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The Forum > Article Comments > This is no silver bullet (train) > Comments

This is no silver bullet (train) : Comments

By Ross Elliott, published 8/4/2019

A proposed High Speed Rail connecting Melbourne with Sydney and Brisbane is getting favourable press, but what are the hurdles?

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I wonder if this idea should be generalised into the idea of no silver bullets generally. As global oil depletes the aviation industry will do it hard as will long distance road use and farming. Australia imported $34bn of liquid fuels last year. Some fancy that electric planes charged by solar panels will whisk us about. Or we patiently queue to charge up our electric buses by the roadside every 200km on long journeys. If that doesn't materialise what are the alternatives?

A plausible scenario is that we travel less, eat a lot of spuds grown locally and generally regress to a village economy. This may the future that awaits today's children.
Posted by Taswegian, Monday, 8 April 2019 7:51:54 AM
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It's heartening to read a reasoned argument against a popular cargo-cult wish.
Of course, many people would like the option of HSR if they lived in areas which would benefit from its inflexible rigidity of route choice, but I think that the issue is the needs difference between moving large numbers of people quickly, and large amounts of freight more slowly.
Like many other realms of modern technical evolution, new transportation methods are emerging, and in the not too distant future we may be placing far less reliance on cars, aircraft, ships and trains to move about.
Let's not rush into something which just might become as outdated as quickly as the NBN.
Posted by Ponder, Monday, 8 April 2019 9:50:58 AM
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The hurdles? Professional naysayers who would see self-interest harmed by the decentralisation very rapid rail would create.

As for being profitable?

Well, the proposed route is along the third busiest domestic air route in the world and given the competition, this would bring to our domestic airline and haulage companies?

There's a huge cohort out there doing their very best to delay the inevitable and as they do so. Ensure the rollout costs double every decade these and similar nation-building projects are endlessly delayed! And not a question of if, but rather, when!

As for whether or not it's affordable? We have a 2.5 trillion super fund!

Infrastructure Australia would build it, but for government controls and prohibitions!?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 8 April 2019 10:55:03 AM
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Without any expert knowledge I have always doubted the VFT feasibility.
Air fares are so cheap it is almost a given.
As a occasional train traveler from Sydney to Melbourne I can see an
alternative project. The Fast Enough Rail.
It requires a considerable amount of work in relaying track perway
especially between Campbelltown and Goulburn.
These mainlines were built using horses and scoops. With modern earth
moving equipment the track could be straightened and high speed trains,
of which we already have them, could increase the speed to about 200km/hr.
The time to Melbourne could be halved and the towns between
given a better service.
It would also require building track to a higher standard than here.
The result would be a Sydney to Melbourne time only double that by air.
It takes me about four hours door to door. The fast enough train
would be about six or seven hours plus an hour getting to Central.
The XPTs in NSW are the same trains as the 125s in the UK.125 is MPH.

Of course the intention of the greens is to produce co2 regulations
or co2 taxes that will close airlines.
Posted by Bazz, Monday, 8 April 2019 11:09:40 AM
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Thank you, Ross Elliott. An excellent article.

Those who promote or support concepts like this continue to ignore reality. Whether such a vehicle is used to transport passengers or freight over long distances with sparse populations, there is an unavoidable requirement to stop - frequently and probably for lengthy periods - to load and unload.

Since we're talking about three letter acronyms (TLAs), the stopping process will turn HSRs or VFTs into JATs (just another train).

How many more brain dead projects like the NBN and NDIS and now the HSR can the Australian taxpayer be expected to carry into the distant future? Is there any chance - ANY - that such a project would be completed on budget and on schedule? History tells us not, so cost-benefit analysis falls somewhere between extremely difficult and out of the question.

Bazz's "fast enough train" is a neat idea but lacks definition and fails examination: fast enough for whom? Well, fast enough for Bazz, apparently, but he's not the market. What is "fast enough" and compared to what?
Posted by calwest, Monday, 8 April 2019 12:11:56 PM
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Ross Elliott clearly knows very little about high speed rail. And I see calmest shares his greatest misconception.

Once you understand that not every train has to stop at every station, you'll see the regional benefits are much higher.
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 8 April 2019 12:55:27 PM
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As cheap as airfares are, those countries that have embraced fast trains. Demonstrate two things, train travel express between regional centres is both cheaper and faster. And safer?

What they can do offshore (anywhere else but here) can't be one here, because we're just too dumb to do it!

After all, one needs a functional brain to read and comprehend relevant facts and figures! But one that'll still rattle in a thimble to bag/destroy our viable affordable future! And those amenities that would enhance and assist it!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 8 April 2019 2:34:12 PM
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Aiden,

You miss the point entirely with your inane comment. As usual.

Here's one of Ross Elliott's key points: "HSR would take two or three hours and there may only be a few services a day in each direction."

And there is not a large enough population in that part of Australia to make extra trips commercially viable.

So tell us, Aiden, how many of those two or three (?) services will be able to bypass stations? To what effect on (a) revenue and (b) customer service and (c) efficiency?

