On 11/03/2010 9:11 AM, johnsuth@nospam.com.au wrote:
> I hope that our politicians demand excellence from CRCs which ask for taxpayers money for dubious
> projects. A self funded business case would be an excellent up front reality check. The
> proponents of a High Speed passenger rail service in the East Coast corridor should acknowledge
> that overseas examples of HS rail are in socialist command economies with much higher population
> densities than Australia, and that the HS track would necessarily be separate from and additional to
> the already investigated but unfunded freight rail track in the same corridor. Then they can
> suggest which government is willing to pay for the track, and how the existing passenger rail
> operators feel about stumping up the funds for a fleet of super trains. NSW Countrylink runs one
> daylight service each day to Melbourne and to Brisbane which, inspite of comfortable seating, OK
> food and friendly staff, attract only a handful of pensioners, half of whom join and depart at
> intermediate stops which a HS train could not make while still being called HS. How would a shorter
> journey time multiply this patronage the thousandfold necessary to fill the number of trains each
> day required to repay the cost of the track, and the signalling which would be a small NBN, and the
> overhead wiring and distribution? I acknowledge the arguments against air travel, but air has
> infinite bandwidth, and has no acquisition, construction or maintenance costs. We will still need the
> airports for overseas travel. I am looking forward to reading a business case on the CRC web site.
>
>
A quick look at the Qantas timetable shows that Qantas/Jestar have 43
flights from Sydney to Melbourne, with a little under 8500 seats. Virgin
add to that, so the total capacity is proababy in excess of 10,000
seats. Thus there's a significant potential market. The question is
whether a link can be constructed that is fast enough to capture a
worthwhile share of the market, and at a cost that is competitive with
air travel. Journey times between Sydney/Melbourne, Sydney/Brisbane
would have to be under three hours IMHO, which implies trains that are
fast even by today's fast train standards.
A maglev could do it and the technology certainly exists, but no long
distance maglev has been built anywhere, due to the expense.
Sylvia.
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