There seems to be a never-ending stream of railway proposals for the taxpayer to fund. They are rarely economic in our sparsely settled country. Indeed many recently-built railroads in this country were a waste of money.

Three obvious examples are the Alice Springs to Darwin railway, the Inland Rail project, and Canberra's light rail. They are all uneconomic porkbarrel projects. In the past few days the Grattan Institute has also come out and said that the idea of a fast train from Melbourne to Brisbane, via Sydney and Canberra would be ‘ruinously expensive’.

Enough of these pie-in-the-sky proposals.

I strongly believe in the principal of "put your money where your mouth is" this means if it is such a good idea you pay for it. If you do not have the money then get investors, otherwise no deal.
I love trains but when it comes to moving people nothing beats aeroplanes for long distances.
Cargo is always cheaper on ships. Hence revoke all our nonsensical laws on coastal shipping.
Always let the market decide and pay for what is required and that includes the Melbourne airport to the city rail/tram. I bet the government will pick the worst option and it will be shown to be the worst option.

Providing transport should be a service that pays for its costs, profit has no part of it !
If we were to really just focus on profit then millions of people would perish if left to their own merits !
That's why we need policies that focus on sustainable service to the community, a user pays for costs without profit system.
Those who desire profit should be free to do so via demand for their product ! No funding from taxpayers. If you can't sell your product, produce something that sells !
The entertainment industry too should make their money according to their talent ! If you can't entertain people don't ask others to pay for you ! Get another job where you can earn enough !
Welfare must not be a one size fits all ! Don't move to another town unless there's a job waiting for you ! The whole system needs change as well as mentalities must change !

With a Federal Parliamentary & Legislative Council Inquiry into this fiasco, landholders can and have proven everything they say & will continue to fight the lies & media propaganda. ARTC have no business case to support the viability of this project. The mismanagement and shifty greedy deals we find out about are mind boggling. Costly & detrimental last-minute route changes, Council mayors found guilty of misconduct. Deals done and FOI obtained to prove this. Senator Glenn Sterle, Chair of the Parliamentary Inquiry stated in Senate Estimates, ARTC are '$20 Billion short' which makes the cost of Inland Rail $30 Billion+. A 200% cost increase and they haven't really started yet. This rail is set to blow out greater than the NBN. It will never make a profit. Just to name a few, the 2015 business case does not provide any updated costing scope to account for the cost escalations associated with future proofing; increased cost in relation to raising bridges and lowering roads, crossings & replacement of structures not capable of carrying the new axle tonnage. It also never sought to update the scope of works costs established by the 2010 IRAS and so we are seeing massive blow outs in ALL SECTIONS. For example the new Narromine to Burroway section requires additional 8 kms of new track, increased culverting & embankments, much longer bridging & has a longer transit time than the accepted western concept alignment. This is in ADDITION to the $37 million extra for the last-minute change from the 8 year well researched & accepted route West of Narromine to the highly flood prone, high community risk East Narromine alignment. This change will waste well over $300 million of taxpayers money, become very costly to maintain, unnecessarily destroy farms, business, homes and almost certainly place our community at risk of flooding where no flooding has ever occurred before. And that’s just Narromine. Is it any wonder people are now seeking legal advice. There are 10's of thousands of affected landholders. We are not few, we are many.

An excellent personal advertorial for a project that good sense has denied, Everald.

In that vein the repetition of "REPORT THIS AD" three times in your essay is fitting.

Everald, surely your exalted meeting with Prime Minister Eyebrows, his agreement with your "visionary project" and his "green light to open negotiations with appropriate Ministers in his Cabinet"

- is homage enough, in lieu of payment for your good self, Sir Everald.

The simple truth is trains are viable in Europe, Japan, China, India and other high population areas, but not in underpopulated markets like Australia. Unlike those crowded places Australia lacks the fresh water for high population Everald.

Sorry mate, time to move on and accept that your run is done. There will be an inland railway just not as you conceived it, but one that avoids the troubling flood plain by detouring through already publically owned state forest?

Suggest you turn your attention to how we make it and the bullet train an economic proposition via the intended power supply.

Which has to be nuclear to stack up. No, not conventional but rather, walk away safe MSR thorium and as multiple factory-built, mass-produced SMR's we can perfect deploy and then export to an energy saved world! As vastly cheaper than coal, energy! See thorium in four minutes!

Thorium, abundant as lead, also has the advantage of producing the alpha particle, bismuth 213. And could be made available in nuclear medicine clinics the length and breadth of the outback to then encourage a million-plus, annual medical tourists, to visit for their treatment and possible remission from otherwise, death sentence cancer!

Other than that, there's a new space age method of desalinating water which uses, quarter of the energy of traditional desalination and produces as much as 95% potale water and as such. Cost-effective for broad-scale irrigation that then allows the rivers to flow and the aquifers to remain untouched!

Time to grab another even more pressing issue and use your persona to give it oxygen and some public awareness support, but only if you want to see a turbocharged, economic recovery as your real contribution and legacy
Alan B.

Shipping is cheaper! So instead of an inland railway? Why not an inland canal?

But then we know that a modern freight train service is always going to be more cost-effective than road hauled freight, and only practical where rail isn't, mostly the almost unpopulated outback and that's way, way west of the great divide.

An inland canal can serve to move freight and endlessly available seawater, which can then be used inside evaporative glasshouses to grow, intensive labour, crops,

And or, site several dozen nuclear powered desal plants to create cost-effective broad-scale irrigation projects where none are now possible, to take full advantage of the next boom, the food boom. And given it eans a quid allow all of it to pay for itself and financed off-budget, so as the taxpayer is kept out of the loop.

