Labor will promise $1bn to begin buying the land corridor for an east coast high-speed rail line between Melbourne and Brisbane via Canberra and Sydney.
The party’s infrastructure spokesman, Anthony Albanese, will make the commitment to advance the project on Friday, as Labor releases its budget costings.
In a statement, Albanese said the commitment would help deliver a rail line to “revolutionise interstate travel and regional development in Australia” with speeds of up to 350km/h.
He cited a 2013 feasibility study that identified a 1,748km route and “found the project would return more than $2 in public benefit for every dollar invested”.
That study found that 90% of the benefit of the project would accrue to users of the fast rail, particularly business travellers, with only a “small positive financial return on investment” to be expected.
It found express journey times would be 2 hours 37 minutes between Brisbane and Sydney, one hour and four minutes between Sydney and Canberra, and two hours and 44 minutes between Sydney and Melbourne.
Governments would be required to fund most of the upfront capital costs, for a project estimated to cost $114bn in 2012 terms, it said.
Labor has already committed $50m to create a high-speed rail authority, which would be required to finalise track alignment, start land acquisitions and finalise an updated business case for the project in consultation with Infrastructure Australia.
Albanese said that after “nearly six years of Coalition inaction” Labor had developed “a comprehensive plan to invest in the rail and roads our nation needs”.
He described east coast fast rail as “an economic game-changer for communities along its path”, including the Gold Coast, Grafton, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Newcastle, the New South Wales central coast, southern highlands, Canberra, Wagga Wagga and Shepparton.
“It would bring these communities closer to capital cities, allowing for increased commuting while also strengthening the case for regional business investment.”
In 2017 Infrastructure Australia estimated that securing the corridor alone would cost $4.3bn, but would save $1.9bn compared with acquiring the corridor at the time of construction.
Infrastructure Australia listed preserving the east coast high-speed rail corridor as a “high priority” initiative as recently as February. By 2075, the combined population of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane is projected to exceed 30 million people.
The Coalition’s 2019 budget included $2bn for fast rail between Melbourne and Geelong and $40m to study five potential new routes from Sydney to Wollongong, Sydney to Parkes, Melbourne to Traralgon, Melbourne to Albury-Wodonga and Brisbane to the Gold Coast.
In September a list of leaked infrastructure spending suggested the Turnbull government had planned to spend $1.5bn on high-speed rail connecting Newcastle, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.
