Sydney to Melbourne High Speed Rail Investigation | Australian HSR
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- Опубликовано: 12 окт 2024
- Australians have been talking about building high speed rail for decades with no results. The grand idea is to build HSR from Brisbane to Melbourne, which would be roughly 1000 miles or 1600km! Right now they're talking about MAYBE building 120km of that from Sydney to Newcastle. However, a very compelling city pair within the concept is Sydney to Melbourne. Together those two metros account for 40% of the entire Australian national population. Would it make sense, though? What would a route look like and what would it look like? Find out inside! This video also has the dual purpose of wishing a happy birthday to Ben from Melbourne. If you'd like a birthday video for yourself or someone else in 2025, keep an eye out for one of my videos in December, which will have instructions on how to get that chance.
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Chapters:
0:00 Hey, Its Your Old Pal Lucid Stew Again
0:05 Introduction
0:25 The Metros
3:08 Guiding Principles & Technology
3:36 Melbourne
5:51 Northern Victoria
7:38 Wodonga-Albury
8:56 Southern NSW
10:35 Canberra
12:27 Between Canberra and Sydney
13:21 Sydney Suburbs
14:43 Sydney
16:05 Comparison to Flying
16:44 Cost
17:34 Thanks and Up Next
17:54 See You On That Big, Beautiful Freeway!
Topics:
High Speed Rail
HSR
Monty Python
Australia
Birthday
Melbourne
Sydney
Canberra
Victoria
Australian Capital Territory
New South Wales
Flinders Street Station
Southern Cross Station
Sydney Central Station
Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport
Melbourne Airport
Canberra Airport
Alstom Avelia
Broadmeadows Station
Wodonga
Albury
Albury Railway Station
Western Sydney International Airport
Newcastle
I like this new concept of going to other countries to see if HSR will work other there. Also happy birthday Ben enjoy your 30th birthday 🎂🥳
The Australian government has dedicated $500 million for planning, land purchases and early works for an eventual line from Melbourne to Brisbane.
They should have just told Lucid Stew it was their birthday.
Thank you! I wonder if Australia will finally go through with it this time.
Lucid, you dog! I'm so happy to see you branch out and make some dough while at it. Haha! Keep it coming!
$500 million is just lip service.
It's kind of insane they're focusing on Syd-Newcastle as a first link for HSR, the geography makes that so much harder than going south from Sydney.
I think the logic there is about the existing Sydney Newcastle rail corridor being busier than the Sydney Canberra one, but that's just a function of the quality of service (fully electrified, dozens of trains a day vs like 3 diesels).
There is no direction into or out of Sydney that is easier. All directions have significant geographical issues to deal with.
Happy Birthday, Ben 🎉🎈!
Cool special! Nice to feature another country!
I'm actually working on a video on the history of HSR proposals myself, and yours is pretty good imo. The only notes I'd have is that it's unlikely they'd do a Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne Service, the plans even back in the 80s with the Bi-Centennial HSR and the Very Fast Train were for most trains to go straight from Sydney-Melbourne, with most Canberra trains being Sydney-to Canberra, and only a handful of Melbourne-Canberra services. The latter because it's just not that common for people to do that journey. But Sydney-Canberra is the most popular countrylink service.
Also one thing that would add onto the cost, apart from the gauge (you'd need to do almost entirely new track within Victoria since the standard gauge line atm is crap, and the standard gauge ends at Southern Cross) is electrification. Sydney and Melbourne both use the antiquated 1.5kv DC OHLE system, which just isn't suited to HSR operations. Most new proposals want to use 25kv AC like in Europe, or in parts of the US. But dual-mode units aren't too difficult nowadays. Also getting into Sydney, the electrified portions are quite busy, so potentially if you wanted to operate more services than what countrylink does atm (2x Melbourne XPTs and 3x Canberra Xplorers per day per direction), you'd need to add more tracks. Some track slots are opening up on the Illawarra between Central and Sydenham due to the metro, and that portion could be sextuplicated if need (they planned on doing in the 40s, but didn't finish it), and from Wolli creek to Revesby its also quad track, but from there it's only dual-track. But again, they have planned to quad track it at some point.
