How do I possibly start a high speed line project in Australia?

[ian3mith]

HI Guys

I few days ago I started to think about looking to start a high speed line in Australia Perth to Melbourne since there is a high speed line already in place, Melbourne to Sydney then Sydney to Brisbane. I though it would be a excellent opportunity to connect all the cities together by high speed rail lines.

To be honest I do not want to talk and talk and bore you guys, that's my objective, Let me tell alittle bit about my self. Well Im 20 years old from England, I been in the railway industry just over a year now and i really love it and im very dedicated. Im obv not going to do it on my own so i need to make a team to get this ball rolling, but one massive problem i dont know how to start this kind of thing on such a MASSIVE scale. If im going to hit it, im going to kill it as the saying goes .

Anyway, anyone got any ideas how to start it out leave a message or email
iansmith3211@hotmail.co.uk

Kind regards,
Ian Smith.

 

[RJ]

You may wish to get some experience working in the transport planning field - you might get to work with and for people with enough influence to set the policy on projects of this scale. Even if your team had the means to pay for such a scheme, you might have to run it past the government, satisfy mountains of legislation and agreements and model and evaluate the benefits and establish a veritable BCR that would outweigh the costs by quite some margin first.

Perhaps attend this course on The Principles of Traffic and Transport - more information here. Anyone could be giving the lectures, from managing directors of transport consultancies to planners and project managers who were key in masterminding schemes like Canary Wharf and the Northern Line extension. At the same time, perhaps undertake studies in a relevant discipline and try getting work experience within a government department or a transport consultancy.

Good luck and I await others' responses with anticipation!

 

[Clip]

The first thing you have to ask yourself is that is there a good cost to benefit ratio for what you are wanting to do.

Ive done the Melbourne to Sydney trip by rail and yes it takes 12 hours but it goes through some barren outback as do the rest of the lines.

Given how cheap and quick flying is between these cities is there any reason at all as to why you would want to spend untold billions building new lines trhough the desert and still be unable to do the journey quicker than by plane?

 

[Abpj17]

The first thing you have to ask yourself is that is there a good cost to benefit ratio for what you are wanting to do.

Ive done the Melbourne to Sydney trip by rail and yes it takes 12 hours but it goes through some barren outback as do the rest of the lines.

Given how cheap and quick flying is between these cities is there any reason at all as to why you would want to spend untold billions building new lines trhough the desert and still be unable to do the journey quicker than by plane?

Primarily environmental reasons - there is a green think tank in Australia that pushes this project every so often.

 

[SPADTrap]

One heck of a dream! Good luck with it! First things first, can you get into Aus as a resident? Not often easy! :P

 

[G136GREYHOUND]

When Mark Hopwood was a teenage boy, he used to hang around the stations around Reading telling everyone that he : " Was going to sort the railway out when he grew up "

Well from booking clerk under BR to Managing Director in Privatisation, you can't but admire the guy's sense of purpose.

Never say never mate

 

[telstarbox]

For some background, these are the people leading the HS2 project: http://www.hs2.org.uk/about-hs2-ltd/executive-team

And these are the people running Crossrail: http://www.crossrail.co.uk/about-us/people/

 

[Clip]

Primarily environmental reasons - there is a green think tank in Australia that pushes this project every so often.

And how would they deliver the electricity over the vast distances and how far is too far for said electricity before it becomes more environmentally friendly to go by train?

And again, how do you stop the business man from flying because its quicker?

 

[ian3mith]

Thank you guys for commenting, I have done some research yesterday about it, and im going to do more now since I got more to look at.

I will try make a better future for some people, thats want I want to do.

Thanks again, keep the commenting coming, I read them all

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Might be worth studying how the projected high speed lines in California are doing in the planning process.
California shares some characteristics with Australia, such as mountain barriers and a lot of desert, with large but widely-spaced population centres.
The general attitude to rail is also similar - somewhere between indifferent and hostile, especially from the road and air lobbies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

In Australia you also have the state jealousies to contend with.
Getting QLD, NSW and VIC to agree to any one project might be quite hard.
I see they have been looking at high-speed rail for decades: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Australia
Currently there is nothing remotely like high speed operation.
Services are mostly electric suburban with a few diesel long distance services running over mostly heavy freight lines.
Good luck, though!

 

[Emyr]

And how would they deliver the electricity over the vast distances and how far is too far for said electricity before it becomes more environmentally friendly to go by train?

