00:00:02
Speaker 1: From the newsroom. A news still come to me today there. I'm Andrew Buckalow, and I am one of the many Aussies who would like to know if we're ever going to get a fast train from Sydney to Melbourne. This thing gets talked about all the time. The Federal government says there is light at the end of the tunnel, but others think the project will forever be stuck at the station bit of a train. Pun for you there, today, I'm going to find out the answer once and for all. I'm going to speak to an expert who's going to reveal how likely it is, when it could happen, and how long it would actually take to travel between our major cities if it does eventually get built. All the board, the idea of building a high speed rail network in Australia has been talked about for decades. Various plans and pictures have been made over the years, but none have been able to gather enough steam. That could change, though, if Anthony Alberanezi gets his way.
00:01:00
Speaker 2: My vision is the high speed rail that runs from Brisbane to Melbourne, grabbing jobs and connecting communities up and down the East coast of Australia, overcoming the tyranny of distance that's held regions back.
00:01:12
Speaker 1: That was back in twenty twenty two, and since then the Labor Government has set up a High Speed Rail Authority to try and make those dreams a reality. Here's their plan. They want to build a high speed rail network along the East Coast, which stops in Brisbane, Newcastle, the Central Coast, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. The trains would be capable of traveling at more than three hundred kilometers per hour. A trip from Brisbane to Sydney would take about four hours. A trip from Sydney to Melbourne would also take four hours. They want to start by building the line from Newcastle to Sydney, which is in the planning stages right now. The new project's first line would link Newcastle and Sydney in an hour and the Central Coast in just thirty minutes. It's estimated that stretch alone could take more than ten years to build and could cost up to thirty billion dollars. After that, in theory, they'd build the rest of the high speed rail line, with the aim of having the whole thing completed by drum roll please the year twenty sixty. So will it actually happen for he to discuss that is Professor Christopher Pettick from the University of New South Wales. What are the arguments for high speed rail in Australia.
00:02:23
Speaker 3: Look, I think there's quite a few arguments for If we look at CO two emissions. Just for example, every passenger on a flight from say Sydney to Melbourne, those kilograms of CO two are up to one hundred to one hundred and eighty per person. If you're on a train, you're looking at about sixteen to eighteen kilograms, so that's a reduction of CO two ten times. Also, the high speed rail would be run be electrified system, so you're not even using any fuel that planes are dependent on and you're not going to see a plane with a big EV battery anytime soon.
00:02:58
Speaker 2: All right.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: So, apart from it more environmentally friendly, why else is it a good idea?
00:03:03
Speaker 3: Australia's population is growing as we know, there's growing pains in our cities. We've got Sydney, we've got Melbourne, the two largest cities accommodating almost half Australia's population. The Australian Bureau Statistics are forecasting Australias to grow nine million people by twenty fifty. Where are all those people going to go? Do we really want all of those people to be moving to the capital cities, to Melbourne, to Sydney, to Brisbane. So there's a huge opportunity by putting in a high speed rail as the backbone of a national plan for Australia to accommodate future growth. So this would help solve some of our immigration challenges and also importantly housing affordability a lot cheaper to build houses and for people to go live around some of these regional stations that are being proposed in Newcastle where property prices are about half the price of buying a house in Sydney. Then you go out to Grafton or Coffs Harbor, down to Victoria and Shepperdon when the average property price is around five hundred thousand for a house. So there's real benefits for Australia planning our long term growth, so we can have a lot of people come into the country and not put a lot of pressure on our infrastructure in our capital cities.
00:04:18
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the arguments against high speed rail in Australia. Firstly, let's talk about the cost. So if it's going to cost maybe thirty billion dollars just to do in the Newcastle or Sydney stretch, I mean the whole thing from Brisbane to Melbourne must be an astronomical cost.
00:04:32
Speaker 3: So there's been many studies of this going back forty years around high speed rail, and I guess some of the most recent studies are probably about a decade old. We've got new studies a business case being released by the High Speed Rail Authority later this year. But the total cost back in about twenty twelve was about one hundred and fifteen billion. That's probably up now in being in twenty twenty five. It is a big project. It's going to cost a lot, but it's probably not going to cost any more than about five or six submarines out of the Orchest program. And you think about fifteen hundred kilometers of high speed rail network connecting seventy percent of Australia's population for the price of five or six submarines, I still think it's a fantastic piece of infrastructure. Plus there's also ways of helping to fund that using mechanisms. We've got tax mechanisms like value.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: Capture, explain value capture.
