High Speed Rail, or just high-er speed?

N700A Shinkansen in Kyoto

There's a long-standing debate amongst public transport advocates in Australia over whether we should be pushing for a brand new High Speed Rail link between Melbourne and Sydney, or for upgrades to the existing line. There are pros and cons to both approaches, and I've always struggled to come to a firm conclusion - but I think I've finally made up my mind. 

First, let's lay out both sides of the argument. 

On one hand, you might say that upgrading the existing corridor is inadequate. It's gotta be faster than flying, and over the distance from Melbourne to Sydney, 200km/h (or even 250km/h) trains would just take too long - so most people would keep flying. 

You might also say that every dollar spent on upgrades is a dollar we can't spend on a new 300+km/h line, ie it's very much either-or. 

Italy's aviation market was decimated by trains like this Frecciarossa (via Martin Elsey)

On the other hand, you might say - HSR is never gonna happen. The politicians will talk big, and commission feasibility studies, but they'll never actually build it. But some cheaper upgrades? Those might have a chance. We'll never get the 'perfect', so we might as well try and get the 'good'.

You might also point out that high-er speed rail will at least give people a viable alternative to driving - and while it might not kill aviation, it can at least take a bite out of it. 

LNER Azuma trains are capable of 200km/h on upgraded tracks (via Carl Spencer)

Of course there are shades of grey - some upgrade-advocates might see HSR as a white elephant that should never be built, while others might see upgrades as a step on the journey to building HSR later. 

Personally, I've always been torn between the "HSR now" and "upgrades now" camps. I believe HSR is a good idea, I believe it's viable, but I acknowledge the political challenges. Clearly, though, a divided rail advocacy movement hasn't gotten us either of them so far. 

The breakthrough for me came from observing the UK's debate over HS2, and trying to learn from their mistakes. 

Render of the proposed HS2 trains (via Hitachi Rail)

HS2 was sold to the public purely as a way of getting from London to Birmingham (and Manchester and Leeds) quicker - purely as a shiny, flashy High Speed Rail project. It's been cut back dramatically, partly because people didn't really warm to that vision. But the truth is, it was always so much more than that. 

Britain's railways cater to long-distance express passenger trains, medium-distance commuter trains, local suburban trains, and freight trains. These trains all have different speeds and stopping patterns, which means you need to leave big gaps in the timetables for the express trains, so they don't catch up to the train in front of them. This severely limits how fast express trains can go, and how many other trains you can run in the same corridor. 

By building a new, fully separated pair of tracks, you could separate out your express trains, and run them a lot more often without worrying about catching up to the train in front - while also running all those other trains a lot more often and a lot closer together, without them getting in anyone's way. It's a big boost to capacity for all types of train.

And since you're building an express track pair on a brand new alignment, it makes sense to build it for very high speeds.

So HS2 is not solely a new high speed line, it's primarily a capacity-adding relief line (which happens to enable very high speeds). 

High Speed 2's design as it has been scaled back over the years (via Cnbrb)

Right now, HSR between Melbourne and Sydney is being sold as a way to get passengers between those two cities quick enough to beat aviation, and that's about it (1). But this is far from the only problem we face in that corridor. 

We are extraordinarily dependent on road freight, which is inefficient, polluting, dangerous and damaging to our roads. Regional towns and cities, particularly on the NSW leg, do not have frequent trains to their capital cities. Trains from Sydney to Canberra are inadequate, and from Melbourne to Canberra are nonexistent. And, while the existing diesel trains are a low-carbon option, we do ultimately need to make them zero-carbon. 

Looking at the infrastructure itself, large sections of the line are single-track, other large sections are incredibly slow and squiggly, and nothing beyond Sydney's suburbs is electrified. 

HS2 was put forward because there was really no way to get much more out of the existing congested West Coast Main Line corridor (2). The Melbourne-Sydney line is a long way from being that congested - so let's do everything we can to improve it, to encourage more passenger and freight traffic onto it, until it becomes congested. When that day comes, we build HSR as a relief line. 

Passenger and freight trains at Cootamundra

What does that look like? 

It deserves a post in its own right, but a key part would be a package of upgrades something like what Dr Philip Laird has proposed, bypassing squiggly sections with straighter tracks. Another key part would be the progressive electrification of the corridor. 

If Melbourne-Sydney trains took about 6.5 hours and ran several times a day, they might not kill aviation in the way full HSR would, but they would take a big bite out of it. So would Sydney-Canberra in 2.5hrs. 

It's also not the case that the money is either-or; spending money on the existing line doesn't weaken the case for future investment, it strengthens it. 

Relatively few people use and rely on the existing railway, which means the constituency fighting for it is small. PT experts and advocates all know "build it and they will come," but hypothetical future users are not an effective voting bloc in the way that existing actual users are. If you invest in the railway, and make it very well used, that will create that constituency - and when it becomes plain to that constituency that the railway they use every day is full and needs to be expanded, they will force the politicians to make additional investment. 

(This is basically how the road lobby gets highways funded - each upgrade generates users, which causes a bottleneck further along, which governments feel compelled to upgrade, which generates more users, which justifies the next upgrade).

The Newcastle line sees a mix of express, stopping and freight trains

Ironically we have a great example of this closer to home. The Sydney-Newcastle line is quite slow and bendy, weaving its way through difficult terrain, but it's also quite heavily used. It's perhaps not totally full, but we have that same mixture of express trains that only stop at major hubs, commuter trains that stop at every tiny station, and a decent amount of freight - and you probably couldn't run substantially more of these trains on the existing lines without the fast trains catching up with the slow ones, particularly in peak hours. 

So the solution is to build a brand new, straighter, express track, to take the long-distance expresses off the congested line (and btw make them run a lot faster) - freeing up space to run more commuter and freight trains on the old line. Happily, the Federal government is indeed looking at Sydney-Newcastle as the first step of its HSR plans. The amount of tunnelling required does make it an expensive and difficult project - and there is unfortunately always the possibility this gets it thrown in the too-hard basket - but the benefits make it worthwhile. 

The existing, twisty alignment of the Newcastle Line (via OpenRailwayMap)

So this is where I've landed. 

Building a new high-speed express line between Sydney and Newcastle makes a lot of sense, because it not only provides fast trains, it increases capacity on a fairly congested corridor. 

On the Melbourne-Sydney corridor, our first job is to make it congested. 

Improve the infrastructure, and fill it with multiple express trains from Melbourne to Sydney (and Canberra) per day; fill it with commuter trains connecting small towns to the cities; fill it with freight. 

Then, when it's full, it will be easier for all those passengers (and freight operators) to make the case for a fast bypass line - and the politicians will have to listen. 

1. Admittedly there has also been an effort from some quarters to tie it to regionalisation, and suggest it will give people access to more affordable housing in regional cities, but I don't think the case for this is particularly strong. 

2. Or the Midland Main Line, or the East Coast Main Line; HS2's original Y-shaped route, combined with its very high speeds, was designed to provide speedy London connections to all three mainlines, and free up space for local services on all of them.