I hear they have lots of space and good weather, so Solar generation sites could be created to support the supply.

 

[RJ]

Thank you guys for commenting, I have done some research yesterday about it, and im going to do more now since I got more to look at.

I will try make a better future for some people, thats want I want to do.

Thanks again, keep the commenting coming, I read them all

Some valid points have been raised in this thread which would need answering. Serious consideration should be given to them before you decide whether or not you wish to spend any further time or resources pursuing this.

 

[radamfi]

Solar energy must surely be a no brainer in Australia, given there is such a vast area of uninhabited land and a small population.

 

[Clip]

I hear they have lots of space and good weather, so Solar generation sites could be created to support the supply.

Thats good but again billions to spend on it and to keep it running.

And why would people take the train for business - the ones who spend money to get around Aus when the plane is ALWAYS going to be quicker?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
And how many of these vast solar farms would you need to generate enough power to supply the electricity over thousands of miles that some journeys do in Aus?

 

[DownSouth]

There was a major report last year into a Brisbane-Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne proposal.

This would certainly be possible, but it would be such a big job (a credible claim to greatest railway construction in history) that no government would ever be able to commit to it. It would take approximately 45-50 years to build, and before anyone laughs at the timescale that's still a kilometre/year construction rate of over twice the rate at which the high speed line from Folkestone to London was constructed in considerably easier terrain.

The terrain is very tough - the plumbline from Melbourne to Sydney is about 700km long but goes through terrain up to 1,600 metres above sea level. The shortest remotely practical high speed rail route would be about 820km long, and even that would require many long tunnels.

Ive done the Melbourne to Sydney trip by rail and yes it takes 12 hours but it goes through some barren outback as do the rest of the lines.

Given how cheap and quick flying is between these cities is there any reason at all as to why you would want to spend untold billions building new lines trhough the desert and still be unable to do the journey quicker than by plane?

You must be thinking of the Sydney-Adelaide-Perth route with regards to the desert, there is no desert between Melbourne and Sydney. The train time is still around 12 hours largely thanks to the winding alignment through the Great Dividing Range and various terrain issues which would be extremely expensive to solve when the demand simply isn't there.

A 320km/h line on a 850km route could provide a transit time of around 3.5 hours on a full express run. This would be a quite competitive centre-to-centre time against air, and having a stop of the outskirts of each city (e.g. Broadmeadows in the north of Melbourne and Campbelltown in the south-east of Sydney) would provide even better transit times for many people than having to battle their way to/from the city centres at either end of the high speed journey.

The real benefit would be to freight transport. Lots of trucks use the Pacific Highway (Brisbane-Sydney) and Hume Highway (Sydney-Melbourne) for intercity runs. These could be put onto Eurotunnel-style roll-on-roll-off trains at terminals on the outskirts of the major cities which should be able to cruise at 160-200km/h. At the moment, rail simply cannot compete on Melbourne-Sydney general freight because the line is too slow and there's too much time wasted at the container terminals at each end, but a roll-on-roll-off service would allow that time to be cut down.

And how would they deliver the electricity over the vast distances and how far is too far for said electricity before it becomes more environmentally friendly to go by train?

This would only be a problem for electrifying to Perth.

Brisbane-Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne and Adelaide-Melbourne wouldn't be a problem, and in the case of Adelaide-Melbourne the rail corridor is actually shared with major transmission lines for about 250km of its length.

Solar energy must surely be a no brainer in Australia, given there is such a vast area of uninhabited land and a small population.

Solar thermal would be possible for the outback sections of the Trans-Australia Railway, if it ever turns into a mature technology. Photovoltaic cells would be no use at night, and when even an impossible 320km/h line would take ten hours you can't afford to have the line open only during the day.

The Trans-Australian Railway is 1692km from Port Augusta (SA) to Kalgoorlie (WA), including the famous 478km straight line which covers 4.3° of the earth's curvature. Both Port Augusta and Kalgoorlie are also the end of the line as far as the National Electricity Market and Western Power transmission networks are concerned. The railways could set up their own transmission lines to serve the line for a couple of hundred kilometres out from each end, but beyond that there would need to be purpose-built power stations.

Even if you set up new power stations, that wouldn't solve the issue of double-stacked containers and electrification being incompatible, or the issues with trying to maintain an electrical system in such extreme weather (shade temperatures in the day of 40+°C and overnight minimums below freezing on the same day) or the question of who in their right mind would want to pay for it.

