[+] Tyranny of Distance: Fast Rail to Set Opportunity in Motion

Perhaps no one has summed up Australia’s geographical remoteness better than historian and academic Geoffrey Blainey, who titled his 1966 book The Tyranny of Distance . Blainey was referring to the early uncertainty Australians felt of their future economic prosperity, given the centre of the British Empire as well as the United States were great distances from the first settlement. What Blainey did not say was that the tyranny of distance still existed once you sailed into Sydney Harbour. And still does. Australia counts just five cities of more than a million people, but 13 of more than 200,000. All bar the national capital are dotted along the biggest coastline in the world. Most are a plane ride from each other. That may be about to change. Last week, and with little fanfare, a Bill passed both houses of parliament setting up the federal government’s High Speed Rail Authority , which, according to Transport Minister Catherine King, will be charged with overseeing “the construction and operation of a high-speed rail network along Australia's eastern seaboard”. “I think the government should be commended for that,” says Nick Cleary, chairman of Consolidated Land and Rail Australia (CLARA). But he warns high-speed rail is not just an opportunity to get people between Sydney and Melbourne faster. It enables a rebalance of the whole idea of Australian settlement. “At the moment we have urban sprawl with a little bit of infill as our only mechanism to house people,” says Cleary, who with investors founded CLARA in 2011 to change the landscape of how people live. “And what that’s doing is pushing people away from family, from friends, from jobs, creating excessive mental health problems, as well as housing affordability problems.” ▲ The Planning Institute of Australia national policy director John Brockhoff. The Planning Institute of Australia agrees. “It would be so much more advantageous to the country if high-speed rail fitted into a settlement strategy and some broader outcomes for the regions, states and the nation as to how it wants to accommodate its growth,” says the institute’s national policy director, John Brockhoff, “rather than being a piece of infrastructure in the abstract.” Almost 200 years after George Stephenson drove Locomotion No.1—the first steam train to carry passengers on a public line—rail remains the most efficient means of moving large numbers of people. However, Australia’s road to high-speed rail—generally accepted to be travel at more than 250 kmh—has been a rocky one. It’s been under investigation since the early 1980s, and every government since has had another look at its viability. The most commonly suggested route is between Australia’s two biggest cities, which is also one of the world’s busiest air corridors. However, a comprehensive study in 2012-2013 suggested two eastern seaboard routes covering Brisbane-Coffs Harbour-Newcastle-Sydney-Wagga Wagga-Shepparton-Melbourne, with spur lines to the Gold Coast and Canberra. The then cost was estimated at $114 billion and the then minister of transport was one Anthony Albanese, now Prime Minister. The new authority will build on that previous work, albeit with a less ambitious plan. An initial $500-million commitment will plan a Sydney-to-Newcastle link. At speeds of 250 or even 300km/h, that journey would be cut to about 40 minutes, compared with 2 hours, 20 minutes to drive the 160km. ▲ A render of a high-speed train at a station in Newcastle. “There are a whole range of reasons we don’t want to just continually add more lanes to the M1,” Brockhoff said. “And there are compelling reasons around having Newcastle and the lower Hunter Valley reach their full potential by introducing faster rail before we even get to very fast rail. “But I always come back to the point that high speed rail in all its forms doesn’t exist in isolation. It should be about what are we trying to achieve for our major regional centres, or even new regional centres that we might want to create?” CLARA’s Cleary concedes the government has to look after the Hunter Valley and Newcastle voters. “It’s very admirable, but it’s not going to fundamentally change the conversation as to where people choose to live,” he says. “The answers to a first stage of high-speed rail are not going to be found in a Sydney to Newcastle line. “But if you’re looking at a high-speed train that will enable a rebalancing of the settlement, a better corridor would be Sydney to Canberra, which has more accessibility of land, and a much easier terrain to cross.” Cleary says the 2012-2013 study showed the cost of a Sydney-to-Canberra route was $15 billion to $25 billion, or about a third of a route from Sydney to Newcastle. And Sydney to Canberra is on the way to Melbourne. CLARA’s study, commissioned in 2018 with $8 million in government money and matching funding from their investors, called for a new regional city, about 10km north of Shepparton and more or less half-way between Canberra and Melbourne. ▲ A Sydney-to-Canberra route for the first high-speed rail service in Australia makes sense, according to CLARA. “We were able to build a whole city from scratch looking at the engineering, land acquisition and everything to do with building that city,” Cleary said. “It was sustainable and connected.” Based upon that theorised city of 400,000 people, CLARA’s model showed the so-called value uplift would offset the capital cost of a high-speed rail link, which reduced the travel time to Melbourne—190km away—to 32 minutes. “Our model found that high-speed rail should be supported through new cities, because that’s where you are going to get the biggest value uplift and can actually design cities that are fit for purpose for high density.” Value uplift In February this year the University of New South Wales also looked at the value uplift from high-speed rail. “In Australia, we don’t have a national settlement pattern strategy,” says the director of the university’s city futures research centre Professor Chris Pettit. “So, I guess from a city futures perspective, we were keen to revisit that given we’ve got significant population growth forecasts over the coming decades. There is a view we could be looking at 35 million plus people living in Australia by 2050.” Pettit says their research paper challenges the government to think about an integrated land-use transport strategy. And to provide infrastructure as an early backbone to make communities liveable. What that does not necessarily mean is a series of new towns and cities along a high-speed route. Frequent stops kill high speed rail, in fact stations any closer to each other than about 100km are considered a waste of time, quite literally. Research released in August this year by the multi-national construction giant Lendlease found the length and ease of a commute matters to the workforce. ▲ University of New South Wales city futures research centre director Professor Chris Pettit. Lendlease head of customer strategy Alison Webb said research undertaken with Leesman —a UK-based company that measures and analyses employees in the workplace— found the length of a commute does correlate to the number of days people are likely to come into the office. “As a takeaway, only about 4 per cent of people who commute more than an hour are likely to spend four or five days in the office,” she says. Still, says Webb, the fundamentals of working in a city haven’t changed that much. People just may choose to live in other places. Regardless of where early high-speed lines are located, a key recommendation from the 2012-13 study was the urgent need to secure appropriate land, or corridor acquisition. “One of the things that would be of enormous advantage,” says Brockhoff, “is to broadly agree on the geometry of high-speed rail and work out what needs to happen in terms of corridor acquisition so those options aren’t closed off, particularly in and out of your major cities.” Another key recommendation from the 2012-13 study—and one likely to be taken up by the Albanese government’s new high speed rail authority—is a solid commitment to any project. Private enterprise will demand it, says Cleary. “If the government chooses to front a high-speed rail between, say Sydney and Newcastle, developers will look for available land upon which to build communities that are connected by the rail and can get that value uplift,” he said. “The developers are looking for an outcome with certainty and appeal. Everyone can be a winner, but it does mean the government has to step up and stop looking at studies.” You are currently experiencing The Urban Developer Plus (TUD+), our premium membership for property professionals. Click here to learn more.

[+] Tyranny of Distance: Fast Rail to Set Opportunity in Motion

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