Video: Oz Fast Rail Plan

in Trains by Jon C — April 24, 2010 at 5:46 pm | 2 comments

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown today launched a campaign for a high-speed rail link between Melbourne and Sydney.
It would mean the trip would take four hours. Estimates of the cost for the rail link are around $AU$40 billion.

This is their promotional video:

Today’s Greens’ launch follows this pre-feasibility report from a group calling itself Cooperative Research Centre for Rail Innovation, which said high sped rail would reduce Sydney – Melbourne/Canberra/Gold Coast/Brisbane air patronage and alleviate the need for a second Sydney airport.

The group estimates that, based on European experience of high-speed rail, it could “reasonably be expected that some 50% of the travellers between Sydney and Melbourne would use a high speed rail link if the journey was less than four hours. For shorter routes such as Sydney – Canberra and Sydney – Newcastle the share of travellers would be much higher.

“Average speeds between stations of around 250km/h are now in established operations in Europe. More recently even higher average speeds have been reported in China. Applying such speeds to Australia could reduce Sydney – Melbourne transit time to between 3 and 4 hours and lead to a very significant rail mode share, says the group.

Greens Bob Brown, launching the campaign at a Melbourne rail station, said that work needs to start now on establishing a high-speed rail link between the nation’s biggest capital cities.

A link on Australia’s east coast would provide fast, reliable and sustainable transport for 75% of our population. Newcastle and Canberra could be connected to the network. The rail would reduce greenhouse emissions from transport and congestion on the high demand Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane flight routes and accident-prone Pacific, Hume and Princes highways.

Tags: Bob Brown Cooperative Research Centre for Rail Innovation Greens Melbourne Sydney