A change in government has put a high-speed rail link between Sydney and Newcastle back on the agenda, and a good thing, too.
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Every year, well over 30 million car passengers cross the Hawkesbury River.
This is projected to double within coming decades, and plans are afoot to further augment the M1 Motorway from Newcastle to Sydney, including major works through rugged terrain.
This would be very expensive.
There is a cost in not building high-speed rail between Newcastle and Sydney, including tens of billions spent on road pavement and consequential costs of road usage.
For the same bucket of cash, we can build an integrated high-speed rail network that will move more people, faster, and deliver more economic activity.
The M1 was transformational for Newcastle. It improved lives and gave people new opportunities.
One thing we have never done is a formal analysis of the wider social and economic benefits that flowed from building this road.
Maybe we should, because it may teach us something about how to fully enumerate the broad social and economic benefits of high-speed rail.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
No country has built high-speed rail primarily as an alternative to air travel but, here in Australia, we have obsessed about HSR as an alternative to inter-capital air services.
Japan built the Shinkansen (literally "new main line") high-speed rail as a solution for constrained capacity.
When the Eurotunnel (HS1) came into service in England, its main competitor was Channel ferries.
China did not build high-speed rail to compete with airports; it continues to invest in those. Rather, it had its own capacity and geopolitical issues.
The government's 2013 HSR Study was premised on replacing air travel, because no one stopped to ask: What is the problem we are actually trying to solve?
It's about social and economic return on investment and about moving away from solving transport problems with tar. We need to move on.
HSR should be about competing with car travel, not air travel.
It should be about maximising volume of use. The more people who use it, the more who benefit. It needs to be simple, affordable, accessible and able to leverage existing public transport infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Transport for NSW is a prisoner to the paradigm of incremental upgrades to the existing rail line.
It hasn't yet realised the potential of an integrated network, one that involves both a high-speed mainline and an upgraded conventional line working together.
There is an opportunity for the federal government to fund most of this work.
It would be the first instalment of a larger HSR network, while benefiting commuters and taking cars off the M1.
Let us now build the road of the future: high-speed rail.
SPECIFICS
Many people have pointed out that HSR is pointless without direct access to Newcastle and Gosford cities. I agree.
There is also a common misconception that HSR needs minimal stops in order to be fast and therefore is unsuitable as a commuter rail line that needs localised access.
The solution is an integrated network featuring both high-speed and conventional services.
High-speed trains use parts of the existing rail line to access existing stations (such as Newcastle and Gosford). They then use the high-speed mainline to shrink distance and time. This approach is being implemented in England's HS2 network from London to the country's north.
The northern section of the NSW HSR mainline, connecting Newcastle and the Hunter with the Central Coast, is undemanding in engineering terms and provides high benefit. Straightening existing rail lines is far more expensive per kilometre than building new.
Regarding Sydney to Woy Woy, there is no medium-speed (160kmh) route that can pass through this terrain without extensive tunnelling and/or expensive bridges.
I believe engineering opinion will converge on a simple, continuous tunnel and a cost-effective low-level bridge across the Hawkesbury.
It is worth noting that a 250kmh standard tunnel is not much larger than a metro tunnel (7.5 versus 6 metres) and that recent metro projects in Sydney have tunnels costing well under $100 million per kilometre.
Space for this column precludes a discussion of Sydney access. I'll simply note here that most journeys will be to points outside the Sydney CBD.
Tomorrow: Why good HSR design is crucial.
Russel Lunney is an engineer and high-speed rail consultant.
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