Can Australia Build High Speed Rail?

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Hey, it's your old pal Lucid Stew again.

[00:00:02]The Australian government has finally released its business case for Australian highspeed rail in New South Wales. So, we're headed back to Australia.

[00:00:12]Let's jump right into it. The plan here is to build highspeed rail between Sydney and Newcastle. That would be the first phase of a broader line connecting Melbourne and Brisbane.

[00:00:25]The initial phase would be six stations over 194 kilometers. This would be built in three stages for an estimated cost of 93.6 billion Australian.

[00:00:37]That is a P90 estimate, so it's not likely it would be much more than that.

[00:00:41]For those of you worried about increases, a train would take about 90 minutes to travel from end to end for an average of 130 km hour.

[00:00:52]Not exactly impressive for a line that's supposed to be capable of 320 km per hour top speed, but we'll get into that later. Let's take a look at the places this rail line would be stopping.

[00:01:05]Newcastle. Newcastle is a city of 170,120 km up the coast from Sydney. It's part of a larger metro area with about 500,000 people in it. It's currently connected to Sydney by the M1 motorway and conventional rail that takes about 2 and 1/2 hours.

[00:01:24]The prediction is that a high-speed rail line would cut that down to an hour.

[00:01:28]There were a few options for stations in the Newcastle area. The favorite option is the Broad Meadow area at or near the current station, and that is meant to be underground.

[00:01:38]That has changed since the business case was first submitted that has the Broad Meadow highspeed rail station at ground level. So, it's important to understand that this information is preliminary and may yet change. You can see this document is lightly redacted and unfortunately most of those redactions are conceptual renderings, which sucks, but I'll try to make it up for you when I can. About 30 km closer to Sydney is the next intended station on the west side of Lake McQuary at Moriceet.

[00:02:08]As you've probably noticed, I am American. I have visited Australia on vacation. I think it's a lovely country.

[00:02:16]I am going to butcher some of your place names in this video like I did in my first Australian highspeed rail video about a hypothetical line between Sydney and Melbourne. Go check that out if you haven't seen it. Also, please forgive me in advance. I promise to do my best on pronunciation. I was corrected enough in country to know that for instance it's not Melbourne but I'm not going to condescend to you by calling it Malibin as though I were a native. Back to what is hopefully Moriceet. This is a sparsely populated mostly suburban and rural area with an overall population of about 25,000.

[00:02:55]This station is something of a catch-all for the area. It's intended to be near the M1 motorway and a park and ride station. The high-speed line will be elevated on vioideuct through here and the station would do likewise.

[00:03:10]There's some land around the intended station which the government predicts could lead to induced development on up to 665 hectares.

[00:03:19]Travel time to Sydney would be about 45 minutes and 15 minutes to Newcastle. So, this is a viable commuter location for those that work in the big city but don't care to live there. About 40 kilometers further south is Gossford in the central coast area. Gossford is a compact business district with a population of about 8,000. The central coast has a widely dispersed population of 175,000.

[00:03:47]Gossford station would be underground.

[00:03:49]It is meant to connect to Gossford's current train station which is in the heart of the central business district.

[00:03:56]This will be a narrow twotrack station with an island platform.

[00:04:02]Construction will be cut and cover, so they dig a big hole and then fill it in when they're done. All of that makes me think the preferred site is under the Burns Place parklet next to the current train station, but the government document doesn't specify this. Travel time from Gosford should be about half an hour to both Sydney and Newcastle.

[00:04:21]Then we have Sydney, which is arguably Australia's largest city with a metro population of 5 a.5 million. Sydney is probably the most internationally recognizable part of Australia. Its harbor bridge and opera house are national icons.

[00:04:38]Sydney has a large historic train station, Sydney's central station on the southern end of its central business district. The new highspeed rail station is meant to be underneath that in a min cavern approximately 30 to 40 meters under the surface. Sydney is simultaneously dense and expansive.

[00:04:57]There isn't much room for new transportation infrastructure on the surface. Next is Paramata, 20 km to the west of Sydney CBD. This is one of Greater Sydney's dense secondary cores.

[00:05:10]Paramatada as a city of 260,000 is sometimes considered as Sydney's second CBD or the core of Western Sydney.

[00:05:19]Paramata's dense core is situated between the Paramata River and the train station. Like Sydney, the new train station here is meant to be mined and 30 to 40 m underground, which like Sydney signals an intent for it to be directly under the current station. The Sydney CBD is about 2 km long north to south.

[00:05:38]It takes about 15 minutes to walk a kilometer. This high-speed rail line would connect Sydney's two core business districts in a in less than 15 minutes, which would functionally bind them transportationally and economically. And lastly, another 25 km west, we have Western Sydney International, which is a large new airport being constructed on the Sydney Metro's western outskirts.