As hinted at in the video, I didn't care to get too far into the weeds with the finer details of the existing systems in Melbourne and Sydney. In the spirit of government, I elected to throw money at the problem instead. :D
@@LucidStew Yh, that works. But getting into the weeds can be fun sometimes :)
THANKYOU! I asked you for this like 6 months ago and you said maybe one day, that wonderful sunday has arrived! Looking forward to this one.
Just a minor point, but Australia uses left hand running, the opposite of your animations. 🙃
The current Australian government plan is to do Sydney to Newcastle as the first step of Melbourne to Brisbane via Canberra & Sydney. Preliminary information suggests that the Sydney end will be somewhere around Parramatta rather than Central, and that the Newcastle end would be around Cameron Park (an industrial area served by slow, congested roads and nowhere near public transport), and that almost all of the route would be in tunnel.
Good stuff. I recommend reading Fastrack Australia's report on how the Syd-Mel HSR can be built in stages via upgrades of the existing line.
It's basically how the French and Koreans built their high speed railways - keep existing railway hubs and stations, while building newer and straighter HSR corridors outside major cities.
Nice Surprise. Many Happy Returns to Ben in Melbourne from Ben in Saratoga NY. Canada has two great pairs to study, Edmonton-Calgary and the Detroit-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec corridor. $$$ for Rancho-Vegas. Thanks! :D
Thank you! I still need to get through SEHSR before going international beyond this one-off birthday greeting/vacation slideshow.
I'm sure he'll be quite happy with the pronunciation of Melbourne.
Oh, we learned how not to say it our first day in-country thanks to a hotel clerk in Sydney who could not let Mel-born stand.
I would love to see a video on what a TGV-AVE connection between Barcelona and Montpellier would look like
I was very confused for a second because I'm used to Barcelona Spain and Montpellier Vermont, and those shouldn't be linked by HSR. After asking google maps where the original Montpellier was; i definitely agree that its an interesting corridor/link to investigate.
Thank you for this video. It would take the Australian government 8 years to come up with something comparable, so well done
Happy birthday Ben!! 🎉🎂🥳
Melbourne-Sydney video before a Toronto-Montreal video 😮
Such a great video discussing a quite unique proposal, I truly support this if it went ahead. I did want to mention one point in regard to travel time in other aspects compared to only being on a plane vs a train.
The airport at Melbourne only has semi-frequent bus connections to the city and alternative modes of transport built in the future (i.e rail infrastructure) could be better to speed up travel time to the city centre since it currently takes around half an hour from airport to CBD. Also, airports take a bit of time to arrive, get through security, get to gates and any other small things needing to be done whereas train travel is a bit easier. Simply arriving at an allocated HSR station, having your ticket checked and boarding your seat makes it much more convenient then arriving 2-3 hrs early to get on a flight. I do want to add that current Melbourne to Sydney trains do have some delays (not by a major bit but still some extra times to the journey) so while it's not guaranteed, it could easily still occur.
With that in mind, I think that all services besides the Melbourne to Sydney (Non-Express) would either be quicker (or close the flight time) and much more convenient for commuters, especially for those who may not be comfortable flying or who live really far our from Kingsford Smith Airport (i.e Glenfield and further west). Just my take here but definitely open to hearing what other people think.
46B USD looks very doable. Kind of surprised HSR is very competitive to airplanes at 1000km...
That's about where flying really starts pulling ahead of a truly fast train(~150mph avg). Some of it is down to extra hassle at the airport. Some of it is down to many large airports being far from city centers.
When the train nolonger can compete on pure travel time, its probably best to look into other forms of competition like cost and comfort.
The US used to have an private train called the auto train that had 2 main selling points. The had auto carrier wagons so you could bring _your_ car with you. And since the target audience were vactioners going to Florida it was a party train with lots of alcohol. It was originally very popular.
