The main place in Australia where it would make sense to make high speed rail is the big Sydney-Melbourne route as it's been the world's 3rd or so busiest air route for many decades now. Currently it's about a 2 hour flight at a cost of a few hundred dollars with flights leaving multiple times per hour. By car this journey takes 7-8 hours, and these are the cities where you can do a lot without needing a car, so there's no incentive to take yours.

The other places where it might make sense are Sydney-Brisbane and maybe Adelaide-Melbourne since both are also 7-8 hour drives and about 2 hour flights. Last I travelled Adelaide-Melbourne the trip by train was 13 hours and by bus it was about the same because of the route and extra stops.

As another commenter has pointed out, in the smaller Australian cities you pretty much need a car to get around. So realistically the train journey is competing with the 2 hour plane ride rather than the 8 hour drive. Because you'll either drive and have a car at your destination or fly/train and need a hire car or taxis when you get there.

Don't get me wrong, I like trains and I wish Australia was less like Los Angeles and more like Europe, but it would take serious investment by the Government to make this happen and compete with the airlines.

Sounds a lot like Boston-NYC-Washington DC. Multiple flights per hour, 4hr drive between closest pair of cities, but thankfully there is a railroad that takes about the same time of driving, depending on the (rail/highway) traffic of the day.

One large problem is passenger rail is a second class citizen on US rail, legally it’s supposed to be given priority but ultimately it’s all on private rail and enforcement is non existent so it’ll get delayed for things caused by cargo. I had an Amtrak journey that had to sit and wait for an hour or two to let the tracks cool after a particularly heavy cargo train had gone by.

I would counter this by offering: Long Island Railroad, MetroNorth, New Jersey Transit, MBTA Commuter Rail, Bay Area Rapid Transit, and Caltrain. (Sorry, I don't know about the Chicago system.) All of these are very good commuter rail systems that mostly own all of their track or have primary right-of-way, so undelayed by cargo trains.

Mbta commuter rail is not a good system. I tried it for a month (Fitchburg line), the train was scheduled once an hour and was regularly half an hour or more late. The passes were exorbitantly expensive, too; more than the cost of car ownership for the same route. I so badly want it to work, I love the idea of it, but the day to day experience is comically bad.

I checked Wiki for more info about the MBTA Fitchburg line. I don't know from what station you rode, but MBTA commuter fares are much cheaper than the total cost of ownership of a car per mile. Estimates are about 81 cents per mile to drive a car (depreciation, fuel, maintenance, repairs, insurance, etc.) -- I Googled for it. Fitchburg station to North station is 53.7 miles, which would cost 43.50 USD to drive a car. The current MBTA fare is 12.25 USD -- much cheaper than owning a car.

Chicago's commuter rail system is called Metra (operating code MTX).

They own some of their own rails. UP and BNSF operate 4 of their commuter routes. CSX owns most of a few of the Metra operated routes.

Once, I was delayed 2 hours on Christmas Eve by a 1 Mile + Long freight train that broke down while crossing our main line pulling into the freight yard south of O'Hare Airport. A victim of CSX's "precision scheduled railroading".

Back when Metra pre-recorded the automated announcements, they specifically had one for delays caused by "freight train interference". The freight operators don't give a flying fuck who they interfere with, because they are empowered to.

Those are all local systems, all the cross country and intercity (for cities where their suburbs haven't merged like Chicago or the NE) stuff has to share tracks with cargo rail.

That lack of delays from cargo is also why they work a little better. One other big delay though is that basically none of the trains operate as expresses so they have loads of little stops along the way serving all the little towns along the route where little delays build up and by the end of the run they're sometimes hours behind schedule.

But commuter rail is pretty different, right? The point of discussion was more around the restrictions of intercity.

Rode the Shinkansen twice in the last week (Tokyo<->Osaka). Not the most scenic, but you do have a spot where you pass Mt Fuji.

Not sure if this route goes the full 320 km/h but it was plenty fast!

Loved the convenience and ease though. Having to schlep to the airport and deal with all the hassle of flying sucks by comparison.

Rock up to the station, buy a ticket, wait 30 minutes and go.