[00:06:04]This is scheduled to open in October of 2026. Being new construction in an otherwise undeveloped area leaves plenty of room for a high-speed rail station that will be a cut and cover station with four tracks. According to the graphic, one of the few that wasn't redacted. The station will be located close to the box for the metro station, which is clearly visible in this Google Earth shot. Travel time from Sydney Central to Sydney Western in the report is 27 minutes. One thing all of these places have in common is connectivity to existing transit networks. This is good design and lets highspeed rail function as part of a transit network rather than by itself. Greater Sydney has an expansive system of intercity commuter and metro rail that will be able to feed passenger directly into this highspeed rail line. Why this many stops? 6 over 194 km is kind of a lot for a highspeed rail line. To keep it simple, the connection to Western Sydney International creates the project with the greatest overall benefit. And the Moriceet stop is seen as delivering 5 to9 billion in long-term benefit for future development in the area in exchange for the station and 5 to 10 minutes of delay for the stop. That said, the distances between stops are generally short and trains will be at a maximum design speed of 320 km per hour for very little of this initial phase.

[00:07:35]Speaking of that, let's look at the route. It is 194 km long between Newcastle and Gossford. The route will mostly be above ground and on vioideuct about half the time. It would roughly parallel M1 from 20 kilometers west of Newcastle to about 7 kilometers north of Gossford where it would go underground.

[00:07:56]That section parallel to M1 would be the fastest. The train would likely reach the top speed of 320 km per hour for 10 to 15 km between Broad Meadow and Moriceet and then again for another 10 to 15 km between Moriceet and Gosford.

[00:08:12]Once underground north of Gosford, the route will stay underground until reaching the Hornsby area 20 kilometers north of Sydney. There the route would very briefly surface. This is for maintenance, construction, and emergency response purposes since these will be very long tunnels. 38 km between Gosford and Hornsby and about 25 km between Hornsby and Sydney Central Station.

[00:08:38]Tunnels will be sidebyside twin boore which was chosen for a variety of reasons including safety. The route between Sydney and Paramata as designed currently will be entirely underground.

[00:08:50]It looks like that will run in the vicinity of the M4 motorway and will run for about 21 km. Paramada to Western Sydney International would be about 30 kilometers and twothirds underground, curving south of Prospect Reservoir before surfacing in this still undeveloped area about 10 km northeast of the airport. If you hadn't noticed, this train will be underground a lot.

[00:09:15]115 km of the route is tunnneled with the vast majority being Twin Boore. One very important thing to note is that for some reason, probably expense speed in the tunnels will be limited to 200 km per hour. It's certainly possible for it to be higher. Uh on a new project, you'd probably expect 240 km per hour or more.

[00:09:38]This will increase travel times south of Gosford. Although the portion between Gossford and Sydney will actually be the fastest on average by virtue of being the longest segment between stations at 60 km. That is because Newcastle Sydney highspeed rail is set up more like an intercity express train. In addition, this segment between Newcastle and Sydney is meant to be the first part of a much larger East Coast highspeed rail line extending from Melbourne in the south to Brisbane in the north. That's roughly 1,800 km of highspeed rail with a 194 km slow part precisely in the middle. I'm from California. It makes sense for me to compare this to California highspeed rail. It's not dissimilar in scope nor expense. The one thing that California highspeed rail has going for it is that the fast part is in the middle. Having the slow part in the middle functionally splits the project into a northern and southern section with Sydney at the core. This is reinforced by estimates for the broader network that put both Melbourne and Brisbane times at roughly 4 hours relative to Sydney. This Newcastle Sydney part is meant to be constructed in three stages. Newcastle to Gossford would be first, then Gossford to Sydney, and finally to Western Sydney. Service would start from Newcastle to Gossford, and then expand as each of the two southern segments were completed in order. The chart here shows construction starting on the first stage in 2027. The government has released an April quote update, but really the only new information is that the development process is going to take two years, so 2028 at the earliest for construction.

[00:11:30]The latest part of stage 1B to Sydney would start 2 or 3 years later than stage 1A. Construction on stage 1A would complete roughly 8 to 10 years after commencing. I'd put it within the realm of possibility that this would be running between Newcastle and Gosford by 2040, but large-scale projects are nearly always delayed, so I wouldn't hold my breath for that either. It stands to reason that construction to Sydney would complete a few years after that. The final construction to Paramata and Western Sydney would start four or five years after stage 1B. And then they have completion here just trailing off into the future. Construction being done four or five years after stage 1B to Sydney is a reasonable assumption. So I think if things go moderately to plan, the whole thing being open between Newcastle and Western Sydney by 2050 is doable. The summary document says completion by 2042.

