Flight of fancy? New company promotes East Coast high-speed rail
In Canberra, any day of the week, walk outside your home or workplace and look up. There’s every chance you’ll see at least one vapour trail following a plane on the SYD-MEL run.
Now the fifth-busiest commercial air route, the trip between Australia’s two largest cities is around 90 minutes - plus check-in, plus boarding, plus disembarking, plus the inevitable taxi into the city. Hell, let’s call it four hours from door-to-door.
That paragraph alone contains all the justification needed for a high-speed rail (HSR) link down Australia’s east coast. A three-hour train trip between city centres is the stuff of which dreams are made.
Today, Fairfax is reporting that a little-known entity – Consolidated Land and Rail Australia – is looking to put HSR back on the table. There’s not much on the website so far, except for a timer counting down and the promise that, in 44 days, the company will “reshape Australia.”
Naturally, a spur into Canberra to link both Sydney and Melbourne to the capital has to happen as well (Qantas alone runs 31 flights a day between Sydney and Canberra).
Canberra Airport's HSR Terminal Concept
You might think this will put pressure on Canberra Airport. However, the company has previously stated its support of HSR, even promoting itself as the ideal location for the terminal.
To use a poorly chosen pun, will a proposal for HSR fly? History would suggest not, however our train-loving PM has promised to hear them out in a meeting at Parliament House today.
All we can say is, don’t hold your breath.