High-Speed Rail for Australia: Is it Impossible?

Australia is a railway nation, but there is one type of railway it still doesn't have - high-speed rail. Let's talk about how it can make it a reality.

Check out @Taitset for more Australian content!

As always, leave a comment down below if you have ideas for our future videos. Like, subscribe, and hit the bell icon so you won't miss my next video!

==PATREON==

If you'd like to help me make more videos & get exclusive behind the scenes access, early video releases, and premium blog posts, consider supporting my Patreon! Every dollar goes towards helping my channel grow & reach more people.

==ATTRIBUTION==

Thumbnail Courtesy of Under the Clocks

==MY SOCIAL MEDIA==

==COMMUNITY DISCORD SERVER==

(Not officially affiliated with the channel)

==ABOUT ME==

Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!

Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.

[Taitset]

Thanks for having me on the show Reece!

[r-labs]

As an Australian, I am so angry that Australia does still not have at least one state of the art high speed rail link

[lessylessy]

The ground work for a high speed rail between sydney and newcastle has started recently with plans for lines connecting the east coast cities from Brisbane down. It is still very very early but I am really excited.

[BigBlueMan]

Adelaide (1.3 million) still has half its lines unelectrified and has no City Underground tunnel linking the North of the city with the South - would love to see you do a video on this Reece!

Other big cities in Australia that don't have "fairly modern electrified rail systems" and need big improvement:
-Canberra-Queanbeyan (490k) has only 1 electrified LR line; the InterCity line is diesel and only runs 3 trains a day to Goulburn+Sydney
-Newcastle-Maitland (517k) has 1 diesel line, 1 electrified LR line and 1 electrified InterCity line only runs hourly all-stops in addition to hourly express trains; the old LR network was torn up in the mid-century car craze
-Wollongong (300k) has 1 electrified InterCity line that only runs all-stopper trains once hourly in addition to hourly express trains.
-Geelong (295k) is only 1 line and diesel, the old LR network was ripped up in the mid-century car craze.
-Hobart (250k) has no rail of any form despite straddling the old rail line, the passenger services ceased in the 1970s but were significantly quicker than the bus services that replaced them. The rail corridor ceased freight operations in 2014 and is still there, it is possibly the biggest low-hanging fruit of anywhere I know of in the country. The former LR network was ripped up in the mid-century car craze.

[shakeelali]

Australia getting HSR is kinda like Fusion Power. It's doable and technically feasible, but it's always 30 years away and the next governments issue. Even if we had a solid proposal presented to government right now, it would get lost in the red tape and politicized till it's killed by public opinion. A large part of it comes down to our incredibly short election cycles, not to mention the outsized influence Qantas has on our Federal politicians. Sydney to Melbourne is routinely one of the top 10 busiest air routes anywhere in the world, domestic or international. The demand is there, the tech exists and is cheap enough, we have the skills, brains and labour for it. The political will just doesn't exist.

[RealNotOrrio]

While less flashy regional hsr could also be considerd, here in victoria our two largest cities are just seperated by large amounts of flat land and the largerly low density western suburbs

[Zhilinjain]

Given the housing crisis, what would make more sense is to have HSR trains to Wollongong, Newcastle, Dubbo, Wagga, Tamworth ….. people can start living in these areas and commute to Sydney for work on regular basis.

[timor]

"They don't even have the snowy!" I love it.
High Speed Rail is a no brainer for the Sydney-Melbourne corridor, however the airline industry has been assiduous in protecting the 5th busiest air corridor in the entire world.

[refsmithy]

As someone who was on a train between Albury and Goulburn yesterday, you were 100% right about how speed prohibitive the terrain on some parts of the route is, but interestingly enough the slowest part of the journey yesterday was actually just north of Wagga where, despite what looks like relatively kind terrain and no obvious track damage, the train slowed to a crawl for a good 5 or so kilometres. Infrastructure improvements to remove issues like that (even without anything else) will make the journey time more reliable rather than the current "an hour late is practically on time" reputation that the Sydney-Melbourne XPT in particular has.

[Voyagerthend]

Besides the Goulburn-Albury stretch, you have to also consider Campbelltown-Mittagong since that stretch is notoriously slow and windy. However, I reckon the suggestion from Goulburn-Albury should just be Goulburn-Wagga since Wagga-Albury is pretty straight

[Wiratama]

The fact Australia neighborhood, Indonesia, just launching High Speed Railway this year make me sure Australia should deserve had high speed railway

[katrinabryce]

Don't you want to aim for a single line that goes Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, taking in some smaller towns along the way? People probably won't generally travel the whole length of it unless they are creating footage to publish on YouTube, but it doesn't open up a lot more potential station pairs. And even if the small towns are really small now, they will have a lot of growth potential if high speed rail comes to them.

[rictownend]

Something around Wollongong Sydney CBD, Parramatta, Gosford.

And up north Coolangatta (airport) to Brisbane.

[pmason]

I think it's hard to explain just how empty Australia is. The five largest cities on the route from Sydney to Melbourne are Aulbury-Woodonga (pop 100, 000), Wagga-Wagga (pop 50, 000), and three other cities with a population around 20, 000. After that, there's no town bigger than 5, 000 people and even those are few and far between.

Long story short, the only way HSR between Sydney and Melbourne gets any ridership is by stealing Sydney-Melbourne passengers from the airlines. This is where things always get shaky. Sydney airport is 12 minutes from Central Station by train. Melbourne is 30 minutes from Southern Cross by express bus. Flight time is about 1hr, so without checked bags the flight is as little as 2:40 CBD to CBD. Even with checked bags, it's not much over 3:15. Once fully complete HSR would be nearly 4 hours.

That's not insurmountable. But it's tough. If there were some good intermediate destinations, then perhaps you could stand to only capture a moderate chunk of the market. But without any intermediates worth speaking of, it only stacks up if the train can grab something like the majority of the market. And with it being significantly slower (particularly in the interim), that seems unlikely. It's been studied ten ways to Sunday, and that is always the conclusion.

[thecat]

In Victoria the issue currently happening is that every high speed rail proposal proposed usually gets cut in budget cuts.

[SamSandford]

Wish Adelaide and South Australia in general would take it's heavy passenger rail more seriously. Electrify all Adelaide lines, underground city loop that goes out (underground) to the airport, return of regional services but high speed. So much opportunity to revitalise and expand the network to support the growing outer suburbs and regional centres.

[acl__live]

My two favourite transit YouTubers on the same video it’s a perfect Christmas gift

[Dqtube]

Related to this topic. I really liked the idea that @City-Moose presented in the ‘Will Australia ever get High Speed Rail?’ video. He cited some study that said that improving/modernizing the existing line could reduce travel time between these cities by 5 hours without having to build an actual HSR line. Estimated construction time for this project is 4 years.

[CHEWSOONWEIMoe]

10:45 On the approach to Melbourne, I think running on the direct route via Essendon would save time and avoid freight trains on the Albion-Jacana line.

[ashurraj]

Surprised you didn’t talk about the prospector train from Perth to Kalgoorlie as it is a great example of a “higher speed train” this service rarely stops and is well built to allow it to operate fast being the fastest “service”(not fastest train ie: distance/time) and operating in rather smart format. Would recommend looking In to this for more information then I could give but it is certainly a good case study.