[00:12:37]I don't think that's impossible, but it seems very optimistic. Let's split the difference and I will predict 2046 at the earliest. Then you can hold me to it in 16 years since you will definitely be watching every video I put out from now until then. On the $93.6 billion cost, this is a P90 estimate. That is very high confidence. I get a lot of comments on California highspeed rail about how it's going to cost a trillion dollars or whatever. nonsense from people who don't know how money works. Apparently, uh, one thing about California highspeed rail is that they use lower confidence P50 and P65 estimates. Being that this is a P90 estimate, it is unlikely that Australian highspeed rail between Newcastle and Sydney Western International Airport will cost more than $93.6 billion. Even if it does, because it is still possible, it's even less likely that it will cost more by a significant amount. And in fact, it's more likely to be less than 93.6 billion. This high confidence estimate is one of the positives to take away from this business case report. One thing that's less positive is the amount of redaction in the funding and financing section of this document.

[00:13:57]There is a lot of talk in this section about how public private partnerships can help smooth out costs to government, but there isn't any mention of where government will get the money. Based on our experience here in California highspeed rail, if you're behind Australian highspeed rail being built, demand that the government can demonstrate where the necessary funds are coming from. It's easy to say the national government will pay for it when the national government doesn't tell you what taxes will be implemented or increased. And according to these charts, you will be spending 5 to10 billion a year as a country every year for 15 years just to build this part.

[00:14:39]But is all that and $93 billion worth it? That's less positive. If we look at the benefit cost analysis, things get dicey. For phases 1A and 1B between Newcastle and Sydney, you have a BCR range between 0.9 and 1.2 with an overall likelihood that BCR would be greater than one over 50 years. This basically means that it would take 50 years for the overall benefit to society to exceed the overall cost to society.

[00:15:13]For BCR, you can look at one as the break even line. Unfortunately, a BCR of one is not a great motivation for doing something. In the US, in order to be considered high quality in Federal Railroad Administration grant applications, projects need to demonstrate a BCR of two or higher over 30 years. The outlook is even worse when adding Western Sydney to the mix. The range drops between 0.8 and slightly more than one. This chart suggests a roughly 25% chance that the BCR will be one or greater. And one thing you might not expect, the projected benefit of the project hinges on development around the Moriceet station. So if Moriceet doesn't develop massively in the next 50 years, it will take that much longer for the project to show a net benefit. These numbers are in a vacuum. We must remember that this is meant to be part of a much larger system. Newcastle to Western Sydney alone is likely a poor investment. However, if we look at the difference in projected ridership with and without the larger system, usage is projected to be 2 and 1/2 times higher on this part when Melbourne, Canra, Brisbane and all the places between are considered. One reason is that the broader system is planned to include more services for all stop high-speed service between Newcastle in Sydney.

[00:16:50]20inut headways are planned with 10-minute headways between peak times.

[00:16:56]However, the system itself is being designed with a capacity for trains every 5 minutes. This leaves room for a mix of long-d distanceance, regional, and short regional services. Another parallel to California highspeed rail is that the part in the middle isn't worth it by itself. It needs to be extended to the ends in a much larger system in order to be worth building. Let me offer some more advice from the perspective of a Californian.

[00:17:25]This only makes sense if your country commits to the full system from Melbourne to Brisbane. Really, the government should be showing you the BCR of everything, not just this part. Make sure that the government comes up with a real means of funding the entire thing.

[00:17:41]Don't get stuck with this part between Newcastle and Western Sydney alone. The government itself is showing you that the best you can hope for is to get your money back from that. Under what circumstance would you invest your money if the promised return 50 years later was what you originally put in? Without this scrutiny, you could end up like California with an evershrinking initial operating segment a decade behind schedule that isn't worth it by itself and no demonstrable means of expanding beyond that. So far, the Australian government has committed 660 million to develop this project. That's a long way off from delivery of even the first part. If we extrapolate at typical high-speed rail construction costs of 100 million Australian per kilometer, the full system from Melbourne to Brisbane could easily cost $250 billion or more. That's $9,000 for each person in this country of 28 million. That is eerily similar to California and California highspeed rail. At the very least, if Australia decides to do this, it should remain vigilant to ensure that the project doesn't turn into a fiasco like in California. I hope you enjoyed this presentation. Let me know what you think of Australia's highspeed rail prospects in the comments. Where's the money coming from? In California, I've imagined increases in our gas and sales taxes or more borrowing. What would Australia have to do to gather 93 to$250 billion dollars in new taxes? There are plenty more videos to come. Don't forget, there are also plenty of ways to support this content, including super thanks. You can buy me a coffee. You can also check out my Patreon page and consider a membership. You can also join for free, so check it out. Speaking of that, here's a big thanks to my conspicuous Patreon supporters that helped make this channel possible. They know who they are and now everybody else does, too. I'll continue keeping tabs on Australia and revisit the subject next time there's a big development. But that's all for now. Until next time, I'll see you on that big, beautiful freeway.