The Trans-Australian Railway is fit for purpose as it is - it carries 88% of the land freight crossing the Nullabor Plain and 115 km/h is a good speed which gets close to the optimum transit time - any faster and the minimal time gained would be lost in extra fuel stops, assuming it wasn't lost waiting at crossing loops. The rail distance from Melbourne to Perth is about 3,400km - if a 320km high speed line the whole way was possible (and if the train could actually run at full speed the whole way, which is not realistic) it would still take about 11 hours for what is currently a four hour flight depending on the wind direction.

 

[radamfi]

Solar thermal would be possible for the outback sections of the Trans-Australia Railway, if it ever turns into a mature technology. Photovoltaic cells would be no use at night, and when even an impossible 320km/h line would take ten hours you can't afford to have the line open only during the day.

But electricity generated during the day can be stored at night. I would have thought that solar would be so useful in Australia, not only could solar be used for powering a railway line, but for the whole country, given only a few people need to be served.

 

[DownSouth]

But electricity generated during the day can be stored at night.

If solar thermal ever works this will be the case, but with solar photovoltaic cells and batteries it cannot be done in quantities large enough to power trains.

How many battery packs have you come across which can put out an average of 6 megawatts (with a peak capacity of over 9MW) for over 12 hours at a time? That (plus extra to account for transmission losses) is what is needed to power one regular freight train across the Trans-Australia Railway, but at this moment in the night there are 12 freight trains between Port Augusta and Kalgoorlie, all of them close to 1800 metres long and most of them being in that 1690km segment for the whole night.

Signals, communication nodes and point machines in remote areas with appropriate local climate conditions are already solar/battery powered here, and they work quite well. But that's because the power demanded is in the order of a hundred watts, not up to ten megawatts.

I would have thought that solar would be so useful in Australia, not only could solar be used for powering a railway line, but for the whole country, given only a few people need to be served.

There are lots of homes and businesses that have solar photovoltaic cells on the roof, but they don't actually reduce the need for other power stations as they aren't of much use when the peak electricity demand is typically in the evening.

The electrified railways in all five mainland capital cities do already benefit from solar power - by way of the PV cells on building roofs feeding power not used by that building back into the electric grid, which in turn powers (among other stuff) electric trains.

As great as our climate may be for them, PV cells are not sustainable. Solar thermal (if it ever works on a large scale) might be, but with our plentiful uranium supply nuclear is more likely as a long-term solution. If the other infrastructure issues (e.g. double-stacked containers, wind conditions, maintenance) get sorted out, with nuclear power we could quite happily put up with the transmission losses of electrifying the Trans-Australia Railway in the event of the oil supply drying up.

 

[Abpj17]

And how would they deliver the electricity over the vast distances and how far is too far for said electricity before it becomes more environmentally friendly to go by train?

And again, how do you stop the business man from flying because its quicker?

No idea lol. I didn't manage to find a copy of a proper copy, just some wishful thinking and big numbers!

 

[ian959]

High Speed Rail is never going to get off the ground in Australia. The only route that really has even a reasonable business case is Sydney to Melbourne simply because a 300 kmh HSR route would compete very favourably on the city centre to city centre timings of air travel as DownSouth has pointed out. The business case for Sydney to Brisbane is nowhere near as good and there would be no business case for anything else at all.

At the costs involved in building such a HSR route as Sydney to Melbourne however, it would be far better to use the money to try and sort out some of the infrastructure black spots on the existing routes and get the line speeds raised to something close to 160 kmh. That would likely get more modal shift from road which is desperately needed rather than spending more and more money trying to fix up the Hume and Pacific Highways. Such route upgrades on Brisbane - Sydney - Melbourne would cost tonnes of money, but would still probably be half the cost of a HSR and of infinitely more benefit. Some of the engineering challenges of a HSR from Sydney to Melbourne alone would be unbelievably costly.

The Trans Australia Railway is fit for purpose as is and probably needs little more than upgrades to say 130 kmh running with a bunch more long loops installed at strategic spots to reduce waiting times for trains to pass. There might not be much out there on the Nullarbor Plain but the challenges of building a HSR from Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta would realistically be virtually insurmountable with current technology. The passenger market on that route is pretty much tourist only and here is not much point zipping across there at 300 kmh plus anyway - it is a journey to be savoured, not just taken.

