[cont]
We can support foreign workers too, we'll give food, shelter and passage to and from their countries, but we won't pay them our award wages. We'll pay them their award wages + a premium, and we'll let them keep it all to take home tax free.
The foreigners want opportunities, we'll give them opportunities.
But our nation will benefit.

Helping in this way means we no longer have to offer as much foreign aid.
Another big saving.

We'll start with buying a few containers of cheap chinese chainsaws.
You can get really good quality for $100 a piece now on ebay.
I'm sure we'll get a discount if we buy bulk.

And we'll send out all the inmates, work for the dole people, uni students who didnt take their studies seriously, refugees, immigrants and cheap foreign labour out onto 'the new frontier' with the cheap chinese chainsaws, and we're going to carve a 1km wide path right up the length of the country that will act not just for HSR but for road transport, electricity, internet and water movement if and where needed as well.
It will be the main conduit of our nation for the coming centuries.

With more people here to build this project there'll be more demand on rural farmers and they'll be able to stay afloat.
We'll build an enclosure for the HSR with a roof and solar panels that will power the trains.
The power created will help to power the settlements of workers along the track as it is being built.

We'll be cheap on fuel costs too.
We're going to commandere 'Puffing Billy' for her greatest Australian feat yet, as well as any other old working steam engines.
We'll send people and trains to go and rip up old unused track to build the new temporary track if we have to, keeping costs down.
We're going to sell the wood at top dollar at $25 bucks a bag at all Australian service stations like they already do and power the trains with the left over timber.

[cont]
We'll turn this 1km strip into a giant quarry of materials and you've achived it all on the cheap.
A tiny fraction of what others suggest.
Even saved money in some places.

We can have some of the workers in an unused factory build cheap portable housing units an a commercial scale, (which will be delivered on the trains) and these can be sold off to mining and infrastructure companies after the project is completed, as there will then be many more viable resource projects after its completed.

The reason why these projects aren't achieved is because people like you have no vision.
You're focused on ONLY thinking about how and why it can't be done, rather than thinking about what it takes to ACTUALLY GET IT DONE.
Turn it into a whole national drive that the whole country can get behind and take part in.

How much time, effort and money have you spent trying to stop this, and how much could you have achieved in 'actually doing it' and making it happen if you had the right mindset?

Already spent 20million just on the feasability.
How much could have already been achieved if you hadve had the right mindset and just went ahead and did it?
I'd have had 100 teams of 1000 workers already partially completed the initial work.
Moving the settlements on the backs of the trains as the temporary track extends.

We'll bring back billy tea and damper and camp ovens if thats what it takes and we'll make it a national experience.

Absurdly unaffordable. Taxpayers already subsidise the Overland between Adelaide and Melbourne, with fares costing twice that of flying. The
Adelaide to Darwin rail is struggling to stay afloat. Australians don't do rail. Rail is fine in countries with huge populations in small areas, where they are not as fussed about the environment. At $168 billion, Australia cannot afford such nonsense. We already exist on borrowed money, owing $440 billion and rising. And what about the voters in the rest of Australia? This absurdity arose in the fevered imagination of Bob Brown, was resurrected by Keating and Howard; now our totally inept and desperate PM has latched on to it, with the assistance of the tennis player, John Alexander. What an embarrassing shower our government is.

Hi AC,

As Pete points out, it's very unlikely that HSR will ever carry freight. I don't know the difference in ticket price in countries which have both Snail-Rail and HSR, but I suspect it is dearer for HSR by a significant factor. An inland freight-rail service from Brisbane to Melbourne, yes, but not an HSR carrying freight.

Economists, on their coffee break, have probably already done the analysis on the relationship between no. of stops & rate of decline in 'maximum possible value capture' and found, to no-one's surprise, that the more stops, the slower, and the slower, the less attractive, therefore the less demand, therefore the lower the ticket price, therefore the lower the total income AND the lower any returns from 'value capture', therefore the less viable.

So ideally, an inter-capital HSR with very few stops ? Say, only three or four between the major cities ? With the value of 'value capture' limited to the twenty km either side of each stop ?

It's not rocket science.

Cheers,

Joe

In the late 1960's I attended a guest lecture at university, where the HSR proponents recommended a train from Canberra through Goulbourn to Sydney and on to Newcastle. No airport stops. Only 5 or 6 stations, total.

BHP was a partner... remember then? When that was "The Big Australian" with Australian board and Australian employees... but I digress.

Half of the presentation focussed on the need for very strong legislation, both State and Federal:
Compulsory land acquisition rights.
All land, prior to rezoning, would be first acquired by the Consortium, to which the profits from rezoning would go.
The Consortium would have wide powers to rezone land to rail, housing, industrial and commercial uses. Forget local government and the Land & Environment Court - these fellows would be kings.

Nothing has changed in the past 60 years.

The Australian project simply cannot stand on its own two feet. I expect that the majority of existing HSR lines globally operate profitably, either.

HSR as presented in Australia is essentially a land grab, a developer's dream and a con job. Be very afraid when private capital is mentioned in the same breath as HSR.

Besides which, who needs another whopping great corridor dividing our major communities and slicing through the countryside?

Yes Joe and to correct any misunderstanding; I meant the third busiest in terms of domestic travel, which by the way, was all that kept Qantas afloat during the time when other airlines were dying on the vine for lack of clientele or as a consequence of the GFC or the highest oil prices in living memory.

As for freight we need a very different system that would probably be limited to around 160 klm's PH and serve all our needs for future intercity overnight freight.

The key there being the elimination of all stops(overpasses, underpasses) or slowing curves, some of which can be ameliorated just by engineered cambers, which would allow much of the existing system to have a second life as a freight specific line.

Two kilometre long double decker container cargo trains, would make such a freight specific service viable. And given the elimination of all unnecessary stops or bottle necks, allow the effect of inertia and gravity to work for us!

In Japan which holds the current speed record (around 600 klm's PH for very fast trains, stops can be just 20 klicks apart? Blink and you'll miss it? But not the acceleration or deceleration.

We for our part and in the interest of captured value could spread them out further and just concentrate on good service connections (light rail or monorail) that might even utilize the separation green space between our dual lane commuter highways.

What might kill the idea is electric planes! And that is not as silly as it sounds, given electric rail gun catapults, new batteries, spray on solar panels, (the paint job) brushless high speed, extremely efficient, 10,000+ RPM motors and or, helium lifted airships?

Moreover it is just a matter of time before we see autonomous flying cars (with folding wings) transporting many of us. And high speed NBN, making much of it entirely unnecessary?
Rhrosty.