This thread is for HSR and like discussions.
Rail Back On Track Advocate Jeff Addison told Shane Doherty on 4BC Summer Drive, “Without knowing details, if we were to extrapolate out that distance [Sydney to the Central Coast] for that cost for, Brisbane to Cairns, you’d be looking at a cost of $324 billion, which I can’t see happening.”
Sydney to Central Coast HSR faces numerous high cost challenges including tunnelling through the Sydney urban area and challenging terrain out towards Gosford, so the per km cost is likely to be high compared to, say, HSR through more open and flatter terrain. That being said, I don’t think the economic imperative is there to build HSR north through Queensland.
In my view, the more realistic and achievable goal in the mid-term could be to, say, bring the NCL average operation speed up through a combination of track upgrades, curve mitigations and level crossing removals and upgrades etc. The line between Townsville and Cairns is particularly slow and littered with cane tram crossings.
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Although Townsville to Cairns is particularly slow, is also sees very little traffic, so any expenditure there will produce minimal returns.
I would prefer to see curve/grade easing and level crossing removals focused on the area south of Townsville, and particularly between Beerburrum and Rockhampton. This would make the ETT more competitive with road travel, and improve the efficiency of freight rail delivery to the vast majority of the State’s population.
HSR would require a whole new alignment (probably standard gauge) anyway, which would be cost-prohibitive for that stretch. A new generation of proper sleeper trains would be lower-hanging fruit.
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HSR would definitely have to be standard gauge.
I would be surprised if many here would argue for HSR to Cairns, but an alignment that allows for the tilts to run at 160 km/h (along with investigating increasing this to 180 or 200 km/h) would be valuable for increasing the attractiveness of medium and long-distance rail travel. Imagine Brisbane to Rockhampton being 5 hours, rather than the current 7:45.
I also agree that looking at bringing back sleeper cars for trains would be a good move!
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If national HSR ever makes it to Brisbane I think it will make sense to extend that north to the Sunshine Coast. Especially if there’s no regional fast rail project before then. (Remember the Tilt takes 45 minutes to Caboolture!)
This isn’t just about making the SC-Brisbane connection fast, it’s also the network effect of marginal but many connections between SC and everywhere else already on HSR by then.
High Speed Rail - ABC Utopia
Season 1 Episode 3: Very Fast Turnover
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A Current Affair
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