Fast track urged for intercity high-speed rail project
Passengers will be on Australia’s first high-speed trains in just 12 years if the latest proposal for the country’s rail network leaves the station.
Stretching almost 200km from Newcastle to Sydney, newly released details show the long-touted line will be built in three phases, with the final section opening in 2042.
Infrastructure Australia I recommend you move forward. With the plan in evaluation of a business plan that the Albanian government’s High Speed Rail Administration has been working on since finishing it in 2024.
The nation-building project will ultimately allow passengers to travel between NSW’s two most populous cities at speeds of up to 320km/h, reducing travel time from Newcastle to Sydney from two-and-a-half hours to one hour.
Six stations in total will be built. The first phase, covering Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and the Central Coast, will be delivered in 2037, while the second phase, between the Central Coast and Sydney Central, will be completed in 2039.
The third section, connecting Central to Parramatta and the soon-to-open Western Sydney Airport, will open in 2042.
A large portion of the route (almost 60 percent, or about 115 km) will be tunneled, necessitating lower speeds.
The evaluation report stated that “Given the large amount of tunneling and new rail systems, we expect the costs to change significantly as the maturity of the design increases,” and stated that it is not yet possible to make a reliable assessment of the cost-benefit ratio of the proposal.
The former NSW coalition government began developing a high-speed rail proposal from Newcastle to Sydney before abandoning the plans ahead of the 2023 election after spending $100 million on feasibility studies.
NSW Premier Chris Minns was less than enthusiastic when asked on Thursday about the feasibility of the project without federal support.
“The federal government has much, much deeper pockets than NSW. If this is an initiative they want to pursue, that’s great for NSW, I’m not going to get in their way,” he told reporters.
But federal Transport and Infrastructure Minister Catherine King welcomed the plan, describing it as “a nation-shaping investment”.
“This will unlock homes, create employment opportunities in the regions and enable our ambitious carbon reduction targets to be met,” a spokesman for Ms King said in a statement.
“The government is committed to developing high-speed rail, which has proven its ability to bring people and places closer together abroad.”
The High Speed Rail Authority is seeking funding from the Commonwealth to progress design work, secure planning approvals and refine cost estimates for the first two phases.
The Albanian government has already allocated $500 million to planning efforts for the project. More studies are needed to determine the final cost, but it is likely to reach at least tens of billions of dollars.
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