And why haven't you dealt with the idiocy of similar disastrous grand gestures from the Left - NBN, pink batts, BER, free computers, NDIS? Billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars spent on crap. And you want to spend more because you've learned nothing. Nit-picking is rarely effective argument.

Still rolling out the NDIS and it's already lining up as a candidate for a royal commission. Doesn't even operate a customer call centre.
Posted by calwest, Monday, 8 April 2019 3:09:44 PM
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Alan B.,

You have no evidence whatsoever that trains would be "both cheaper and faster". None.

And how many hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies do you consider "viable and affordable", since no business cased has been made? None.
Posted by calwest, Monday, 8 April 2019 3:27:59 PM
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Talk about pie in the sky.

Trillions to acquire the right of way & even more to build the thing. Even if it could then carry thousands a day, the fare would have to be in the thousands of dollars each way to return the cost of construction, let alone the running costs, & then a profit.

Hell, even the crazy Californians have finally pulled the pin on their high speed rail project. The whole thing just couldn't justify the huge expenditure.

It is about time all public transport was required to turn a profit. Why should the hundreds of thousands with no public transport available have to subsidise those who have it, or want it.
Posted by Hasbeen, Monday, 8 April 2019 6:05:40 PM
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calwest,
The "two or three services a day in each direction" claim is based on another misunderstanding: that all trains would need to be very high capacity. That would be like trying to start an airline with only A380s!

Where the demand is there, railways can supply the capacity, and we could certainly get double decker high speed trains 400m long if we needed to. But we won't start out with those even on the Sydney to Melbourne expresses, let alone the country services where initial demand will be a lot lower.

Sydney to Melbourne is one of the world's busiest air routes, and Ross greatly underestimates high speed rail's ability to attract passengers who would otherwise fly. He seems not to understand that getting to the airport is usually more inconvenient than getting to the CBD. And he makes the ludicrous claim that "Each mode would have its own boarding and alighting procedures which would add equally to the trip time" oblivious to the fact that boarding and alighting are much quicker on trains because they have a lot more doors!

>And there is not a large enough population in that part of Australia to make extra trips commercially viable.
That's chicken and egg. Once the high speed rail comes, the population will follow.

(tbc)
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 8 April 2019 6:41:15 PM
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calwest (continued)

>And why haven't you dealt with the idiocy of similar disastrous grand gestures from the Left - NBN,
The Left aren't to blame there. The NBN was a good investment for the nation until the idiotic Libs decided to waste billions of dollars on FTTN. Even their superficially sensible policy of using existing HFC cables turned out to be a huge waste of money because they paid far too much for them.

>pink batts,
Easy to criticise with hindsight, but solar panels were expensive in those days, and improving energy efficiency was the best value thing we could do to reduce our carbon footprint.

>BER,
Excellent value in WA. Reasonable value in SA, Queensland and Tasmania.
It's only in NSW and Victoria, where overseeing the project was contracted out to the private sector, that the huge waste occurred. But still people like you fail to learn the lesson: if you want public money to be spent efficiently you need capable government; minimal government only brings false economies.

>free computers,
What free computers are you referring to? There were private education providers offering those as a signup bonus, but IIRC that was the result of a Howard government policy.

>NDIS?
Greatly improving the standard of living of disabled people and enabling them to be more productive. Money well spent!
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 8 April 2019 6:43:42 PM
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Aidan,

I apologise for misspelling your name. My error.

Nevertheless, your excuses for Labor policy amount to wilful blindness.

There really is not much point in debating you.

Nevertheless:
>pink batts,
Easy to criticise with hindsight, but solar panels were expensive in those days, and improving energy efficiency was the best value thing we could do to reduce our carbon footprint.

Solar panels are still expensive and are of little use without storage, requiring highly flammable lithium batteries: $15,000 gets you a barely adequate system.

Carbon dioxide is 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere by volume. Human-produced carbon dioxide is 3 per cent of that. Australia produces 1.3 per cent of that 3 per cent. And electricity generation is about one third of that: 0.000002 per cent. Any reduction of our "carbon footprint" is just another meaningless gesture by posturing leftists. At vast expense, of course.

>NDIS?
Greatly improving the standard of living of disabled people and enabling them to be more productive. Money well spent!

Please let us all know how you measure and validate "greatly improving" and in what ways they become "more productive". All of them? To what extent?

>And why haven't you dealt with the idiocy of similar disastrous grand gestures from the Left - NBN...

The NBN was entirely Stephen Conroy's baby. I don't argue that the changes introduced by Turnbull were of any value. The whole project should have been scrapped and left to private enterprise, as it has been in other countries.

>...if you want public money to be spent efficiently you need capable government; minimal government only brings false economies.

I want public money to be spent efficiently. Trouble is, you leave public spending to public service clerks with no conception of commercial reality and you end up with disaster after disaster, as in each of these examples and many others, including the BER.

