Re: Canberra-south coast

[dbromage@fang.omni.com.au (David Bromage)]

Bill Bolton (billbolton@computer.org) wrote:
> dbromage@fang.omni.com.au (David Bromage) wrote:

> > Why not? Sydney - Melbourne is the third busiest air corridor in the
> > world.

> Are you sure... what's the source of your data and how much of that
> traffic is Sydney to Melbourne ?

The figure was 5.6 million passenger journeys in 1999/2000 (DoTRS), a
period which ended just before Impulse and Virgin started flying. About
85% of the traffic is Sydney to Melbourne or vice versa, with 10% to/from
international services and 5% to/from regionals. On top of this, about 4
million passenger journeys are made by road each year (car and bus), not
including travel to intermediate locations.

The second busiest route is Sydney - Brisbane with 3.3 million, Melbourne
- Brisbane is 3rd with 1.7 million, Sydney - Coolangatta is 5th with 1.3
million, and Sydney - Canberra is 10th with 0.9 million. Of the regionals,
Sydney - Albury is 4th with 125,000 (1998), Sydney - Wagga is 5th with
116,000 and Sydney - Coffs Harbour is 6th with 112,000.

Back in 1993, the world's busiest air route was London - Paris with 4.1
million passenger journeys (ICAO). By 1998 it had fallen to under 3
million. Eurostar now carries 56% of all London - Paris passenger
journeys, including a considerable amount of new travel. Eurostar also
carries about 75% of all business travellers. I don't have the figures for
London - Brussels, but the proportion moving from air to rail was about
the same.

The capacity of faster trains to generate new travel is well documented,
going back to the London - Glasgow electrification in the 50s and 60s. In
1980, before the TGV, the total number of passenger journeys between Paris
and Lyon by all modes of public transport (rail, air, coach) was 1.5
million. In 1982, the first full year of TGV operation, the number of rail
journeys alone was 3.5 million. In 1998 it was 23 million!

You don't even need to go much faster to win passengers from the airlines.
Take Brisbane to Bundaberg for example.

You simply can't look at the population of two cities and say it can't
support a high speed rail service. You have to look at the number of
travellers between them, not population. Sydney - Melbourne is now busier
than the world's busiest air route was only 8 years ago, and Sydney -
Brisbane is not far behind.

The numbers will be considerably higher now that Impulse and Virgin are
flying. Sydney - Canberra increased something like 12% in the 3 months
after Impulse started flying the route, although much of that was new
travel on the other two since fares were reduced.

Cheers
David