When the fastest train in Australia is the Tilt Train between Brisbane and Rockhampton at a maximum 160 kmh in services and most passenger services barely scrape over 120 kmh, Australia is better off looking at modest upgrades to 160 kmh rather than all new 320 kmh HSRs.

 

[DownSouth]

The Trans Australia Railway is fit for purpose as is and probably needs little more than upgrades to say 130 kmh running with a bunch more long loops installed at strategic spots to reduce waiting times for trains to pass.

I can't see any genuine advantage in upgrading the Trans Australia Railway to 130 km/h. The above-rail operators who run their trains on the line agree, they would prefer a full Adelaide-Perth rebuild to be about higher axle loads instead of higher speeds.

There is work going ahead on genuine improvements to Adelaide-Perth transit times - in the form of the Advanced Traffic Management System which will reduce the time spent waiting at loops and do away with the train crews operating the points themselves.

The situation with passing loops on the Trans is actually very good at the moment. Between Adelaide and Tarcoola they are spaced at 25-40 km intervals, from Tarcoola to Kalgoorlie no further than 55 km apart. All of them, (bar just a couple between Kalgoorlie and Perth) between Adelaide and Perth are long enough for the longest trains.

The worst pinch points on the East-West corridor have nothing to do with the Trans, they are the loops on the Adelaide-Melbourne sector in Victoria which restrict the length and number of trains. To have them spaced any closer (any "strategic spots" already have them) would result in massive CapEx for negligible gain, and if there's going to be massive CapEx it should first be spent on increasing the permitted axle loads and improving signalling, not on unnecessary extra loops or higher speeds.

When the fastest train in Australia is the Tilt Train between Brisbane and Rockhampton at a maximum 160 kmh in services and most passenger services barely scrape over 120 kmh, Australia is better off looking at modest upgrades to 160 kmh rather than all new 320 kmh HSRs.

Wrong. The most productive upgrades will be to sort out pinch points, build cutoff lines, increase loading gauges and axle loads on the North-South corridor from Melbourne to Brisbane, not increase line speeds.

With the exception of Melbourne-Sydney-Canberra (over 80% of which would require a new alignment for high speed rail) there's not really a major interstate corridor where passenger rail could ever be viable, and so the ARTC CapEx budget must be focused on improving the situation for freight first and passengers afterwards.

 

[LesS]

A high speed line between Perth & the east coast is not a proposition. The distances are too great and the passengers available too few. Such a line would result in destination arrivals at inconvenient hours. Much better to load the trains up, slow down the speeds, and arrive at more agreeable hours.

There is a good case for a high speed line linking Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne. The existing air route is either the 3rd or 4th busiest in the world. The combined population including intermediate regional cities is about 11 millions. If such a line were extended to Brisbane via the coast you can add another 4 millions to the population. It will not happen because the politicians are petrified of commencing such a project and then being unable to complete it. The reaction of the airlines needs to be considered. They would simpy reduce their fares; as happened between London & Paris when Eurostar commenced. It has taken 10 years for Eurostar to show a profit.

A much better proposition is to upgrade exisiting lines mostly by removal of curves, to allow speeds between 160 & 200kph. This is unikely to happen either.

There is an existing bus service between Canberra & Sydney with departures every hour each way. Travel time is 3 hours. The competing rail service; 3 services each way daily; takes 4 hours.
The daily train between Sydney and Brisbane turns around in Brisbane between 3am & 4am local time.

So far as rail is concerned the situation in Australia can only be described as dire.

We have a federal government which will not allocate $1 to rail transport, particularly urban rail, except for projects already under construction. Instead funds are being allocated to roads and urban road tunnels. There are 2 tunnel projects in Sydney and one in Melbourne. The Melbourne one is estimated to cost in excess of $1billion per kilometre. The Sydney tunnels can be expected to cost about the same. All up these 3 tunnels are likely to cost $50billion or more. In my view they will create more traffic problems than they will solve.

There is worse. The New south Wales government has commenced construction of a new suburban line. It will be totally incompatible with the existing network. Passengers will be expected to stand for journeys up to 70 minutes to the city and include a change of trains.