The key takeaway is if you can make the trainride itself significantly more enjoyable than flying or driving then that becomes a selling point even if you aren't the fastest option. (I personally think Amtrak's long distance route to rural towns should have this car carrier option, at a premium of course, but it solves the last mile problem for towns that will never have transit in their current state.)
@@jasonreed7522 this is how HSR became popular in Europe and Japan - having speeds as fast as planes while having more freedom and leg room than airplanes. Plus the trains bring you straight to and from downtown.
happy birthday Ben
Great video mate!
Considering the suburban rail loop in Melbourne will almost cost more at estimated 200 billion for just the eastern and northern sides, I would actually be in favour of scrapping the SRL for this if I had the choice.
Only problems on the Melbourne end: SG track would need to be laid from SCS to FSS in the CBD, additionally, the existing goods like from Albion to Jacana is SG while the main/through suburban to Broadmeadows is a steep BG track trough the bank in Glenroy. also, the route via Albion takes you through airport west which is the same route as the proposed Airport rail link.
Great video mate! It really made me consider how viable a HSR actually is in Australia.
I looked at several options into Melbourne and they're all kind of mediocre, aside from a long tunnel and underground station. Same with Sydney, really. If they're willing to spend $20 billion on Sydney-Newcastle, maybe billions in new tunnels for Sydney and Melbourne isn't so far fetched. I do think, though, that the $45 billion - $67 billion estimate is a little far-fetched if it doesn't tend toward the budget-side.
Based on a quick google standard gauge is about 24cm narrower than broad gauge, so its theoretically possible to just lay the stand tracks instead the broad tracks.
You can either share a rail and add 1 rail 24cm inside the outer rail, or not share a rail and add 2 rails 12cm in from the outer rails.
Its not ideal, but it's theoretically possible as a budget option. Atleast compared to expanding the width of the corridor or ripping put the BG and putting SG back in its place.
Another option is making a train that can change its gauge. I think a couple dual gauge trains exist in the world, but the extra complexity is probably better off avoided.
Happy birthday Ben
This was really interesting, would love to see the main Canada corridor (Toronto to Montreal and beyond on both ends)!
It is first on my list of U.S. HSR Corridor connectors after the Corridors series is done. Probably early next year.
@@LucidStew i look forwards to it. Quebec - Windsor is probably the closest HSR corridor to me that has a chance of existing at true HSR standards in my life. (I'm at the northern edge of NY)
Its also a no-brainer for Canada when about half of their population is along that perfectly straight corridor. (Well straight like the US northeast corridor is straight.) Last i heard the Canadian government was aiming for high frequency and not high speed on that corridor though.
@@jasonreed7522 Canada is currently in the RFP stage and is requiring all participants to submit both high speed and high frequency proposals. HSR in Canada will happen eventually, but it will probably take a very long time.
@@cmmartti that's promising, atleast they are asking for HSR proposals in addition to HFR. And unfortunately government is almost always glacially slow.
I love this, and have been doing my own "studies" on this corridor for some time. I'm going to add my comments here purely for discussion, not to shoot down Lucid at all. In short I think this project is vital to our future here in the land down under.
1. Melbourne to Broadmeadows.
- I'd be starting at Southern Cross since that's what makes sense. I loved the idea of starting at Flinders Street though, but trust me the interior doesn't match the beauty of the exterior.
- Due to the Metro Trains Melbourne services running on the Craigieburn line, you wont be running at 150km/h.
- You can count on a journey time of 25min SCS-BMS.
- The easiest solution for the track gauge issue is to convert the MTM Craigieburn line to dual gauge. I would also install a SG junction at Jacarna, allowing trains to come and go from all 3 platforms at BMS. Depending on service frequency, I would consider extending the DG all the way to Seymour, and possibly beyond to Shepparton.
2. Broadmeadows to Seymour
- I think there is too much effort switch between the railway and freeway ROW's - Aussie's don't really like construction work.