00:05:25
Speaker 3: So value capture is not new, it's what was used to fund the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Those who benefit from that new piece of infrastructure in our cities can pay towards it, and there's various ways that they could do that. But simply put you put in a new transformational piece of infrastructure like a light rail, you put it in a new metro, the property prices around those train stations go up because you've provided greater accessibility to jobs and services for those living near those new stations. So if you put that in the context of high speed rail, you've just basically put Hamburg as a satellite city. You've put Newcastle as a satellite city or a suburb even to Sydney, and so the land value around those stations goes up a lot. Now, what government can do is look at various policies and mechanisms. They could be purchasing some of the land around those stations at a very affordable price right now. They could be then selling that still at market price, providing affordable housing, and that value that's being created is then captured. And we've done a study at the City Futures Research Center UNSW a few years ago, under various scenarios, if we were to have like an extra one point twenty five million people live up and down that corridor, you could realize one hundred and forty billion dollars of additional value that could be captured through such a policy that could then go towards funding a huge chunk of this high speed rail infrastructure.
00:06:54
Speaker 1: So if it did happen, let's talk about you know, if we had this up and running by twenty sixty, do you think it would be cheaper for people to travel by train than plane overall?
00:07:05
Speaker 3: Yes, if you factor in all the costs and friction points when we travel at the moment. So if you're going from say Sydney to Melbourne, which is the fifth busiest domestic route in the world, you've got a factor in an uber or a taxi to get to the airport.
00:07:19
Speaker 1: Right yeah, and that taxi out of Melbourne airport that always costs you a lot of money too. It's not just a one hundred dollar jet staff light. You're now paying one hundred and sixty one hundred and seventy just to get into Melbourne and then into the city exactly.
00:07:33
Speaker 3: And there's no train options in Melbourne. And really you know, the way they implement high speed rail, like they do around the world, they put it near existing train infrastructure. So if you were, for example, to and there's no decision yet where these stations would go, but if you've for example, put it in Paramattera and Central Sydney, you could then have access via the Metro and other train infrastructure and public transporting structure to Western Sydney. That would be a lot, a lot cheaper than going to the airport.
00:08:04
Speaker 1: Also, on a train, I feel like you probably have a bigger luggage allowance on a train as well.
00:08:09
Speaker 3: Usually overseas you don't pay for luggage allowance. There you go, the seats are bigger, you get more space if you want to pull out your laptop or sit back and relax. You know, a lot of the international high speed rail networks I've been on in China, in Japan, in Korea, across Europe and the UK, it's almost like a business class seat. You know, you get a lot more space. Luggage is not an issue. You're not paying extra for you know, check in and so yeah, a lot of the barriers are reduced and it becomes a lot more of a comfortable, seamless journey. You're not lining up to go through security, You're not queuing exactly, You're not queuing ten minutes to get onto the plane or onto the train and ten minutes to come off. It's a lot more pleasant experience.
00:08:56
Speaker 1: It sounds pretty good, right, But will this high speed rail actually get built? Going to find that out in just a moment. Welcome back, Professor Chris. You sound like you are on board with the plan to build a high speed rail network in Australia, so you think this is definitely a viable option.
00:09:17
Speaker 3: I think it's absolutely a viable option. I mean I would see it as the backbone of a national settlement strategy for the country to help alleviate some of those pressure points as we mentioned before around You know, we've got a lot of people moving into Australia. We are a big country and we should be able to accommodate that, but we do need the right infrastructure and I think it's the project of choice for the country.
00:09:40
Speaker 1: Do you think it'll actually happen? I mean, we've got the plan to start on this line from Newcastle to Sydney. The rest of it could take up to twenty sixty to complete. If it gets approved, do you think it's actually going to happen? What's the likelihood?
00:09:54
Speaker 3: Look, I think there's more momentum than we've had previously, and the strangest population is growing. We do have these issues of where's everyone going to live. I think with the current government, they're very serious about this. They've invested five hundred million on serious studies. They've done the costings as you mentioned out to doing the Newcastle Link, and if they build that link over the next ten years, I think we'll see a network evolve out of that.