Worse still, they intend to close the rail line into the city of Newcastle, 100 miles norht of Sydney, with the last train on Christmas Day. It is to be replaced with a tramline mostly over the same tracks. Work is not to commence on this until 12 months after the closure of the rail line.
Probably the strongest proponent of the rail closure gave out paper bags full of money to several local State politicians before the last election and before closure was decided upon. There have been other dubious, similar, activities by proponents of closure. We know these things because they have been admitted and acknowledged under oath.
The transport minster says that the closure is not about transportation but about revitalsing the city -- I kid you not.

If all of this sounds like something from Alice in Wonderland; it certainly is; only we are living through it. The political ideology comes directly from the Margaret Thatcher manual.

Dare I suggest that this might be a legacy of imperialism?

 

[DownSouth]

So far as rail is concerned the situation in Australia can only be described as dire.

Maybe in NSW, not so across the nation. In every other mainland state there are extensions and new stations being built on the suburban networks, new rolling stock being ordered, modern signalling systems being commissioned and new/extended crossing loops on the long distance lines.

The collapse of the iron ore bubble has killed off a few freight services from mines which were only ever a short-term cash grab, but apart from that the freight market is generally increasing.

 

[Stonesourscotty]

Some of the biggest problems on Sydney to Melbourne is the train doesn't actually go to Melbourne it goes a scruffy dive called broadmeadows that lacks any amenities doesn't even have a hungry jacks lol

 

[Clip]

Some of the biggest problems on Sydney to Melbourne is the train doesn't actually go to Melbourne it goes a scruffy dive called broadmeadows that lacks any amenities doesn't even have a hungry jacks lol

Has it changed then as I caught it from Southern Cross station which is bang in the heart of Melbourne and Im sure it has a hungry jacks.

 

[ian959]

Some of the biggest problems on Sydney to Melbourne is the train doesn't actually go to Melbourne it goes a scruffy dive called broadmeadows that lacks any amenities doesn't even have a hungry jacks lol

Pardon? The train goes to Southern Cross station, across the road from the centre of Melbourne... whilst it has been a while since I was there, I do recall lots of amenities. Perhaps you ought to have a look here

 

[DownSouth]

Has it changed then as I caught it from Southern Cross station which is bang in the heart of Melbourne and Im sure it has a hungry jacks.

Pardon? The train goes to Southern Cross station, across the road from the centre of Melbourne... whilst it has been a while since I was there, I do recall lots of amenities. Perhaps you ought to have a look here

The XPT is currently terminating at Broadmeadows (outer northern suburbs) because their narrow non-standard wheel rims (127mm wide vs the 140mm standard profile) are not compatible with the new dual-gauge turnouts on the recently rerouted approach to Southern Cross. NSW Trainlink did not provide a XPT set to test the track before it was opened, so this issue was only discovered when the first passenger service used the new track and landed in the dirt.

Coaches are offered for XPT passengers between Southern Cross and Broadmeadows (primarily to cater for passengers with luggage), or they can choose to take a regular scheduled MTM service instead of going by road.

All the other standard gauge trains use the standard 140mm wheel rim profile and don't have a problem with the new track - V/Line trains from Albury and The Overland from Adelaide resumed using Southern Cross once the track damage from the XPT derailment was dealt with.

 

[Clip]

wow. Thats really bad forward planning!! Sounds something liek the brits may do lol

 

[richw]

Get experience working for other large projects so you gather experience first. Find how such large projects are operated. Take that experience into your own planning.

Raise funds from investors. You will need a strong robust background to get anyone to part with any kind of funds, regardless how strong your plans are, investors wont give funds to someone with a weak background in the industry

Get a more professional email address when asking for advise and help on such a multi billion pound project, people will take you more seriously with a decent domain

 

[Stonesourscotty]

Currently I reside in Melbourne and I'm unfortunate enough to have had to work in Sydney recently and i currently hold a three months nsw trains pass so yeah the Broadmeadows situation is unfortunate and very annoying as its a scruffy station that lacks amenities and it's bloody cold without a roof.. they should either have the xpt waiting for passengers or leave them aboard the coaches as Melbourne gets bloody cold around the Times the xpt operates its not a good scenario when your fighting a losing battle vs planes from Tullamarine and Avalon

 

[tranzitjim]

The best idea is to visit an Australian based forum website.

www.railpage.com.au has been popular in the past, but the moderators are **** with anyone who has vision.

www.wheelsonsteel.com.au

and

www.railsa.org

are two of which I may are worth asking in.

I too would love to operate some kind of a train service between Melbourne and Sydney, but the matter is getting finance. Been spending 10 years looking for someone to fund my project, but no.