Have we got the Sydney-Newcastle HSR line right?
- Ross Lowrey
- Dec 7
- 3 min read
The design of a high speed line is a balancing act between the engineering to achieve fast travel times between two major cities and the desire for well-placed stops to promote regional growth. The alignment selected for the Sydney-Newcastle line suggests that regional growth in the corridor has taken priority. But is this the right alignment for the long-term?
Balancing connectivity with regional growth
The primary design objective of any high speed line is to minimise the time taken between two major cities e.g. Paris-Lyon is about 470kms which takes just over 4.7hrs by car compared with just under 2hrs by train. To achieve this, the line runs as straight as possible and avoids going through intermediate cities.
Of course, intermediate cities want the benefits of faster travel, so regional growth becomes another design objective. A common solution is to connect the high speed line to an existing regional line, allowing stopping HS trains to use the existing station while direct trains simply bypass the city. Lyon-Marseille demonstrates this design. Lyon-Marseille is about 310kms which takes just over 3 hours by car or about 1.7hrs by direct train. But TGV trains can also serve 5 small cities in the Rhone valley using conventional rail tracks, thereby spreading the benefits of faster travel to these intermediate cities. But high speed points are very expensive and trains must slow down to cross them, which means they are also avoided where possible.
High speed rail can also have other design objectives. HS2 in the UK is a good example where the design objectives included setting Manchester and Leeds as terminal destinations, requiring HS2 to go through intermediate cities, and the setting of higher specifications than comparable projects e.g. an extended 120-year lifetime for infrastructure assets (typically 100 years). These were a major source of higher capital costs for HS2 than for comparable projects elsewhere.
These design objectives are variable at the beginning of the project. But they become immutable and drive costs once they are locked into the design. That is why it is so important that the design requirements are properly explored, debated and agreed before the project proceeds.
Do we have the right design objectives for Sydney-Newcastle HSR?
Unfortunately, we don’t know what the design objectives are for the Sydney-Newcastle high speed line. The government has not released the HSRA report, so we do not know what other options were considered by HSRA. However, we do know that HSRA preferred the line running from Newcastle to Sydney Central and then to Western Sydney Airport (WSA) via Parramatta (as shown on the map from HSRA).
This means we can’t be sure how the competing needs of future fast travel between Sydney and Brisbane have been balanced with regional growth in the Central and Hunter regions. But the proposed alignment looks suspiciously similar to the Committee for Sydney’s proposal for fast rail lines to create a Sandstone mega-region. And 80% of the benefits are related to housing or regional growth. This suggests that regional growth has taken priority over long-distance travel (which is a future benefit and wouldn’t have been included in the business case).
The challenge is that Newcastle is an intermediate city on the Sydney-Brisbane arm of an East Coast HSR line. The HSRA has decided to build a dedicated high speed line which gives it greater reliability but less flexibility than if it was integrated with the existing conventional line. This leads to many questions about HSRA’s plans to extend the line north to Brisbane and south to Canberra and Melbourne. And also about the types of services to be offered as Sydney-Newcastle is merely commuting distance by HSR standards.
We need a more open, collaborative process
The HSRA has done an admirable job in completing a comprehensive business case in just 6 months as requested by the federal government. But has the federal government put the cart before the horse? It is widely accepted that the effectiveness of the planning system and the quality of its outcomes depends on open, accountable and collaborative actions.
Judging by the Infrastructure Australia assessment, it appears the only decision for the government to make is whether or not to proceed the “Development Phase” of the project. This means the design objectives for this section of high speed rail will be locked-in, and the chance to debate them will have been lost.
