 paper. It also decimates air travels share of the route, High Speed Rail has >80% share London to Paris, >60% Barcelona to Madrid... I wonder if Qantas and Virgin have had any influence on this process....

[GayBoyRunning]

geezes i think our government wants stay back in the 50's .... -__-

[tri400]

Not viable on the 4th busiest air route in the world (MEL-SYD)? maybe they wanna wait for it to become the 2nd busiest air route, before they start building it! :p