<
https://theconversation.com/more-than-ever-its-time-to-upgrade-the-sydney-melbourne-railway-187169>
"It’s 14 years since former NSW rail chief Len Harper described the rail link
between Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, as “inadequate
for current and future needs”. And it’s 31 years since former Prime Minister
Gough Whitlam put the problem more bluntly during a TV interview:
there are no cities in the world as close to each other with such large
population as Sydney and Melbourne which are linked by so bad a railway.
Despite remedial work by the Australian Rail Track Corporation since it leased
the NSW section of track, the rail link’s most serious problem – its “steam
age” alignment – remains.
Is a new, dedicated, high-speed rail link the answer? The Labor government
thinks so: among the plans flagged last week when Governor-General David Hurley
opened parliament was a pledge to begin work on “nation-building projects like
high-speed rail”.
That vision isn’t new. A high-speed rail link between Sydney and Melbourne –
with trains operating at speeds of 250 kilometres per hour or more on their own
track – was first proposed in 1984 by CSIRO. Since then, it has been examined
in depth no fewer than three times, most recently in a report released by the
Gillard government in 2013."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