- The easier solution is to increase the curve radii along the existing railway ROW, which would only take minor land acquisitions at worst to accomplish.
- I think a stop in Seymour is warranted as it would connect a lot of communities in the local area to the HSR corridor. Also I would be having a medium speed train parallel the HSR stopping at all the little towns along the way as well. A stop at Seymour would allow for changing between these services, along with changing between heading north to Shepparton, or North-East to Wangaratta and Albury.
3. Seymour to Albury
- I keep changing my mind on whether the HSR should go through Shepparton or Wangaratta. Which ever one misses out would get a MSR link instead, in my mind. As this video followed the North-East line, I'll make my comments based on that.
- I agree the HSR would need to bypass Euroa, although doing so you would likely run into cultural heritage issues. Perhaps the best option here, although it would mean slowing down, is utilising the freeway ROW.
- My paralleling MSR would be stopping at all the little towns through here, all that V/Line currently serves.
- It is worth a stop in either Benalla or Wangaratta, but not both. Wangaratta is the bigger town so it would likely be the choice. Doing so would connect lots of little places not directly along the corridor. It also serves as a bus transfer for going to the Victorian Alps, something especially valuable during the snow season.
- Again I would look at increasing curve radii around Chiltern, rather than an entirely new ROW. You would likely be slowing down to 80km/h to utilise the existing tracks around Wodonga, before stopping at Albury. In a practical sense you aren't losing much time by doing any of this.
- Without doing the sums properly, I'd probably looking at closer to 2hrs Melbourne to Albury, but saving a lot of cost and headache in construction.
4. Albury to Canberra
- Skipping Wagga Wagga is absolutely insane.
- You can use the existing ROW for the entire run - it is (broad strokes) all rated to 160km/h currently, and could easily support more than that even before looking at increasing curve radii.
- North of Wagga Wagga, you are looking at greenfields either way - following the existing stations or cutting directly to Canberra. I think going straight to Canberra is the best solution.
- The only question is do you stop in Gundagai? I think not, but again you would be linking in more communities from the foothills.
- Since I would be going direct to Canberra, places like Cootamundra, Harden, and Yass would all be linked up by a separate MSR line - something that is desperately needed regardless as an improvement to the 1880's railway used at the moment.
5. Canberra to Glenfield
- Again, skipping Goulburn is insane.
- I would also be stopping at Moss Vale.
- Both these link in a lot of off-corridor communities via road transfer.
- All other towns missed can be served by MSR.
- Other than that, I like the bluefields solution you have shown here.
- It's a very smart idea to stop at Glenfield instead of Campbelltown. If only the NSW state government would extend the Leppington line to the new airport, instead of insisting on weird Metro (driverless) ideas.
6. Glenfield to Sydney
- I'd use the existing tracks along the East Hills line, as you have done.
- Top speeds along here are 160km/h at the moment. I would have to look into if it's possible to increase these, but you'd likely be following another train anyway.
- Initially the system can be up and running this way, but I would investigate having new tunnels bored from either Wolli Creek or Erskenville to Central/Sydney Terminal. Just not sure the cost/benefit would be there.
Very cool! Maybe someday you could check out a brazilian high speed corridor between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro?
I would favour double decker trains probably built by Alstom & having the service operated by V/Line which is arguably the best regional rail operator in Australia. And make this use an integrated fare system (NSW & Vic using the same card, but not same fare prices).
I love the music 🎶! Stellar Wind. Twice! I use this particular song in most of my RUclips videos! 😃👍
Yeah, its a great backing track, and long, too.
I know you've already covered Denver in one video, but I'd love to see a Pueblo to Fort Collins or Cheyenne video, as this corridor is currently slated to get a new rail service (to be be voted on in 2026) and it might be interesting to see what it would be like if this was an HSR project.
the timing of him saying he would just wing the pronunciations for this video only right after miss-pronouncing Craigieburn is just so ironic. (it's pronounced kray-gee-burn by the way)
I was pretty sure I'd said it wrong and it was a good time to address that possibility. Some other places are probably acceptable based on my visit there, but even then its nearly impossible to say some of those words right without practicing a fake accent for a month. For instance Melbourne. We were informed before we even got there that we were saying it wrong(Mel-born). Mel-burn was suggested, but of course locals say it more like Melb-un.
