When they say a new airport for Sydney will cost around $12 billion, then yes, HSR is probably the way to go.
Especially if you consider the compression of time that could occur.
If a routing was BNE - OOL - Newcastle - SYD. If there was a spur line to Wollongong and then SYD - CBR - MEL - Geelong
If you can turn Wollongong / Newcastle into suburbs of Sydney ie travel times of 30-40 mins for a reasonable cost, then suddenly the housing crisis would be partially alleviated. It would also help with the economic growth of those regions - Wollongong especially.
How to fund it? land tax. Anyone with access to the HSR would have an instant increase in the value of their house, so it seems only fair to help pay for that.
I'm worried about what's going to happen in Australia once the world economy starts growing strongly again. The price of jet fuel will sky rocket, and suddenly travel around the country is going to plummet.
HSR could be a good economic stmulus should Europe implode and China's growth rate drop below 8%
I like all these ideas that people are having for the proposed lines if HSR did happen!
I think the consensus on this thread is almost universal - we wouldn't mind HSR at all (and a good contingent would actually really like it!), but we recognise there are significant and substantially insurmountable barriers to it being a reality.
Travel time between Newcastle and Sydney of 30-40 mins would certainly be better than the current 2-3 hours. Aeropelican might not be happy about it. It'd be good to see a better development of Newcastle and Wooloongong, however. I'm a bit dubious about the housing crisis alleviation thing. It'd be better to improve the current regional rail / other public transport / traffic flow in the current greater Sydney metropolitan area, since that would handily affect more people. With Newcastle and Wooloongong, you'd need good feeder services to allow the population to concentrate around those areas rather than Sydney (i.e. how will people in Newcastle and Wooloongong get to the HSR station; if they go by car you have a new traffic flow problem and the pay-off starts to dissipate). They don't have those at current, and would need some mad scrambling to make it happen. Then again, I could be misreading the context and/or seriousness of the "housing crisis" you speak of.
I would assume that the value of houses close to HSR
may increase due to access to transport, but it may be offset by the proximity to amenity factors associated with HSR (e.g. visual, noise). I'd posit the same dubious value argument with regular intracity rail. Buses are not so subject to this, as the only "negative amenity" is "increased traffic" due to buses (albeit buses are not the most effective solution in all and/or a substantial number of cases). Some people are less agreeable with the amenity aspect more than they are with potential accessibility aspect. (Apart from governments offering less-than-desirable market prices for resumed properties, this is probably a big reason why people oppose some significant transport developments that occur in our major cities). Also, how would the land tax be apportioned to pay for the project, and to what extent will that apportionment really make a contribution to the capex / opex?
Don't underestimate what airlines can do in times of economic crisis, particularly in this country where they are not as financially vulnerable as the ones in the USA (although the latter keep getting out-of-jail-free cards every time they pass through a Chapter 11). Yes they will bleed cash, and perhaps Virgin Australia sits precariously in this regard if we have such a scenario, but they do survive and unless the bleed is set to be medium to long term, airline capitalisation may be slowed but the market will not simply collapse, especially due to the tyranny of distance we face in Australia. HSR will succeed only because it provides a veritable alternative to air transport irrespective of the economic climate (i.e. it is a business and other case in its own right). Either HSR will replace some common intercity air travel (unlikely) or it will provide people with more options (i.e. the overall capacity of travelers increases, with air travel capacity remaining relatively unchanged and HSR providing a substantial amount of service for the "new" capacity).