Your commitment to public service clerks is touching, but unrealistic.
Posted by calwest, Monday, 8 April 2019 7:49:13 PM
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Aidan,

You prove my point - and Hasbeen's, too. If the trains are not "high capacity" they don't turn a profit or the fares become prohibitively expensive. Which means they will be the grossly expensive white elephant some of us predict. Just like Labor's other hare-brained projects.

First question: how many people in, say, Parkes, need to travel to Sydney or Melbourne on a regular basis? Very few, I'd suggest. Indeed, the entire population along the proposed route - ignoring Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane - is unlikely to produce a viable passenger base.

So what is your solution: will the trains run with a couple of carriages? Or are a small number of larger trains going to skip stations? They're both your ideas and seem to be mutually contradictory.

The Sydney to Melbourne air route, faster and cheaper than HSR, is - wait for it - Sydney to Melbourne. Doesn't much help those on the ground in between, so there is no equivalency with HSR and leaves country residents with no genuine alternatives.

The total population of smaller towns and cities along the route is likely to be insufficient to turn a profit for HSR. "Profit" - you know, return on investment and some spare cash to pay off the trillions construction and land purchase would cost. And the more frequently the HSR stops, the less "HS" it becomes, leaving passengers with less time for whatever reason they are travelling to or from the metro centres.

One of life's mysteries is why the Left are so attracted to grand gestures, but haven't figured out how to calculate commercial viability. To the Left, profit is a dirty word. That leads them to the only other option: force taxpayers to squander trillions of dollars via subsidies or handouts.

Sorry that I missed responding to your earlier question about schools computers. This is what I had in mind: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/335554/rudd_defends_one_pc_per_student_policy/
Posted by calwest, Tuesday, 9 April 2019 4:36:13 PM
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calwest,
Solar panels are much cheaper than they were a decade ago, and the grid means home storage isn't needed. Eventually solar panels will be so ubiquitous, and batteries so cheap, that home storage will become commonplace, but at the moment our use of renewables is so low that we hardly need storage at all.

>Carbon dioxide is 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere by volume.
Currently 0.041%. Its preindustrial concentration was 0.028%, and it's fair to attribute 100% of this 46% rise to humans because over this time nature has been a net absorber of CO2, so your 3% figure is at best misleading.

>Australia produces 1.3 per cent of that
But Australia's inaction has been used by over countries to justify their own inaction, so doing something about it is far from a "meaningless gesture".

Obviously we should minimise the expense of our carbon footprint reduction. That means concentrating on what's easiest and cheapest with current technology. Now that's electricity generation, but ten years ago it was efficiency improvements.

As for the NDIS, do your own research! I am not involved, so if you want to know how it's going and how statistics are collected, it's best to ask those who are. What I do know is that it's designed to address a very serious problem that has gone unfixed for far too long.

With the NBN, I accept that scrapping it and leaving it all to private enterprise would've been better than Turnbull's NBN. But had the NBN been done properly, the result would have been better still.

(tbc)
Posted by Aidan, Tuesday, 9 April 2019 5:05:30 PM
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calwest (continued)
>Trouble is, you leave public spending to public service clerks with no conception of commercial reality and
>you end up with disaster after disaster, as in each of these examples and many others, including the BER.

Firstly, I'm not suggesting putting public service CLERKS in charge of the spending; I'm suggesting putting public service ENGINEERS in charge.
Secondly, an understanding of commercial reality should be part of the job. But do you have any actual evidence that the public service don't understand commercial reality?
Thirdly, considering that the BER was only a disaster in the two states where its implementation was outsourced to the private sector, your argument is illogical.
Posted by Aidan, Tuesday, 9 April 2019 5:06:09 PM
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calwest,
The railway would compete with aviation for Sydney to Melbourne traffic in two ways: on price and on convenience. Melbourne Airport is a long way from the CBD, its bus connections are limited and parking is very expensive. Some people would find it more convenient to fly, but most would not.

As for what trains would be used, I'd expect there to be three kinds:
• High capacity trains (probably based on a French design) for nonstop Sydney to Melbourne services
• Lightweight, lower capacity trains (probably based on a Japanese design) for services making intermediate stops
• A few trains based on a Spanish design for services to rural NSW utilising upgraded existing lines for part of the way

People who need to visit Sydney and Melbourne on a regular basis are unlikely to choose to live in country towns at the moment. That's something that HSR will change.

The idiotic notion that "To the Left, profit is a dirty word" clearly came from someone on the right who was too lazy to understand the Left's real objectives. There's certainly nothing inherently wrong with making a profit - indeed it's essential for business. But the public benefit more when the gains are passed on to customers instead. And very high profits may be an indication of market failure.

High speed rail is a long term investment. It may take years to turn a profit, though ultimately it will turn a very large profit. But there's a lot more to economic benefits than profits. The main benefits to the nation are not the profit it makes, but the productivity gain it enables others to make.
Posted by Aidan, Wednesday, 10 April 2019 3:19:13 AM
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