00:10:20
Speaker 1: If you had to look into your little crystal ball right now and tell me what percentage likelihood do you think it is that by twenty sixty we will have a high speed rail network from Brisbane all the way down to Melbourne or percentage.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: Well, there's probably two percentage points on that, Bucky. First of all, I would say it's a seventy percent chance that it's going to be built. I say seventy because it is very much a political hot potato and has been for many decades. There's a lot of support from the current government, which is fantastic. I think if we can get that first Newcastle leg built, I think we will have broken the back of it and will see how successful it is. Mind you, that's actually the hardest leg to build, so we haven't started with an easy leg, say to canber from Sydney. We've gone Geologically speaking, it is really tough. There's a lot of tunneling, you know, going onto the Hawksbury River. So if we can get that leg built, I think that the rest will come. We'll see the benefits and connecting Newcastle on Central Coast. I think it's seventy percent. I'd like to say it's higher, but you know how we operate on three year political cycles. A project like this is going to go over at least that first leg at least three political cycles. The other element of building out to twenty sixty. Are we going to get it built by twenty sixty? Look, we can. Again, it will come down to I guess how efficient we are and building the infrastructure. But look in China, they started building high speed rail in the nineteen nineties and here we are probably thirty years later. They've built over forty thousand kilometers. Wow, and they've got another twenty kilometers twenty thousand they're building in the next five years. So China can build twenty thousand kilometers in five years, surely we can build fifteen hundred eighteen hundred kilometers over thirty forty years.
00:12:14
Speaker 1: Professor Chris from the University of New South Wales thank you so much for chatting to news dot com Dot.
00:12:18
Speaker 3: You Thanks Bucky.
00:12:19
Speaker 1: So what do you reckon if they were roughly the same cost? Would you rather take a four hour train from Melbourne to Sydney or would you still go for the one hour twenty five minute flight. I think personally I would be very willing to give the train a go. If I got a bigger ce, could take more luggage and didn't have to fat around with airport's security, I mean, sign me up. I am on board with this thing as well. Twenty sixty is a long way away though, not even sure I'll be alive fingers crossed. Am all right? Thank you so much for listening. I will chat to you next week when I'm going to be joined by one of the world's most famous drag queens. Oh yes see you later. Follow us Subscribe to from the newsroom wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: From the newsroom. A news still come to me today there. I'm Andrew Buckalow, and I am one of the many Aussies who would like to know if we're ever going to get a fast train from Sydney to Melbourne. This thing gets talked about all the time. The Federal government says there is light at the end of the tunnel, but others think the project will forever be stuck at the station bit of a train. Pun for you there, today, I'm going to find out the answer once and for all. I'm going to speak to an expert who's going to reveal how likely it is, when it could happen, and how long it would actually take to travel between our major cities if it does eventually get built. All the board, the idea of building a high speed rail network in Australia has been talked about for decades. Various plans and pictures have been made over the years, but none have been able to gather enough steam. That could change, though, if Anthony Alberanezi gets his way.
00:01:00
Speaker 2: My vision is the high speed rail that runs from Brisbane to Melbourne, grabbing jobs and connecting communities up and down the East coast of Australia, overcoming the tyranny of distance that's held regions back.
00:01:12
Speaker 1: That was back in twenty twenty two, and since then the Labor Government has set up a High Speed Rail Authority to try and make those dreams a reality. Here's their plan. They want to build a high speed rail network along the East Coast, which stops in Brisbane, Newcastle, the Central Coast, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. The trains would be capable of traveling at more than three hundred kilometers per hour. A trip from Brisbane to Sydney would take about four hours. A trip from Sydney to Melbourne would also take four hours. They want to start by building the line from Newcastle to Sydney, which is in the planning stages right now. The new project's first line would link Newcastle and Sydney in an hour and the Central Coast in just thirty minutes. It's estimated that stretch alone could take more than ten years to build and could cost up to thirty billion dollars. After that, in theory, they'd build the rest of the high speed rail line, with the aim of having the whole thing completed by drum roll please the year twenty sixty. So will it actually happen for he to discuss that is Professor Christopher Pettick from the University of New South Wales. What are the arguments for high speed rail in Australia.
00:02:23
Speaker 3: Look, I think there's quite a few arguments for If we look at CO two emissions. Just for example, every passenger on a flight from say Sydney to Melbourne, those kilograms of CO two are up to one hundred to one hundred and eighty per person. If you're on a train, you're looking at about sixteen to eighteen kilograms, so that's a reduction of CO two ten times. Also, the high speed rail would be run be electrified system, so you're not even using any fuel that planes are dependent on and you're not going to see a plane with a big EV battery anytime soon.