Fantastic hearing your pronunciations. You fuck up Wagga and then almost nail Murrumbidgee. It's really counter intuitive for Australians how hard our accent can be.
wag-uh? Even more difficult is trying to say things the Australian way as a non-Australian without doing one's best Crocodile Dundee impersonation.
You should do Salt Lake City to Las Vegas as a potential Brightline West extension
Looking at the map app, I see current travel times: car = 5:44 via I-15 at 420 miles (nice); train = 8:39 following basically the same route, at least from the map view; plane = 1:20 direct (11-15/day). No idea how many people make that trip by each of the modes currently, but if it's enough to sustain 11-15 direct flights/day, that's more people than I would have thought would make that trip on the regular, seeing as how no two cities are as far apart culturally, per stereotype anyway, than those two. The train would have to go 4x as fast as cars do now in order to compete with planes on time, which seems like a stretch.
It struck me that, if we're going to do that, we might as well continue it from SLC to Denver along the I-80 and I-25 corridors. Vegas to Denver currently: car: 11 hours via I-15 and I-70; train = 16:25 following basically the same route; plane = 1:50 direct (19-25/day). There's no way a train could compete with planes from Vegas to Denver, either via SLC or the current rail route (going via SLC on HSR would probably be faster), and I stopped before checking SLC to Denver separately, but I'm sure there's plenty of traffic between those cities.
And then I thought, what the hell, why not go from Denver south to ABQ, and then loop back around to Vegas via Flagstaff, just for completeness? (Sorry Phoenix but there's no good line between ABQ and Phoenix, while Flagstaff is right along the way; a Flagstaff-Phoenix-Tucson route looks like a good way for those folks to get onto the big 2000-mile HSR loop.)
I mean, if we're going to dream, might as well dream big ...
@@dwc1964 there are currently no trains from SLC to LV. Amtrak doesn't operate any routes that way
@@twentysixbit I was just going by what the map app said
I think it should also stop at Wangaratta ,as it’s the gateway to the wine region and ski fields , potentially bringing in millions in revenue for the region’s tourism industry which, covers a large area. It would create more jobs for the region and help the area thrive .
Happy birthday ben
A high speed route was touted back in the 1980s heading East from Flinders St. through Bairnsdale then through to Canberra from the south then Sydney. Rolling stock proposed then was also the new technology tilting stock. Also broad and and standard gauge trains in Australia run on the left side track of double track.
Cool video, maybe a video on Portugal HSR link with Spain next
You could extended from Sydney to Brisbane. Also get Melbourne to Adelaide. Could extend from Brisbane to Cairns.
The metro population vs city population ratio is pretty wild for Melbourne and Sydney
The City of Melbourne and the City of Sydney only cover the central business district of each city and its surrounding areas. Australian cities have lots of local government areas, and there's no distinction between the "city" and the "suburbs". Brisbane is the only large Australian city where a single local government area covers a large part of the city, and even then people consider the surrounding local government areas to be part of the city as well.
The metros are made up of lots of teeny tiny towns, including the main one, which is quite dense. All together they form a pretty typical large city metro landscape.
when I see it, I will believe it. it's been talk about for over 40 years
Australia episode lessgooo!!!
Given the length of the route, it’d be interesting to see what the travel times and costs would look like for a Sydney-Melbourne maglev, using the L0 Series “rolling stock” for the proposed Chuo Shinkansen. Times would be a lot more competitive, but the cost would likely be many times higher.
I'd roughly estimate a TRUE high speed route, getting rid of the local blending, at roughly $100B AUD and 2 hours end to end on a super express. Maglev, in an EXTRMELY general sense, is about 30% more expensive and 30% faster than that standard of HSR.