If you don't have enough credible science, to know without a shadow of a doubt just how possible all that is!

Just don't descend to bagging it, because you just don't understand the science or just how simple the engineering actually is.

Nonetheless, the robber baron element who can see their rivers of gold screwed from the community will oppose anything that benefits the community more than them!

And like those who own parking lots in busy airports, will know all the bogus reasons, none of this can be allowed to proceed!

There are trillions in super funds etc., now begging for a home where there are guaranteed reliable income streams! And all of the above could provide that very security and get the CO2 spewing jumbo jets out of the sky as well as diesel-burning, long haul trucks off of our highways. And out further where they will be needed as never before!
Alan B.

A canal from Spencer Gulf to Lake Eyre would definitely be an environmental & economic winner. With the increased evaporation the surrounding country would become a fertile region that could accommodate thousands without crowding. Some rivers would become navigable with a little help from dredging & wetlands could be created.
Add to that a Mono rail system that can be enlarged as the demand & economy permit.
All this could be done by enhancing the natural environment instead of flogging it to death !
Simply start with the canal & everything else will fall into place ! Do away with expensive & polluting & fauna destroying highways !
Get the National Service gangs out there to get moving !

Monorails are an excellent idea if built on a continuous loop and as on-demand gondolas that allow social distancing by virtue of their design components and on-demand weight-related service paradigm. And the only real space they'd need would be sidewalks or centre space down existing highways.

The Spencer Gulf to Lake Eyrie would be stage one with stage two from just south of Broome to the lake, So as to allow flood gates on a dual-lane system to move both freight and flushing tidal flows, to move water and shipping in either direction and for free with just the height of northern tides supplying all the motive force.

Rolling wheels down either side with blades and regenerative braking, supply all the power needed to operate the lock gates and would prevent intrusion into the side, perhaps assisted by electric steering motors, fore and aft.

New space-age desal plants, could supply cost-effective potable water for millions of acres Food, fibre, fruit and nuts, coffee, tea and cocoa, whatever and as the prevailing climate conditions suit. For every one new job created by these projects, even more, will follow as service industry employment

And if the new farms and service industries are rolled out, as assisted co-ops, ensure all the money earned and taxes paid stay here, with only debt servicing taking say, 10%? half interest half capital repayment and repaid from a pool all enterprise contributes 15% into? And any surplus, divided equally when all the creation debt is drawn down?

The power source for the desal, MSR thorium, SMR! Nothing else stacks as cost-effective or as safe!
Alan B.

Now now Alan B.

Your childlike wonderment with grand techno-schemes has turned into science fiction again.

From untrialled on a practical business basis Thorium reactors you regurgitate the much discussed and discredited Bradfield Scheme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradfield_Scheme

Bradfield's is/was a inland irrigation project that was designed to irrigate and drought-proof much of the western Queensland interior, as well as large areas of South Australia. It required large pipes, tunnels, pumps and dams to divert water from tropical/monsoonal northern Australia to the western side of the Great Dividing Range and eventually flowing south west to Lake Eyre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradfield_Scheme#Objections

Bradfield's scheme and others have been criticised because they are not practical. Including high capital and ongoing running costs which would make the project uneconomical.

BUT MAINLY:

The extreme evaporation rate in the interior is another negative determinant. No clear evidence has been provided that the amount of water supplied will exceed the EVAPORATION RATE. The reduction in river discharge to the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon may diminish coastal fisheries by reducing the supply of terrestrial organic matter to the coastal and estuarine environment.

In 1947, W.H.R. Nimmo, conducted a critical review of the scheme. He proved that Bradfield's estimates of the amount of water available from the easterly flowing rivers were about two and half times greater than it actually was. The error was attributed to the methodology used to calculate flow estimates was based on GERMAN rivers where the average temperature was much less than in northern Australia.

Soviet Russia tried and failed in their own river diversion scheme, with 1,000s dead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal

plantagenet,
The Bradfield scheme's technical side was so far ahead of conventional thinking that it was literally left behind to where it now is old technology.
The principal however, remains the same & that is to make the interior fertile enough for human settlements & food production.
With modern technology that should be child's play but as Alan B keeps reminding us of, the mentality of those in power isn't anywhere near the available technology to realise the enormous potential of such a scheme !

The reduction in river discharge to the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon may diminish coastal fisheries by reducing the supply of terrestrial organic matter to the coastal and estuarine environment.
plantagenet,
What is diminishing the fish stocks is over-fishing, full stop ! What is killing the coral is pollution from direct, unfiltered & accelerated run-off from the towns & cities & mass tourism !
Run-off was never a problem when rainwater absorbed into the ground but since sealing of large areas now prevents this absorption all the polluting ingredients flow directly onto the Reef.
Such run-off should be harnessed, stored in sediment lagoons & then could be either pumped or tank transported west beyond the Great Dividing range where it could simply be directed into storage ponds or wells for small communities & recharging the acquifers.
A 600mm pipe could easily be placed below the tracks of a Mono Rail. Such a system could be expanded in any direction as long as it falls West beyond the GDR. It would not be something that gets built & be done with it. It'd be a decades long on-going project, all our generation needs to do is start it !

Hi Alan B. and individual

Cogitate on this - you wouldbe engineers with taxpayers' money http://youtu.be/WzgcSDcKrpg

_______________________________________

And after that look in the mirror and you will see your furry water diversion image - carefully http://youtu.be/BpNxWxSHDoA

wouldbe engineers with taxpayers' money
plantagenet,
If it's for the benefit of all then taxpayers money is the moral way to fund it !