00:02:58
Speaker 2: All right.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: So, apart from it more environmentally friendly, why else is it a good idea?
00:03:03
Speaker 3: Australia's population is growing as we know, there's growing pains in our cities. We've got Sydney, we've got Melbourne, the two largest cities accommodating almost half Australia's population. The Australian Bureau Statistics are forecasting Australias to grow nine million people by twenty fifty. Where are all those people going to go? Do we really want all of those people to be moving to the capital cities, to Melbourne, to Sydney, to Brisbane. So there's a huge opportunity by putting in a high speed rail as the backbone of a national plan for Australia to accommodate future growth. So this would help solve some of our immigration challenges and also importantly housing affordability a lot cheaper to build houses and for people to go live around some of these regional stations that are being proposed in Newcastle where property prices are about half the price of buying a house in Sydney. Then you go out to Grafton or Coffs Harbor, down to Victoria and Shepperdon when the average property price is around five hundred thousand for a house. So there's real benefits for Australia planning our long term growth, so we can have a lot of people come into the country and not put a lot of pressure on our infrastructure in our capital cities.
00:04:18
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the arguments against high speed rail in Australia. Firstly, let's talk about the cost. So if it's going to cost maybe thirty billion dollars just to do in the Newcastle or Sydney stretch, I mean the whole thing from Brisbane to Melbourne must be an astronomical cost.
00:04:32
Speaker 3: So there's been many studies of this going back forty years around high speed rail, and I guess some of the most recent studies are probably about a decade old. We've got new studies a business case being released by the High Speed Rail Authority later this year. But the total cost back in about twenty twelve was about one hundred and fifteen billion. That's probably up now in being in twenty twenty five. It is a big project. It's going to cost a lot, but it's probably not going to cost any more than about five or six submarines out of the Orchest program. And you think about fifteen hundred kilometers of high speed rail network connecting seventy percent of Australia's population for the price of five or six submarines, I still think it's a fantastic piece of infrastructure. Plus there's also ways of helping to fund that using mechanisms. We've got tax mechanisms like value.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: Capture, explain value capture.
00:05:25
Speaker 3: So value capture is not new, it's what was used to fund the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Those who benefit from that new piece of infrastructure in our cities can pay towards it, and there's various ways that they could do that. But simply put you put in a new transformational piece of infrastructure like a light rail, you put it in a new metro, the property prices around those train stations go up because you've provided greater accessibility to jobs and services for those living near those new stations. So if you put that in the context of high speed rail, you've just basically put Hamburg as a satellite city. You've put Newcastle as a satellite city or a suburb even to Sydney, and so the land value around those stations goes up a lot. Now, what government can do is look at various policies and mechanisms. They could be purchasing some of the land around those stations at a very affordable price right now. They could be then selling that still at market price, providing affordable housing, and that value that's being created is then captured. And we've done a study at the City Futures Research Center UNSW a few years ago, under various scenarios, if we were to have like an extra one point twenty five million people live up and down that corridor, you could realize one hundred and forty billion dollars of additional value that could be captured through such a policy that could then go towards funding a huge chunk of this high speed rail infrastructure.
00:06:54
Speaker 1: So if it did happen, let's talk about you know, if we had this up and running by twenty sixty, do you think it would be cheaper for people to travel by train than plane overall?
00:07:05
Speaker 3: Yes, if you factor in all the costs and friction points when we travel at the moment. So if you're going from say Sydney to Melbourne, which is the fifth busiest domestic route in the world, you've got a factor in an uber or a taxi to get to the airport.
00:07:19
Speaker 1: Right yeah, and that taxi out of Melbourne airport that always costs you a lot of money too. It's not just a one hundred dollar jet staff light. You're now paying one hundred and sixty one hundred and seventy just to get into Melbourne and then into the city exactly.
00:07:33
Speaker 3: And there's no train options in Melbourne. And really you know, the way they implement high speed rail, like they do around the world, they put it near existing train infrastructure. So if you were, for example, to and there's no decision yet where these stations would go, but if you've for example, put it in Paramattera and Central Sydney, you could then have access via the Metro and other train infrastructure and public transporting structure to Western Sydney. That would be a lot, a lot cheaper than going to the airport.
