If the merits of HSR can truly be qualified then here is how it could be funded, but it would take a paradigm shift in fiscal policy for this to occur.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-04-12/mary-mellor-s-debt-or-democracy-why-not-quantitative-easing-for-people

Cheers Geoff

Hi Rhrosty

So can we combine your vision of nuclear power and trains mate?

Maybe small nuclear reactors in the train engines up front?

Using Uranium or your Thorium idea?

Or an electric track or overhead wires fed by small town reactors every 30 kms?

Please inspect this Barents Observer, 2011, article: http://barentsobserver.com/en/sections/society/russia-designs-nuclear-train which reports:

"Russia Designs Nuclear Train"

"...The engine of the train will be a small fast breeder reactor,

The design is made by Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation, Rosatom.

...The estimated cost of construction is still unclear, and nothing is yet said about the safety of such train.

This is not the first time the idea of a nuclear powered train is presented. Back in 1956,...The Ministry said such locomotives could be used in the High North and remote areas of Siberia,

Another feature with the proposed nuclear powered train is that it can easily be converted to a mobile nuclear power plant, supplying energy to remote areas and industrial sites."

Sounds feasible. Also Canberra's unpopular Light Rail (Tram) Project would be a goer if it was nuclear.

Pete
April 1. 2016

Rhosty,

"We for our part have large tracts of relatively cheap rural land along any proposed route, and if a wide enough corridor is resumed at fair market value and with large scale urban rezoning in play along that resumed corridor, extracted value could pay for the thing."

What's the point of the wide corridor etc., if the trains don't stop?
Or do you envisage lots of urban stops for the high speed trains?

No I don't envisage lots of stops just four or five?

And these places would be out in what is now whoop whoop.

And as the construction moved on rezoned and allowed to become whole new towns, replete with their own industrial estates and CBD's!

This would probably mean stops could be limited to around 200 klm's apart.

And become the nucleus of a passenger transport hubs, serviced by planned light rail and monorail.

If you drive, it's stressful, whereas train travel can be turned into productive time, with the use of onboard Wi-fi, laptops, tablets, mobile phone and assisted video conferencing etc. Allowing all manner of business activities and or study to be undertaken or completed.

And given the indians are successful building a (cheaper than coal) 300 megawatt thorium reactor, I dare say and given our reserves, we could build as many as it would take to power the whole system and the new towns/cities. And for less than half the cost of current gold plated power delivery! And huge incentive to populate the new cities and de-stress the old ones!

We'd see massive movement from our overcrowded cities, and with it, a return to affordable housing.

And let's not forget the economic stimulus such a big project would mean.

Currently we are trying to stack and pack our large and already massively overcrowded capital cities, with tinned people.

Sure we can make them taller all while those developers against decentralization and anything that might assist it and housing affordability, rub their hands together all the way to the bank!?

Ditto airline executives and shareholders posting here with all the outlandish negatives the human imagination can construct!
Rhrosty.

I remember a movie cartoon from decades ago, of a rabbit or bird or maybe Roadrunner in a prison cell; he opens the door and sees no guards around, so he goes back in and gets a saw to cut a door in the wall, and escapes.

Rhosty, there are actually large towns and cities out there, say Albury, Wagga, Bathurst (or Goulburn), Dubbo, Armidale, Toowoomba, which would be the freight nodes on an internal rail system. High-paying passengers ? Maybe not so much.

But what the hell, if we're in debt, what's a few tens of billions more ? It would be so cool to have a very high-speed train whizzing across the plains, maybe up and over Mt Panorama. Our kids could pay for it.

Joe

It is too late to read all this now, but here is my contribution to the HST debate.
First I do not think we will have the money to do the job. We have a
much more important project ahead of us. The construction of a base
load system that can supply electricity for many overcast days.

What we can afford is the "Fast Enough Train" project.
When the present railways were built the earth moving machinery was
horses and scoops. When you travel to Melbourne by train between
Sydney and Wagga you spend a lot of the journey watching the other end of the train.
The tight curves restrict the speed of the train to very low speeds.
Additionally the seat of your pants tell you about the construction standard of the permway.

What is needed is to relay the track to go through the hills instead
of going around every little hill. Then the track should be relaid
to UK main line standards. The difference in the smoothness of the
travel enable still further increase in speed.

Those of you who have travelled on the UK's mainlines will know what
I am on about. Speeds around 200km/hr + are common.
As far as the rolling stock is concerned we already have them.
The XPT are in fact the UK's 125s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWVuRwtjGek

The first train in the link is in fact the XPT alias 125.