If you ask someone to take on the role of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the new High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA), they might be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the work that needs to be done. Not Tim Parker.
A project that has been in the works for at least 30 years is beginning to gain momentum and Parker is doing everything he can to ensure its success. While attending AusRAIL 2024 Parker spoke to an enthralled audience during a session and spent much of the event speaking to the wider industry.
The future high speed rail network is expected to run from Brisbane to Melbourne, through Sydney and Canberra, and regional communities across the east coast of Australia.
The first phase connects Newcastle to Sydney in about one hour on a new dedicated high speed railway. From the Central Coast it will take about 30 minutes to get to Newcastle or to Sydney.
This route would be built first because of the strong economic activity and stable population growth of cities within the corridor. This is expected to continue to grow and underpin the region’s role as a global gateway.
The population of the Newcastle, Hunter Valley and Central Coast regions is expected to grow by 22 per cent, to nearly 1.2 million, by the early 2040s.
The Central Coast and Newcastle areas currently support more than 420,000 jobs.
New homes to accommodate growth are expected in major greenfield areas and key centres such as Gosford, Tuggerah/Wyong, Lake Macquarie and Newcastle.
The existing rail network between Newcastle and Sydney is the busiest in Australia, transporting almost 15 million passengers and significant volumes of freight annually.
Passenger services are often disrupted by freight train movements and the network is forecast to reach full capacity by the early 2040s.
The current Newcastle to Sydney journey time by train and car is about two and a half hours and road travel is often impacted by traffic accidents – with many ‘single points of failure’ existing on the M1 motorway.
There are 91,000 trips every weekday on the road corridor between Newcastle / Lake Macquarie and Sydney.
“I think there is a lot to like about the proof of concept,” Parker said when speaking about the high speed rail route between Sydney and Newcastle. “I think once we have that proof of concept, it will be easier for government and others to see the value and invest in it. I think starting with the Newcastle to Sydney leg makes the most sense as it is rapidly growing.
“Once we do the first section, we are ready and prepared to do the next one to Canberra and then onto Melbourne. It is a small step onto bigger and better things. Our cities have been well serviced for major projects in the past few years, this is a chance to give some to the regions.”
Why now?
While high speed rail has been proposed regularly, it has always struggled to gain momentum. Parker explained that previous proposals came from the private sector and a study completed in 2013 was not a business case, which is what separates this iteration from previous ones.
“We have put together the business case, with the support of Infrastructure Australia, to understand if this actually makes sense,” Parker said.
“What we have also done is pivot from a point A to point B approach to now serving the regions better and growing those regional economies.
“What it represents is not a bit of a change but a step improvement. We have a housing affordability crisis and something like this allows people to live in the regions while working in capital cities.”
Parker is of the belief that what separates the current HSRA project from ones in the past is that it is not trying to compete with the airlines but create an alternative that will push people towards rail travel from car travel.
This train will service the regions, be set up to allow pets to travel with passengers, come with WIFI and potentially have meeting rooms on board to facilitate business trips.
“For me, this will fundamentally change how Australia works,” Parker said.
“These capital cities are great places to live but they cannot fit everyone, so we need to provide other options. High speed rail will also allow these people the opportunities to visit capital cities with ease.”
Australasian Railway Association CEO Caroline Wilkie said high speed rail boosts regional economies, connects communities across vast distances, and creates a far more mobile workforce.
“A massive project like high speed rail offers significant economic benefits. The building phase alone would create thousands of jobs, from engineering and construction to manufacturing and supply chain logistics,” Wilkie said.
“This would offer a much-needed boost to the economy, particularly in regional areas that would benefit directly from construction projects and the influx of workers.
“We have a wealth of engineering expertise and knowledge, which has developed particularly in recent years with several large rail infrastructure projects across Australia. We must capitalise on this highly sought-after skilled workforce before it is lost to other parts of the world.”
Wilkie said it is not just about faster trains; but creating a sustainable transport network that is fit for the future and meets the challenges of a growing population and climate change.
“We have seen the incredibly positive response to the new Sydney Metro, reinforcing that the community loves rail when it delivers on speed, efficiency and comfort,” she said.
“Younger generations place an increasing importance on sustainable transport that minimises environmental and health harms and would no doubt embrace a high speed rail service that would make significant strides toward reducing our carbon footprint.”
While the ARA and Parker are confident in the project, he explained that it is important the project makes sense, thus ensuring bipartisan support.
“Our role is to test whether the theory stands up,” Parker said.
“Rather than saying let’s dive in, Anthony Albanese (Australian Prime Minister) has got us to do a business case to see if it actually makes sense. The business case has to stack up for us to justify it.”