00:08:04
Speaker 1: Also, on a train, I feel like you probably have a bigger luggage allowance on a train as well.
00:08:09
Speaker 3: Usually overseas you don't pay for luggage allowance. There you go, the seats are bigger, you get more space if you want to pull out your laptop or sit back and relax. You know, a lot of the international high speed rail networks I've been on in China, in Japan, in Korea, across Europe and the UK, it's almost like a business class seat. You know, you get a lot more space. Luggage is not an issue. You're not paying extra for you know, check in and so yeah, a lot of the barriers are reduced and it becomes a lot more of a comfortable, seamless journey. You're not lining up to go through security, You're not queuing exactly, You're not queuing ten minutes to get onto the plane or onto the train and ten minutes to come off. It's a lot more pleasant experience.
00:08:56
Speaker 1: It sounds pretty good, right, But will this high speed rail actually get built? Going to find that out in just a moment. Welcome back, Professor Chris. You sound like you are on board with the plan to build a high speed rail network in Australia, so you think this is definitely a viable option.
00:09:17
Speaker 3: I think it's absolutely a viable option. I mean I would see it as the backbone of a national settlement strategy for the country to help alleviate some of those pressure points as we mentioned before around You know, we've got a lot of people moving into Australia. We are a big country and we should be able to accommodate that, but we do need the right infrastructure and I think it's the project of choice for the country.
00:09:40
Speaker 1: Do you think it'll actually happen? I mean, we've got the plan to start on this line from Newcastle to Sydney. The rest of it could take up to twenty sixty to complete. If it gets approved, do you think it's actually going to happen? What's the likelihood?
00:09:54
Speaker 3: Look, I think there's more momentum than we've had previously, and the strangest population is growing. We do have these issues of where's everyone going to live. I think with the current government, they're very serious about this. They've invested five hundred million on serious studies. They've done the costings as you mentioned out to doing the Newcastle Link, and if they build that link over the next ten years, I think we'll see a network evolve out of that.
00:10:20
Speaker 1: If you had to look into your little crystal ball right now and tell me what percentage likelihood do you think it is that by twenty sixty we will have a high speed rail network from Brisbane all the way down to Melbourne or percentage.
00:10:33
Speaker 3: Well, there's probably two percentage points on that, Bucky. First of all, I would say it's a seventy percent chance that it's going to be built. I say seventy because it is very much a political hot potato and has been for many decades. There's a lot of support from the current government, which is fantastic. I think if we can get that first Newcastle leg built, I think we will have broken the back of it and will see how successful it is. Mind you, that's actually the hardest leg to build, so we haven't started with an easy leg, say to canber from Sydney. We've gone Geologically speaking, it is really tough. There's a lot of tunneling, you know, going onto the Hawksbury River. So if we can get that leg built, I think that the rest will come. We'll see the benefits and connecting Newcastle on Central Coast. I think it's seventy percent. I'd like to say it's higher, but you know how we operate on three year political cycles. A project like this is going to go over at least that first leg at least three political cycles. The other element of building out to twenty sixty. Are we going to get it built by twenty sixty? Look, we can. Again, it will come down to I guess how efficient we are and building the infrastructure. But look in China, they started building high speed rail in the nineteen nineties and here we are probably thirty years later. They've built over forty thousand kilometers. Wow, and they've got another twenty kilometers twenty thousand they're building in the next five years. So China can build twenty thousand kilometers in five years, surely we can build fifteen hundred eighteen hundred kilometers over thirty forty years.
00:12:14
Speaker 1: Professor Chris from the University of New South Wales thank you so much for chatting to news dot com Dot.
00:12:18
Speaker 3: You Thanks Bucky.
00:12:19
Speaker 1: So what do you reckon if they were roughly the same cost? Would you rather take a four hour train from Melbourne to Sydney or would you still go for the one hour twenty five minute flight. I think personally I would be very willing to give the train a go. If I got a bigger ce, could take more luggage and didn't have to fat around with airport's security, I mean, sign me up. I am on board with this thing as well. Twenty sixty is a long way away though, not even sure I'll be alive fingers crossed. Am all right? Thank you so much for listening. I will chat to you next week when I'm going to be joined by one of the world's most famous drag queens. Oh yes see you later. Follow us Subscribe to from the newsroom wherever you get your podcasts.
