Transport

Can high speed rail really solve our population problem?

   The loss of 200,000 people would not much change Melbourne or Sydney,
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   [ ] ‘Without efforts to develop a deeper economic base within regional
   cities, high speed rail risks creating highly subsidised long-distance
   commuters.’ Illustration: Rail Projects Victoria

   High speed rail is having one of its regular moments in the sun in
   Australia, with media articles attracting comments such as “just build
   it”, or seeing our lack of fast rail as evidence of a national
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   $15bn – we need to ask whether it can solve our urban problems.

High-speed trains to nowhere: Australia's long-running rail fail

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   advantages the larger city more than the regional cities, as evidenced
   by the cases of Paris and London. In the UK Prof John Tomaney concluded
   that that the regional benefits of a planned High Speed 2 network are
   “ambiguous at best and negative at worst”.

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   Paris, which has a similar role to Sydney in New South Wales and to
   Melbourne in Victoria. The two regional French cities that have
   benefited most from France’s TGV high speed rail system are Lyon and
   Lille. This is because of their role as nodes between the international
   HSR links to the Paris main line and among conventional regional
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   just population dormitories remains untested in current HSR plans.

Too good to be true? Australia's high-speed rail dream leaves a bitter taste

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