>Then you can go make the case for an even faster train for 2050.

I'm very sorry, but such timelines are extremely disheartening and sound like a joke. The problem is, factually, other countries can build out HSRs within 5-10 year horizons, from planning to finishing a route. If it takes 2+ generations to even get a single line... I'm not sure what I can say.

I understand bureaucracy and problem solving processes work differently in our countries, but incredibly sad to see how a person can't see a significant progress within their own lifetimes. I'm not sure when I became such a defeatist, but it is what it is.

that your name is tokio yoyo is sort of funny to me because if you look at shinkansen build/planning timelines, it is absolutely on the order of 2050 for extensions.

the japanese have a world-class trainsystem and it's built by putting one foot in front of the other for decades, not expecting it to be built overnight.

of course, you can build it faster, but then it is more expensive. so what's the priority? it's easier to fund high speed rail projects in developed nations by long, sustained investment that is easily planned for rather than having to suddenly come up with billions of dollars and then deal with the political fallout of inevitable cost-overruns associated with rushing things.

Indeed. In fact, though government approval was granted in Dec 1958, the Shinkansen construction started only in April 1959. And it took five years to open. To say nothing of the fact that it only covered 300 miles and had huge cost overruns of 90% so that the total cost in today’s money would be an astounding $15 billion.

That line from Tokyo to Osaka needed sustained funding for a neverending half decade and wouldn’t have worked as well with just a burst of effort.

By comparison, these days we have much more advanced technology so the Central Subway in SF only cost $1.9 b for the extensive 1.7 miles it covers and though construction started as late as 2012, the line was open in the blink of an eye, and passengers were riding it ten years later.

Indeed, it is a triumph of our modern methods of not expecting things overnight that had this much larger and more complex project delivered so much faster.

An old master carpenter I knew once used to say “Measure a thousand times, then before you cut measure another thousand times. Then cut once”. In the many decades since I’ve known him he has built a single table that IKEA would be jealous of on his own. Any time I gaze upon it I am reminded of our extensive success with rail in California through sustained careful effort, never rushing, always with focus. As the Bene Gesserit say, “Our plans are measured in centuries”

    > the line was open in the blink of an eye

This post is so well written, that I needed to do a double take to realise it was well-craft sarcasm. Up vote from me!

Thank you for this :)

Well played

(Although sometimes these projects are built overnight, between departure of night and morning trains [1])

The Hokuriku shinkansen started construction in 1989 and opened reaching Nagano by 1997, just eight years later and in time for the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Of course they've built more extensions to it since then, most recently to Fukui just last year.

The Tokaido Shinkansen was on the drawing board in the late 1930s, and opened in 1964, after having been interrupted by the war and shelved for many years. A project starting today and opening in 2050 would be about that speed of development, although with the then-novel technology all being proven already one would hope things could be done a bit faster now.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_BYW4YYqG5A

I think once the decision is made 10 yrs is fine. But Australia has a smaller population than most so you'd need to prove decent usage first.

> I'm very sorry, but such timelines are extremely disheartening and sound like a joke. The problem is, factually, other countries can build out HSRs within 5-10 year horizons, from planning to finishing a route. If it takes 2+ generations to even get a single line... I'm not sure what I can say.

While there are places where the build out itself looks fast, in reality I think most any train line ever build spends decades in "would be a good idea" phase of planning. The Hokkaido Shinkansen idea was on the books since the 70s, and we're still just up to Hakodate!

The Utusnomiya rail line (a local tram line) was in the proposal phase since 2001, and launched in 2023. It's been super successful (profitable!), but was still 20+ years for a single line.

Having said all of that, plenty of ideas gestate for a while, so hooking into an existing idea and getting that actually happening feels like a very good use of energy compared to trying to come up with your own special new idea.

Australia has a slowish rail network because it is sparsely populated. It is an extreme version of America, the distances between population centers are quite large and there's not much in-between. There's also not much reason for anyone from Sydney to visit Canberra, and if you do, you certainly need a car to get around.

Sydney to Canberra centre for government adjacent business you probably don't need a car. The train is near parliament and probably near your office and hotel. Maybe a taxi to get to the city centre which is 5 min away.