While Parker believes the high speed rail will be an opportunity to service the regions, he believes two types of services will allow the trains to operate quickly between cities while still supporting regional towns.
“We will basically have two types of service, one a fast intercity train with limited stops and the other which stops regularly,” he said.
“We want to create a service that allows the regional cities to grow and be connected. We want to have the line running through these regional cities as opposed to branch lines which are often cancelled after a period of time.
“I think the longer we leave this project the harder it will get, and it will not get any cheaper.”
Looking to the market
While Australia has completed some impressive projects recently – including the country’s first autonomous rail system – the prospect of high speed rail can be daunting to the industry. Parker believes it will be critical to look to the global market for support.
“It is one of the conversations we have had with some of the supply chain. We ask if they will manufacture locally and many are put off by how far we are from the rest of the world,” he said.
“What we have done is ask a different question. We have been asking, what will it take?”
Parker explained that the Europeans and Japanese have both appreciated this question as it has allowed the HSRA to open dialogue with businesses interested in providing high-speed rail in Australia.
“What we have learnt is that if they supply the project, they want longer maintenance contracts,” he said.
“If the product is the same as what they are using in their home country, as opposed to being ‘Australianised’, it can then become something we manufacture here and supply to the rest of the world.
“They may want the partnership to really grow and be a 15 to 20 year span as opposed to just five.”
Parker explained that the team has been impressed by the response from the market and expects to be able to find a solution that suits Australia.
“We should be going for well-proven products, so we do not have to keep changing it each time we build a new line,” he said.
“For example, Spain has been developing its high speed network since 1992 and now it has 4000 kilometres serving big and small cities. I think there is a model there that we can look toward, it has similar temperatures and similar terrains.
“While any high speed rail here will have that Australian flavour, such as the level of service, we can look around the world to see what best looks like.”
Tunnelling
The preliminary investigations for the high speed rail network have had some positive outcomes already. With the line needing to traverse national parks and built-up areas, tunnelling appears to be the best option for how the first proposed project gets out of Sydney.
The proposed route may have a number of tunnels, with the longest potentially coming in at 38 kilometres. In comparison, the Gotthard Base Tunnel under the Swiss Alps is the world’s longest rail tunnel at 57 kilometres.
Parker believes Australia is ready to tackle this challenge.
“Tunnelling has become the norm now in Australia,” he said.
“The Sydney Metro project was one of the first big railway tunnel projects in Sydney and now it is everywhere, it should not be scary to us anymore.
“While tunnelling can be expensive it provides a better alternative than cutting great swathes through a national park and hills so I think the likelihood will be a number of tunnels.”
Parker said that the organisation is comfortable with the experience and technologies currently available in Australia to do these types of tunnels. He said that the process will be to work with the market and establish if they see a better alternative to tunnelling.
“We are open for refinement but the stone we have uncovered on the proposed route is Hawkesbury sandstone which is really good rock,” he said. “It really is the Goldilocks rock for what we want, not too hard, not too soft, so I think we have a really good solution for getting out of Sydney.”
How industry can support the project
Parker noted that after being promised for so long the project has met some scepticism.
“If the rail industry does not get behind this project, then why would the government?” Parker queried.
“I think if we can move toward looking at this project being made in Australia and not just made in one state, this will help.
“If we do this, we will strengthen the whole supply chain across all states, each state can begin to create speciality areas that they thrive in and enhance manufacturing in all instead of just one state growing.”
Parker believes that Australia has excellent skills and the capability to deliver high-speed rail. He expects there to be a technology and skills transfer in the initial parts of the project, but it could successfully deliver high speed rail along the east coast.
“I think building a driverless metro is more complicated than building high speed rail,” Parker chuckled.
“A whole heap of Australians have done that now and have those skills. You could see in each of those projects that once the first part was done, the second part was even better.
“I believe we have an opportunity with high speed rail to give the industry 10 to 20 years of work and then that will allow us to invest in research and development and build a solid base for the future.”
Parker noted examples such as Spain, Germany and France, all of which have continued constructing high speed rail across the country.
While the east coast is a starting point for this project once the strong base has been built, it can expand into places such as South Australia and Western Australia.
“I am doing my best to convince the rail industry that this makes sense, and we have gone a long way in demystifying a number of issues such as population size and other potential sticking points,” Parker said.
“We need an ongoing pipeline of work and that is what this project will do. Metro tunnel is coming to an end, Sydney Metro has no more work planned and Cross River Rail is heading towards completion, we need work in the industry.
“The key is to just get behind it, the travel times are realistic, it is no longer a utopia project, it is actually achievable.”
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