Re: VFT letter

[ajwright@ozemail.com.au (Ashley Wright)]

On 15 Jul 1998 06:10:07 GMT, markbau1@aol.com (MarkBau1) wrote:

>Does anybody, in their heart of hearts, really believe any high speed rail line
>will ever be built in Australia?
>
>Personally I find it highly amusing to see the press and people in this ng
>waste time discussing something that doesn't have an ice cubes chance in hell
>of succeding!
>
>Let's get back to reality folks!

  Where is the proof that it will not succeed?? And what is wrong with
discussion?? If we, in Australia discounted outright every proposal or
new idea we would be still living in the dark ages. Imagine what would
have happened if for instance Qantas decieded the 707 didn't have an
"ice cubes chance in hell of succeding" or any other transport company
in Australia didn't take some risk.

  That being said the propsal for Sydney/Canberra, can in many
instances draw parallels to the Paris/Le Mans in terms of distance,
city sizes and the target market of traveller. In this case a lrage
portion of the Paris/Le Mans travellers are business travelers and
also quite a large portion of commuters (source is TGV handbook).

  As for the longer distance (high speed) routes like Paris/Lyon, you
could also draw many parallels to a Sydney/Melbourne line for eg. I
for one cannot see any reason why such a line wouldn't be successful
either.

  Where we fall down in Australia, is we do not have any conventional
lines for which a high speed line could feed. To use France as an
example the high speed lines provide connectivity between centres, but
they are also used as trunks for trains to get to other places. That
is one of the reasons why the have so many trainsets.

  I do however have no doubts that the traffic density and POTENTIAL
for a high speed line(s) provided it is a conventional wheel on rail
arrangement which can integrate with our existing city networks, can
be profitable in Australia. Maybe the cost of construction would be
high and take many years to recover the costs of infrastructure, but
the same is true for any road infrastructure that ever has to be built
in this county.

PS. You asked in another post where in the world high speed rail is
common. I would suggest that almost all of continental Western Eurpoe
has some very high speed freight trains. France or Germany are two
very very good examples. BTW the goods lines which allow high speed
freight running are also the reason why the TGV's in Frace work so
well off high speed lines as well as on high speed lines!!!
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 Ashley Wright, Canberra, Australia 
 ajwright@ozemail.com.au                                                                           
 www:  http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ajwright                         
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