Fantastic to attend the Australia High-Speed Rail Association’s Mini-Conference hosted by Joe Langley and Damien Ottaviano.
The conference included a great selection of speakers, who reinforced that investment in HSR can:
1. unlock significant socio-economic value for Australia’s regions,
2. improve location choice and housing affordability by levelling settlement patterns more evenly between mega-cities and regions,
3. contribute to net zero targets by enabling mode shift at a radical scale, and
4. produce more equitable outcomes across geographies.
The speakers reiterated that:
· Investment in HSR needs to be staged. Funding aside, securing appropriate skills to deliver will be a challenge.
· If decision-making and focus was hinged merely on BCRs, then the business case may only stack up if ten trains operated an hour. That will most certainly not be the case on day one. The focus needs to be broader, i.e., on unlocking value, and not just value for today’s generation, but for the future.
Importantly, the conference emphasised that HSR and air-services between Sydney – Melbourne, or Brisbane, can co-exist. These two modes serve very distinct markets. Whilst air routes connect the mega-cities, HSR will enable connectivity between regions and these mega-cities.
In my view, some fundamental questions remain:
· Land-use planning, and settlement patterns are a state-remit in Australia, not national. It’d be interesting to see how the HSR Authority works to deliver a program that requires cross-jurisdictional coordination and agreement on alignment, station locations, and staging.
· Finding a feasible high-speed solution will be akin to solving a constraint-optimisation problem. There will be an array of possibilities, noting geographical, topographical, technical, and affordability constraints. Some solutions may meet the available funding envelope but may not meet expectations on alignment and station locations. Others may satisfy speed and alignment expectations but may be cost-prohibitive. What tools will Government use to select a solution that delivers value?
· Any investment in HSR will be a multi-billion-dollar investment. How will Government muster the funds, and more importantly, the courage, to find alternative sources of funding, noting that a critical mechanism, namely value-sharing, remains contentious?
· Funding challenges aside, investment in HSR will have to be at the expense of other initiatives. What frameworks will be used to decide if this investment represents better value relative to others?
· Stakeholder engagement and buy-in will not be easy. The average punter will most likely be focused on the BCR, which in my view, may not be that high, at least for the first section between Sydney and Newcastle. How will the Government marshal support for such a large program of works and meet expectations of its stakeholders?
Account Director at SITA
3moLooks like a great event - congratulations to all the winners & for ESPs sponsorship 👍