With the government conducting a hearing into the benefits of high-speed rail last week, Labor’s Anthony Albanese submitting a private member’s bill to parliament, and former Liberal minister Andrew Robb supporting such a project, the time is right to approve and start building a much needed high-speed rail system in Australia that would link 60% of the population and slash our greenhouse gas emissions.
With the Turnbull government supposedly committed to tackling climate change head on, and with the prime minister embracing technology, innovation and disruption, high-speed rail is a zero-emissions form of transport that would radically reduce our emissions, connect our regional and urban areas, create jobs and enhance investment.
So what are we waiting for? Whereas Japan, Germany and other European countries have had high-speed rail for decades, this project always seemed to get blocked by two issues in Australia: perceived high cost and perceived lack of demand. Let’s break both of these issues down.
The oft-cited perception is that high-speed rail costs too much. But how much does it cost and how does this compare with other transport options?
The previous Labor government commissioned a report that showed a high-speed rail network connecting Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane would cost $114bn. A study by Beyond Zero Emissions showed it would cost $84bn. A further study by the Australasian railway association brought the costs down to $68bn.
The costs get lower with each study, largely because of better economic analysis and modelling, and detailed studies of the rail path, particularly the routes coming into our major capital cities.
Now, $84bn sounds like, and is, a lot of money. But when compared with the $18bn federal and state/territory governments spend on roads each year, it would take just over four years of road funding to build high-speed rail connecting our east-coast cities.
Demand is the other argument. According to critics, Australia doesn’t have the density of population or the demand to fill those high-speed rail carriages. Given Sydney to Melbourne is the world’s fifth busiest air route, and Sydney to Brisbane the world’s 13th busiest, maybe there is demand after all.
Approximately 60% of Australians live within 50km of the proposed route, so there is certainly the density of population. And the distances between Sydney and Melbourne and Sydney and Brisbane have been shown to be perfect for take up of high-speed rail in many countries around the world. Travelling those distances by high-speed rail takes about three hours, which is more time-competitive than air travel. By the time we’ve caught a taxi to the airport, gone through security and waited for the flight, we would be more than halfway along our high-speed rail journey, which also connects us at the city centre and with other forms of public transport such as local trains, trams and buses.
With the cooling of the mining boom, the investment community is crying out for infrastructure projects with safe returns. And infrastructure jobs from the mining boom can be redeployed into such a nation-building project. What we need is a government with vision beyond the next election, the vision that looks to the benefits for the nation that will last many generations and many election cycles.
One other misconception is that governments would have to cover the full costs of building high-speed rail. With high-speed rail being a commercial proposition, the private sector can meet the majority of the costs. Even Andrew Robb admitted last week that several international firms had offered to pay for the project.
High-speed rail is a commercially viable project that is not dissimilar to building a toll road in terms of the financial model that can be deployed. Under the toll road scenario, governments approve the project, the private sector builds it, and pays off the capital over time by charging a fee to users.
A high-speed rail project can use a similar financial model. The study by Beyond Zero Emissions showed for the first time that the capital costs of high-speed rail could be repaid over a 40-year time frame, making it a commercially attractive proposition not dissimilar to a toll road. Land costs are relatively low (about 5% of total costs), and construction costs are about $40bn. By charging high-speed rail passengers slightly less than the weighted average price for air travel between our capital cities, the capital could be repaid in a commercially attractive time frame.
Like so many of Australia’s critical projects, and one which has the triple effect of boosting jobs and innovation, connecting our nation’s communities, and seriously addressing climate change, this disruptive project is a must for Australia if it wants to to join other developed economies in the 21st century.
One simply cannot imagine an Australia, with populations in both Sydney and Melbourne of eight million, still relying on air, road and an ageing rail system. If the government is really serious about addressing climate change, and embracing technological innovation and disruption, this project has to be at the top of the list.
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