Re: Overland to continue 4 another 2 years

[RC <richy@yahoo.com>]

Population thresholds in some parts of Australia easily exceed that required
to provide good rail transport at a profit.

Obstacles include:
- the government has already provided a service (often at a loss) which
precludes competition
- historic layouts which also prevent optimum use eg is Central Station
where it should be? Would you catch an Airport train or VFT from there when
closer terminals might be built to places of origin.

Imagine if there where no railway from Sydney to Parramatta and Parramatta
road looked like Manila or Bangkok...buses crawling along taking 2 hours for
20 km. If the private sector didn't take that one up the government would be
quickly pressured into action.

But too late there - what about Sydney to Chatswood or Bondi Junction? Same
problem - no money to be made now. And if they'd listened to Henry George
and let the developers capture all the improved land value.

Also we are stuck with the historic mind set - 100 years of industrial
warfare left the public tired of public transport issues and managers
looking for better pastures to nurture their business and political careers
- and unions more committed to guards sitting in useless brakevans and
firemen making tea.

Imagine if the branch lines from Batlow to Yeovil had closed a good 30 years
earlier than they did (or even if better, if many of them had never been
built at all) and the money saved thereby was spent on the lines they
already had - upgrading with heavier rails, better signalling, heavier
locomotives, easier grades and curves, bigger loading gauge, larger wagons,
etc - I doubt they would be losing money now.

I'm not sure decision makers - public and private - can really see rail
performing in this country - except in Qld and Perth - so used to failure
have they become. A shame really, when you see what can be done overseas
RC

Vaughan Williams wrote:

> > The population of France is 60 million people living in a country
> > smaller than the State of NSW.
> > Paris alone has a population of 11 million people .
> > There is no comparison whatsoever between the European situation
> > and Australia .
> > We simply dont have enuf people to justify or support very fast trains
>
> Right answer, wrong reasoning.
>
> As I see it, talk of VFT's misses the point when we don't have a high
> quality conventional rail service. Although Australia as a whole has a
> low population density, if we accept that we don't need a regular
> public transport service to the Nullabor Plain and that trains once an
> hour to Mount Isa are a bit much, we can then look at what is really
> needed.
>
> Sweden has twice the population of the State of Victoria and is three
> times the size. A lot of it is uninhabited as is, effectively, a lot
> of the State of Victoria. The reality is that the majority of
> Australians live in areas with perfectly reasonable population
> densities (Victoria, SE SA, Eastern NSW and SE Qld). We can justify a
> high quality, moderately fast (c.180kph) rail service between the main
> centres. This can be done at modest cost compared with the VFT
> proposals and has the added spinoff of benefiting freight.
>
> Vaughan