Youve got your train running on the right hand rails, when our trains, like our cars, drive on the left
I don't think you would actually need reversing seats or some kind of back up maneuver in Canberra. It's quite common (in Germany at least) to just reverse high speed trains at major train stations.
Down Under We Go!
As usual, what happens in Australia happens at Canada... this same kind of mental gymnastics trying to do the same between Toronto and Montreal.
Is it an anglosphere thing?
You're not even going to mention Wollongong, a city between Canberra and Sydney with a much bigger population than Canberra??
The Sea Cliff Bridge pic wasn't enough?
Your the GOAT stew
bah
You're*
The problem with plane is the wait time and passing through security, with a train you just hop on and go
Can you do a video on Pittsburgh to Philadelphia at MAX speed
I think its fair enough, but however services should be split up
- Canberra to Melbourne (probs twice or 3 times a day, stopping all stations)
- Sydney to Canberra (once per hour, stopping all stations. I would add an station in golburn and somewhere in southern highlands (would have to be outside the city, but have shuttle buses meeting each service)
- Sydney to Melbourne all stations (every half hourly, stopping at ctown or glenfield, some southern highlands city can be met outside with shuttle buses, golburn, some city between golburn and albury, maybe seymour, but outside met with shuttle buses and then melbourne)
- Sydney to Melbourne express (only start at central, albury and then southern cross/filders if possable). That type of service will be hourly between peak and weekends and half hourly during peak.
So there will be 3-4 services per hour from lets say 5am till 8pm from syd to melbs (yeah there will be some trains after 8pm till let say 10pm but less frequent and will be all stoppers)
Sure won't win against the flights in term of raw time, but when your dealing with qantass or jetstar which they can stuff up your day on a whim and security, then i think train is worth is even if is take me 5-6 hours to get from syd to melb on a all stopper....
Standard gauge is from Melbourne Southern Cross Station not Flinders Street station being the beginning of inter-state standard gauge on a dedicated standard gauge right of way to/from Footscray (a major metro, regional and long distance rail interchange) to Victoria/NSW boarder towns of Wadgona/Albury to Sydney Central Station. It would be cheaper to build a 'higher' speed (150-220 km/h) services using Alstom Avelia range of tilting, 'high' speed single or double deck train sets.
I paid to have Flinders partially converted to standard gauge.
@@LucidStew - Okay. I am not sure why Flinders Street as a starting point, as there is no room between Flinders Street Station and Southern Cross for a dedicated set of standard gauge tracks. Ever since the Southern Cross Station opened in 1859, the station has been terminal station for inter-state train services.
Build a Brisbane to Melbourne HSR. Australia is not going away, rail will likely be around for a few more centuries, populations are increasing rapidly, air travel is hard to switch to renewable energy, the sooner HSR is built the better to gain the benefits and construction is not getting going to get any cheaper. Do it properly though with well designed high speed track and dedicated lines in the major cities to avoid congestion and to free up capacity.
Brilliant don’t forget Adelaide to Melbourne
Canada needs HSR between Toronto and Montreal.
Imo the hsr should stop.at Shepparton & Wagga Wagga, both are decenrly sized regional.hubs as well as possibly a deviation via Wollongong & also stop as Mittangong/Goulburn. It should feeds regional cities, not just metros IMO
Canberra is the only winner here. At 8+ hrs I think a sleeping bus or slow train is ideal considering both cities have similar draws. HSR just isn't fast enough.
I was fairly conservative with the routing. It could definitely be faster with the long stretches at 200kph or less on both ends. Wouldn't be cheap, though.
If the HSR is intended to reusing the preexisting legacy suburban tracks to enter/exit the urban areas, similar to the blended model of CAHSR on the Caltrain corridor, rather than have new tracks installed in the ROW, trainsets would need the equipment to draw from AC & DC OHC. Both Sydney & Melbourne's urban railways were electrified in the 1920s using 1500VDC. Whereas, presumably, any new HSR alignment would utilize 25kVAC. Not insurmountable but a potentially complicating factor to keep in mind. Either way, Australia is far ahead of us over on the other side of the Tasman after the Epic Failure that was the Auckland Airport Light Rail, once all the opinions and "consultations" expanded the scope, inflated the costs, to be killed by the new conservative government. Heck, an Amtrak style Intercity system of Diesel trains on legacy freight track would be a massive improvement to the nonexistence of Passenger trains we have.
