We should introduce the same policy. It would stop all those flights from… Sydney to Gosford?
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I wonder if Paris is surrounded by a big arse desiccated plateau like Sydney is?
Flights between Sydney and Canberra are a crime and should have been stopped years ago
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Anyone who gets on a plane when there is a train option available in that kind of travel time is a fucking weirdo. Who wants to go through all the airport rigmarole to save maybe 30 minutes??
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All the airlines and the corresponding unions would be absolutely up in arms should that even be proposed…
Who gives a shit?
Every industry is going to kick up a stink about regulations that affect their profits.
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Rail unions may be pleased, though. And the opinions of unions and unionists don’t count for much these days in policy circles (sadly).
Such a no brainer, in every way. Sign of how backward we are as a country that we never invested in a Melbourne to Brisbane high speed rail network (on raised platforms as in Japan or Italy where there may be problems of flooding). Stops at eg Bendigo, Albury-Wodonga, Canberra, Wagga, Sydney (could be at eg Olympic Park). Gosford, Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Coffs, Tweed Heads/Gold Coast, Brisbane.
Possible variations or additions to include Wollongong and eg Nowra; and from Sydney to Orange/Bathurst.
You realise how much smaller these countries are than ours though? I mean i’m not against it, but the costs would be absolutely astronomical if you were to do the whole east coast. Then throw in the requirements to have stops at all the major and minor city centres on the way, it’ll end up being faster to fly.
It’s usually going to be faster to fly. The point of the French legislation isn’t to get people from A to B in the fastest possible way, it’s to reduce the emissions intensity of travel. I’d gladly take a train from Sydney to Melbourne if it would get me there in the same day instead of overnight.
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Japan is over 3,000km north to south. You can argue population density for sure but size isn’t really the issue. However you don’t just build infrastructure to meet current need/demand. You build it to meet future demand, provide potential for growth, and to open new opportunity for people & business.
Brisbane to Melbourne is the most densely populated corridor in the country. A strip of country under 1800km long. Our national population is projected to grow to over 35 million by 2050 and most of those people will end up somewhere in that strip. Relying on planes & cars to service that growth seems pretty stupid in my opinion.
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North to south their railway line stretches 1,600km for high speed with a handful more branching off, I mean the distance is the same but there’s definitely significantly more people in Japan in comparison. My biggest argument is more just the sheer expense of it would be through the roof. You wouldn’t be able to use most of our current tracks placements and would be ploughing through a lot of mountains and also national parks. My understanding with high speed rail is you can’t have that many steep inclines and declines as well as major bends etc in comparison to regular rail.
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It would be an expensive solution to build high speed rail. Unfortunately, the only other options are
A) we keep flying, being one of the biggest emitters per capita, and half the population is living without fresh water by the end of the century
B) slow trains and driving long range
C) we bank on our airlines being able to rapidly transition to EV aircraft, which would allow to to utilise the existing infrastructure for the main part, but we are still at the stage of demonstrators and pre-orders for small short range aircraft which would mean very expensive tickets even if they do prove viable
OR D) Australians learn not to travel long distances anymore
Not having to travel to Victoria and Melbourne?
I don’t see an issue here.
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A) Flying is here to stay, until we get the rail, but the high speed rail would more likely be built by the states to connect regional centres, before expanding interstate.
B) Will never be a popular option
C) That’s a possibility, but as you stated, will be expensive and will take decades
D) Again never going to happen. Our major business and population centres are extremely far from each other, especially once businesses have people in offices throughout the country. As an example, my biggest instrument supplies are happy to fly their technicians around the country, rather than have a specialist in each major city as it saves them over 100k a year per staff member. Teams and everything else definitely helps, but there generally needs to be some face-to-face contact in businesses.
I mean I have no idea if it’s even feasible with our military infrastructure, but don’t we have a Corp of Engineers that would be able to assist with the construction of a HSR network?
Again, I could be fantasizing in my head a little, but doesn’t the US Army pride itself on it’s Corp of Engineers doing a lot of civilian infrastructure?
Surely by doing that, you would be cutting down on things like labor costs. Obviously, you still need your engineers and all the rest of your specialized people. They would be clearing the rail corridor, helping to build the lines, constructing infrastructure etc.
And now I’m probably veering off into a argument about ‘forced labor’ here, but are prison labor groups illegal in Australia? Obviously, they wouldn’t be doing any sort of specialized work (unless you have a jail inmate with a engineering degree), and would mostly be doing laboring work, building the infrastructure and stuff needing to have a rail system, but surely, we could utilize long-term prisoners to help.
I’m not saying go back to the olden days of ‘chain gangs’, but you could use it as a sentence reduction scheme. I.E. For every week of helping to build the railway, you get a day off your sentence, or something to that degree. Obviously, they would still be paid a ‘wage’, but instead of cold hard cash, they get it deposited into a savings account that they can access upon release, or even invested into education programs, or apprenticeships upon release?
Dunno, I’m obviously spitballing ideas without having any real idea of what it would take. But we DO need a decent rail network in Australia that connects at least the East Coast, and the reality is it’s going to be mega fucking expensive.
Departs Sydney 7.40am, arrives Melbourne 6.30pm.
The big problem is it could be a lot faster, if they spent some serious money on the track.
Also a lot of the time you are put on a bus and that is the pits.
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Compared to the cumulative cost of having to retrofit the infrastructure to support millions of extra people living in Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane?
Decentralisation simply does not happen without fast rail.
And once companies banking on scenario A suddenly have to deal with the real cost of greenhouse gas emissions being paid every time you fly, will they still be happy to shell out for that one technician to fly everywhere?
It’s kinda mental to think scenario A is just unavoidable because the other options would cost more. It’s going to cost a ludicrous amount of money not to change. Insurance premiums for properties outside of major cities (even within them if they have a river) are already going up thanks to climate change, and the increase in price of fossil fuels thanks to war in Ukraine is only a drop in the ocean compared to future price increases we can expect.
We’re literally full.
Anything new is going to be in the traditional low density style instead of mid and high density.