Why it's finally time for high speed rail

Today, Joe Langley, the Chairman of the Australian High Speed Rail Association, was interviewed by Samantha Hawley on ABC News Radio. While Joe is a great advocate with very clear and simple messages, the interview shows that, at least in the media, we are coming from a long way back.

Sam started by seeking Joe's opinion on a number of sound bites about the number of studies into HSR that have failed to produce anything tangible, and the amount of money needing to be invested.

Joe pointed out the Sydney-Canberra XPT that initiated the first study in 1984 because it took four and a quarter hours, is in fact the same train that provides the same service in the same time as today.

As for cost, Joe stated that "we have to go back to the vision - what is the long term vision for the future of the country That's whats missing in the minds of our leaders because a three year election cycle puts a lot of pressure on politicians to make long term decisions."

Sam came back at the $90B price tag on the Sydney-Newcastle section. Joe replied "you've got to give a lot of credit to the approach that the High Speed Rail Authority has taken in this exercise. What the authority proposes to do over the next two years is take the business case and drill down into it to make sure that the investigations that they've looked at to date and to undertake more investigations to come up with a robust cost estimate."

"That doesn't mean that there won't be cost busts in the future. There could still be those because so much of what happens in these big transport projects is hidden - there's underground conditions that you can't anticipate. We've seen that in infrastructure projects going on in Melbourne and Sydney and Brisbane today. So this is a cautious approach to spend two years to do the detailed design. And then the next step is to create a shovel-ready project for the government to have another look at."

So who's paying? Sam pointed out that NSW Premier, Chris Minns, is not committing to put any money up. "That's right." said Joe. "It's very disappointing that that's the New South Wales Government's reaction to this because the New South Wales Government and the people of New South Wales have been the major beneficiaries of cost sharing between the federal government and the state government on big infrastructure projects. The Sydney Metro, for example, and the second Sydney airport. Those are the types of projects that have lifted the economic capacity of the state of New South Wales."

Should Sydney-Newcastle be prioritised? "Well, there is some opposition to the cost of this project. The previous study showed that Sydney to Canberra leg would be more expensive overall because it's about twice the distance, but it would be less cost per kilometre and probably could be done quicker. So we've sort of boxed ourselves in a little bit in coming up with the first leg rather than laying out what the full program would be. But that was not the mandate that was given to the authority. They were given a mandate to look at, in the first instance, Sydney to Newcastle."

Why not Sydney to Melbourne? "Well, I think in the final analysis, Sydney and Melbourne have to be connected with high-speed rail if you're going to build it, because that's where the full benefits of the network are going to be realised, in addition to the Brisbane leg. The more we build and connect, the higher the return on investment will become over time. So Sydney and Melbourne and Sydney and Brisbane definitely have to be part of the picture if we expect to recoup the maximum return on that investment."

Is Australia just too big a country geographically, with too small a population? "Well, Australia is a big continent, but most of our population live along the east coast. The density of the population is really comparable with Spain which has about 4,000 kilometres of high-speed rail, and are expanding it. I think it's appropriate that we're looking at this, and I think that it's doable if we have the vision and we have the leadership to demonstrate what this is going to do for the country over the next 50 to 100 years."

The Grattan Institute says it is an expensive folly. "Right now, we're seeing what being done in Sydney, in particular, where we've spent $70 billion on the metro system, which is a fantastic investment. But what that's done is concentrate the population and the infrastructure investment in capital cities. Same thing is happening in Melbourne and Brisbane. The problems of congestion and pollution and housing affordability will not be solved by doing the same thing that we've done up to this point."

"We need to use the assets that we've got as a country, which is a beautiful, abundant amount of land where cities can expand into regional areas and new cities can be formed. I think one of the other shortcomings of the Grattan approach is that they've used the traditional means of measuring transport projects, which they look at a 30-year time horizon. Well, we're still using the same alignments for trains that were built over 100 years ago now, but we're not tallying that benefit over time. It's the same thing with high-speed rail. That network will be there for 100 years or more."

Summing up, Joe said "what high-speed rail does is offer another solution, another mode of transport, which is really the only type of improvement that we can make that disperses our population and allows us to take advantage of the huge land mass. Certainly, from my standpoint as an urban planner, this is something that would be desperately needed in the next 50 years as we see the issues that arise from building more in the same place."