The alternative is a lot of tunnel, which they do seem willing to sink a bunch of money into.
@@LucidStew Sydney and Melbourne already have TBMs from their respective "Metro" projects. Those could potentially be repurposed, I'm guessing, for an HSR city center tunnel.
Sydney Metropolitan region has more population, now 5.5million
You can't run a train from Flinders Street to Broadmeadows in 12 minutes without building new tracks (at which point you might as well build a new alignment). The Craigieburn line is extremely busy especially during peak and will only get busier into the future. You'd be lucky to maintain a constant speed of 40 km/h without running into the next stopping suburban train. This is not to mention the fact that you'd have to build new dual-gauge track anyway.
There is plenty of room in the right of way for passing tracks. Stations would be more challenging, but I have that section over $2 billion AUD, so its certainly in the budget. Where do you propose the new alignment go other than underground?
@@LucidStew Actually, I've changed my mind. Looking at the Seymour line timetable, express diesel trains are able to get from Southern Cross to Broadmeadows in 20-23 minutes which while longer than 12 minutes is fairly respectable.
How about Melbourne to Adelaide, bonus points if you do Syndey to Adelaide via Broken Hill.
“¾ of a km”. That’s so US. 😂
I was converting from a fraction of a mile, so it didn't occur to me while writing or recording that, but I caught it making the graphic, which is in meters.
Worth it? I say do it. We need a non-co2 way of getting between all these cities. Do you Australians want to keep your reef or what?
Going off how much California high speed rail phase 1 is costing at over US $100 billion and considering that Sydney to Melbourne is longer then phase 1 and will need the extra connections to Canberra this is probably at least a US$150 billion project just between Sydney and Melbourne and probably more because this is Australia and everybody has to get there piece. You can look at the cost of Sydney Metro and extrapolate that out to get an even more expensive price point.
It's a mistake to directly apply CAHSR's cost to other projects. A lot of the cost is from overdesign because the rather ambitious travel time requirements are baked into the law. Also, the various mistakes early on in the project cost about $10 billion and 20 years of inflation. Other places can and do build better.
I could see a more CAHSR-style route costing somewhere around $100 billion AUD, but then you're also talking about it being 75 minutes faster or better.
To put it simply, They’ll just be priced out by qantas and Jetstar if it was ever built. No one would use it unfortunately
this poor horse has decomposed, unsure how anyone finds its remains to continue beating it.
Crikey!
Brisbane to Sydney?
As always, Excellent content!
From what I understand, the main reason why we don't have HSR here is for political reasons.
The 80s, 90s, 00s proposals failed because governments didn't want to spend money, as was the fashion at the time.
The 2013 proposal failed because of a change of government - the new prime minister was ideologically opposed to rail transport, and therefore scrapped it.
I assume the decision to start north is political - lots of swinging voters on the Central Coast, which would provide more of an imperative to get the project done.
I can't believe anyone who watches this channel has a fianceee. What's the real reason for looking at Aus?
I was also motivated so I could force thousands to sit through my vacations slides...
@@LucidStew So your parents own that cafe? Interesting. I think the landscapes and views are a huge bonus for trains over airplanes and you referenced the scenery a couple of times. Even journeys I've taken many times still excite me as the giant moving poster next to me shows amazing views, one after the other. Or, you look down on some clouds.
@@SirKenchalot No, the people who worked there were just really nice, so I though I'd give them a plug. When I visited Australia, I went with my dad and brother. Brother ended up on the cutting room floor.
If you think it'll cost 68B then I have a existing HSR to sell you.
It will not cost less than 120B and it will not happen
What do you base that on?
