The Sydney to Melbourne train journey could be slashed from 11 hours down to just six, and at a fraction of the cost of high-speed rail plans, if sections of the track were upgraded for medium-speed rail, a train expert says.
While a high-speed rail line would take decades to build, laying just 200km of new, straighter track to replace an existing 250km stretch of steam-age railway would deliver a quicker service within four years, according to Wollongong University associate professor Philip Laird.
Laird’s proposal, presented to the Ausrail annual conference this month, would also require three major track deviations to be built in New South Wales, between Glenlee and Mittagong, Goulburn and Yass, and Bowning and Cootamundra.
The proposal would reduce the length of the Sydney to Melbourne railway from about 960km to 900km. Crucially, a track upgraded to modern engineering standards could benefit from tilting trains – which can travel through curved sections of the track at higher speeds where the current XPT rolling stock must slow down.
Tilt trains could travel at 170kmh – under the 200kmh considered to be “high speed” – and make the journey between Sydney and Melbourne in about six hours, Laird says, almost half the time it takes the decades-old XPT trains.
The faster service proposed by Laird would only make a handful of stops at regional centres such as Albury and Wagga Wagga, as opposed to the more than 10 stops currently.
Laird has estimated his plan would only cost “in the billions of dollars, not tens of billions” required for high-speed rail projects, and could be running within four years, even with current construction constraints and costs. However, governments would need to quickly embrace the plan.
Laird, who is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport and was the inaugural national chairman of the Railway Technical Society of Australasia, believes that the environmental benefit is essential if Australia is to reach its short-term and 2050 emissions targets.
In addition to the larger share of high-polluting air and road passengers who might consider the shorter six-hour service, upgrading the track would make rail a more competitive option for freight along Australia’s east coast. Its current share has dwindled to just 2%, Laird said, the result of years of road improvements that have seen trucks dominate the route.
“If you can deliver something faster than the car trip (about nine hours), people will come to it. It doesn’t only have to be high-speed rail costing tens of billions of dollars and taking decades to complete,” Laird said.
He points to similar rail upgrades that improved services between Brisbane and Rockhampton, as well as earlier upgrades in Western Australia, in proving that his Sydney to Melbourne plan is possible.
However , Laird is scathing of a lack of progress made by the Australian Rail Track Corporation – the national body that the NSW and Victorian governments leased their section of track to – on the Sydney to Melbourne railway.
He said the Sydney to Melbourne railway has become deficient under the ARTC, and believes a separate authority should now be tasked with upgrading the interstate track.
“The ARTC have just decided it’s all too hard in the past,” Laird said.
He noted the Albanese government’s proposed high-speed rail authority could lead the upgrade, and said he was hopeful the new government would move away from the decades of inaction that has plagued the Sydney to Melbourne corridor.
“The big question is will this just be more of the endless studies into high-speed rail, or will they get their hands dirty and upgrade (the track).”
Laird says the environmental benefits will be profound. He estimates freight could move more cheaply between the cities on the upgraded track in 10 hours.
If rail’s freight share was to gradually increase to 50%, it would result in a net reduction of 100m litres of diesel being burnt each year, and $150m less spent on road maintenance due to truck damage annually, Laird estimates.
“If Australia fails to bring the Melbourne-Sydney track into the 21st century, we can expect not only excessive greenhouse gas emissions but also growing external costs from many more trucks on the Hume highway. Congestion at Melbourne and Sydney airports will worsen, and Australia will be left increasingly out of step with other countries in Europe, North America and Asia,” Laird said.
While the track would not need to be electrified for trains to achieve the six-hour speed, he said the emissions improvements would be amplified by electrification in the future.
Laird’s proposal comes amid a surge in demand for cheaper interstate train travel as Australians face record high domestic airfares. Last month, Guardian Australia revealed patronage between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane has more than doubled in recent months as services are booked to capacity ahead of the Christmas period.
Despite the 11-hour trip time, the XPT service between Sydney and Melbourne costs as little as $78, with a smaller carbon footprint for travellers than those flying or driving cars on the route, according to Guardian Australia analysis.
Dr Geoffrey Clifton, a senior lecturer in transport logistics management at the University of Sydney business school, said the transport community had long been calling for modest upgrades on the Sydney-Melbourne corridor.
He said the estimated six-hour travel speed and delivery times in Laird’s proposal were “ambitious but certainly reasonable” with existing technology already in place in other Australian states.
“The idea of upgrading the existing rail line certainly makes sense on the face of it,” he said, noting any plan would need a cost benefit analysis.
“You hear wacky ideas all the time in transport, but this is not one of them,” Clifton said. “It’s a sensible idea.”
