The decision to allow Speedrail to proceed to the planning stage for the Very High Speed Train project has been met with both enthusiasm and criticism. The main criticism came from supporters of the Transrapid maglev, although much of that support was for political rather than technical or financial reasons.

In terms of traditional railways running at very high speeds, the French TGV is the world leader and is the only very high speed train in the world to have been exported. Variants of the TGV now run in or into France, Spain, England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and soon in South Korea and the USA. The French postal service La Poste also has seven special TGV trains for carrying mail.

Speedrail has been trying to get the TGV into Australia since its first bid in 1993. The original VFT proposal of the 1980s was also a TGV. Of the short list of six proposals in 1997, four were various types of tilting train, plus Speedrail and the Transrapid maglev.

The "leading edge" maglev technology of the Transrapid is not as new as it is made out to be. It first began as scale models in the 1960s and was demonstrated in its current form at the World Transport Fair in 1979. It is essentially unchanged since the German test track was completed in 1987. It's no more leading edge than a VN Commodore.

The Japanese maglev is far more advanced than the Transrapid. It is a very different system which runs in a U shaped channel, whereas the Transrapid is a monorail. Japan will spend many more years experimenting, evaluating and proving their technology before putting it into commercial operation.

It is claimed that the Transrapid is "virtually impossible" to derail. The RMS Titanic was designed and billed as being "unsinkable", but due to an unforseen set of circumstances she sank on her maiden voyage. The example of the recent ICE crash at Eschede in Germany is often quoted as how a single component failure can cause a disaster. The Transrapid has a very complex guidance system to keep it hovering above the guideway. Just like Eschede, a single component failure could cause a loss of lift and the Transrapid could drop down onto the guideway at a very high speed, maybe at 500km/h.

Obstructions could also cause severe damage to a maglev train. The recent storms have shown how far trees can be thrown in sustained high winds. Although there is a 15cm gap between the train and the guideway, a tree branch blown onto the guideway could cause an untold amount of damage if hit at high speed. A conventional steel wheel would simply crunch a branch to matchwood against the rail.

Professor Tony Eastham is Vice President of Research and Development at the University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong. He has been involved with high speed rail for almost 30 years and was an active researcher in the maglev and a proponent of the technology in the 1970s. More recently he has become a pragmatic realist. Having seen the development of high speed rail systems such as the Japan and France, he firmly believes these can meet the requirements of most traffic corridors worldwide. "I would put the Transrapid maglev at the bottom of the list," he said. "It's likely to be too expensive and it's just not operationally proven." Professor Eastham describes the TGV as a "world train" as it runs in so many countries.

Graham Horn of the Conservation Council of the South East Region and Canberra Sustainable Transport Working Group says "The Speedrail bid is the fast way to provide an environmentally and economically sustainable transport system with a high quality of service."

Speedrail has a very important feature which puts it far ahead of the others - the trains have a locomotive at each end of the train. This gives rise to two important benefits. There is a safety benefit in the event of a collision where the locomotive tends to absorb most of the impact. There is also a passenger comfort benefit in not having diesel or electric motors under the passenger seats.

It was claimed that both tilt trains were "too slow", however one tilt train bid, Capital Rail, was only 9 minutes slower than Speedrail's 81 minutes between Sydney and Canberra. On a full service from Sydney to Melbourne, it would take considerably longer. Of the two tilt train bids, Capital Rail proposed using the Adtranz tilt train. This is a superior product compared to the Siemens tilt train proposed by Inter Capital Express in terms of safety and quality of ride. Tilting trains do provide the best and most cost-effective use of existing rail infrastructure. Capital Rail would ultimately have provided the same service as Speedrail, but only after the track had been upgraded to similar standards over a longer period of time and at greater expense.

The route via Wollongong is one reason, possibly the only reason, that Premier Carr supported Transrapid. Countrylink, owned by the NSW government, was part of the Capital Rail consortium, so it is puzzling that Mr Carr supported a rival bid. When Countrylink evaluated an Adtranz (then Asea Brown Boveri) tilting train in 1995, the VIP demonstration ran to, you guessed it, Wollongong.

The tilt train was tested in regular service between Sydney and Canberra for two months, and slashed 42 minutes off the journey. Even if it never runs to Canberra, he Adtranz tilt train could still be of use on other routes. It could provided greatly improved services to cities such as Dubbo, Parkes, Broken Hill, Grafton, Tamworth and Wollongong on the existing track. I hope that Countrylink continues to examine tilt trains for future services.

Regardless, the decision has been made and it should be supported. It's time to put petty politics aside to ensure that this very important project is a great success.