Trouble is, take the $68 Billion, an interest rate of 3% per annum, and 26000 passengers per day, and you get about $200 per trip just as the component of the ticket price to cover the cost of capital. On top of that there are the operating costs. One can get air tickets for the route for much less than that.
Unless air travel becomes much more expensive (carbon taxes or hiked fuel prices, perhaps) high speed rail will be uncompetitive on cost.
Shame - I like trains.
way more people would ride this than the 26k riding flights as this is much more convenient and will probably be cheaper
The estimate assumes 2028 currency valuation, but yes, the cost would only inflate. It could be paid for directly to avoid any finance cost. Still, I like to think of these things in terms of opportunity cost. $68 billion buys a lot of other things that are perhaps money better spent. You're also going to replace current interstate services and improve other services as well, so you would have some additional benefit beyond the straight-forward competition with flights.
I hadn't heard about new ideas for high speed to Newcastle, but they probably mean we're coming up to a state election. The idea gets bandied about in the lead up, and then forgotten about until the next election. I don't see it ever happening. All it would achieve would be to make Newcastle a commuter suburb of Sydney, and be nothing more than a wealth transfer to existing Newcastle property owners due to increased property prices.
What do you consider new? They're working on a business case. Granted, that is far from construction, but it is a newer development. I could see the argument that this is continuing study paralysis. We have the same situation in the states with a not-dissimilar(in length, scope, and cost) concept in the Pacific Northwest.
@@LucidStew They were supposed to be working on a business case during the parliamentary term before last. I don't think we ever heard anything more from that, probably because the business case didn't stack up.
Oh no, don’t wade into this cesspool!
Interesting proposal! It has fewer stations than most high-speed rail proposals for this corridor, but this allows it to have high speeds with fewer tunnels. The footage is impressive, though I notice it shows the trains running on the right instead of the left.
In a system like this, you'd likely have additional local stations where convenient. There could also be interchanges with the conventional lines to speed up services continuing to stop at local stations away from the trunk.
BANGKOK TO CHIANG MAI
also, thanks for everything you make, stew.
Australia has not been "talking about HSR for decades". No one with common sense takes it seriously. There is a certain entitled segment of the population that wants it, and whenever elections are imminent, cynical politicians pretend to be studying the matter just to get votes from that group. It is hard to imagine a place where HSR is LESS viable than Sydney to Melbourne. They are both big spread out cities, but they are a long way away from each other, and there is nothing in between other than millions of sheep and cattle. The comparative travel times shown in this video are not realistic. The time for flying Sydney to Melbourne is 95 mins, and the channel has allowed 45 mins at either end for a total travel time of about 3 hours. But for the train, the comparison only takes into account the train trip itself. No allowance is made for getting to and from the train stations, which in Sydney and Melbourne would be little different from getting to and from the airport. Door to door a HSR between the two cities would be at least a 6 hour total duration for most, and that's simply not competitive with 3 hours flying. Especially since the majority of the Sydney to Melbourne air-traffic is business related, with customers being very time sensitive.
Would you like several dozens references showing that Australia has been talking about HSR for decades? What are your sources that it hasn't?
The way the time comparisons work is that the airports are assumed to impose a 45 minute penalty over train stations due to things like security, inefficient boarding process, and taxiing. This is probably generous to flying.
The metro to metro times do not account for transit from the station because in both cases, you're in the metro and your destination could be anywhere else in the metro.
The city to city times account for time to get from city to city, as it describes. The train benefits here because in these cases it leaves from the city and arrives at the city. The airports, on the other hand are outside the city, and transit is required to get to and from the city. In this case it was 30 minutes Melbourne, 20 minutes Sydney, and 10 minutes Canberra. In the case of city to city there is no need to account for door to door because I'm not calculating door to door, nor could door to door be reasonably calculated because there are a million doors on each end.
What you're attempting to argue at the end with the 6 hour number is actually already shown in the metro to metro comparison. As I vocalized in the video, an HSR train doesn't fare well in that case except for Sydney-Canberra.