What stands in the way of high-speed rail between Sydney and Newcastle

Crossing the Hawkesbury River on a trip to Sydney from the Central Coast, train passengers can see for themselves the mammoth task confronting engineers if a dedicated high-speed rail line through the area ever becomes a reality.

The deep expanse of the Hawkesbury, together with national park and hilly terrain, make the stretch between Sydney and Gosford the most difficult – and expensive – of any part of a long-touted high-speed line on Australia’s east coast.

Detailed modelling in internal documents obtained by the Herald reveal the colossal cost of a fast rail line, putting the bill in 2022 for a dedicated link between Sydney and Gosford alone at between $25 billion and $30 billion. Increased construction costs will have since pushed the cost higher.

An artist’s impression of a high-speed train in a tunnel on a Sydney-Newcastle line.

The latest plans by the federal government are even more ambitious. A high-speed rail line between Newcastle and Sydney would be the first stage of a mega project extending from Brisbane to Melbourne.

While the cost will play a key role in government decision-making, the planned alignment of a new line through Sydney is already hotly contested. A site for platforms next to Central Station is preferred by the federal authority overseeing the development of high-speed rail on Australia’s east coast.

Building a new line to Central Station diverges from plans by the previous NSW Coalition government. And the federal High Speed Rail Authority’s preference for a main station in Sydney’s east has earned the ire of western Sydney councils and lobby groups.

“It’s madness to me that we would build infrastructure of the future around a view of Sydney that’s rooted in the past,” Parramatta Lord Mayor Martin Zaiter says. “Central Station is no longer central to where Sydney lives – and it shouldn’t be central to the ambitions we have for high-speed rail.”

The previous Coalition state government was on the verge of releasing a detailed plan in 2022 – less than a year before the last NSW election – which proposed a main Sydney station for fast rail at Olympic Park. Under those plans, commuters would be able to switch between fast and metro trains at Olympic Park, allowing them to travel on to the CBD or Parramatta on the Metro West line, which is due to open in 2032.

Amid a housing crisis, the internal documents show the Perrottet government’s planned blueprint for fast rail in NSW over the next 35 years was to spruik it as a catalyst for economic growth and improved wellbeing by making jobs and services more accessible.

The strategy was premised on creating a north-south spine for fast rail, linking Newcastle to Sydney and Wollongong. Trains would travel at speeds of 250km/h, cutting the time of a trip from Gosford to Sydney by 55 minutes to 25 minutes.

Apart from a main hub at Olympic Park, the plan identified a station interchange at Epping, where passengers could switch to travel into the central city on the M1 metro line or head north-west to Rouse Hill. In the south-west, an interchange in the Macarthur area – most likely Campbelltown – was envisaged, giving passengers faster access to Liverpool, the new Western Sydney Airport and the new city of Bradfield.

With the Central Coast and Newcastle boasting the state’s largest populations outside of Sydney, the immediate priority was to be a dedicated fast rail line between the Central Coast and Olympic Park. It was to be followed by a new fast rail alignment from Macarthur to Mittagong in the Southern Highlands, which would reduce travel times by 30 minutes.

Framed as a generator of jobs, future stages were to involve extending the dedicated fast rail further north from Gosford to Newcastle. In the south, a new line would branch off near the fast-growing town of Wilton and extend to Wollongong, cutting travel times from the Illawarra to Olympic Park to 45 minutes. The final stages of the strategy proposed extending fast rail from Mittagong to Canberra.

The investigations confirmed that for the state government, the cost of fast rail infrastructure did not justify extending a line from Newcastle to Port Macquarie due to “limited economic benefits” and low demand.

The Perrottet government’s detailed fast rail strategy was never released, falling victim to election cycles and longer-term funding concerns. However, before it lost power in early 2023, the Coalition did commit $500 million to rail upgrades and two new electrified rail tracks from Tuggerah to Wyong as part of funding for the “first stage of the northern corridor” for fast rail.

High Speed Rail Authority chief executive Tim Parker.Credit: Louie Douvis

Two years later, the federal Labor government is taking the lead on plans for a 140-kilometre line between Sydney and Newcastle along which trains would run at up to 320km/h, leaving its state counterpart in the back seat. With a federal election due to be held by May, promises of a high-speed rail line eventually spanning the east coast from Brisbane to Melbourne are likely to become a plank of Labor’s campaign.

Former senior Sydney Metro bureaucrat Tim Parker is spearheading plans in his role leading the High Speed Rail Authority, which handed a business case for the project to the Albanese government last month.

If the early plans are progressed, up to 84 kilometres mostly between Gosford and central Sydney will comprise sections of twin tunnels because of the hilly terrain, the Hawkesbury River and estuaries, national park and built-up urban areas which comprise some of the world’s most expensive housing.

“It’s very, very difficult. What gives me confidence is the amount of tunnelling we have done recently – both motorways and metros,” Parker says. “We’ve got Sydney sandstone, which is God’s rock for tunnelling.”

A further 25 kilometres – primarily between Gosford and Newcastle – would be viaducts or bridges. “The first section of high-speed rail that we’re tackling is technically one of the most challenging sections [on the east coast],” Parker says. “It’s the wider benefits that really begin to make it justifiable. It does a lot more than just get people from A to B.”

Cynicism runs deep in the community when politicians and bureaucrats spruik high-speed rail. Despite this, Parker is adamant he took the job to deliver the project, not add to the pile of deep-dive studies into high-speed rail over the years gathering dust.

Among those, he is drawing expertise from is former Transport for NSW chief Rodd Staples, the architect of Sydney’s metro network who now works for big four consultant firm EY. Staples is providing advice on strategy and direction to the federal authority as part of EY’s multimillion-dollar contracts for advisory services ranging from demand modelling, delivery strategy and economic development to funding and financing.

Signalling it is serious, the federal authority recently used drill rigs on barges to bore as deep as 140 metres under the Hawkesbury River and a Central Coast estuary. Parker says the results from the rock and sediment sampled showed “very good tunnel rock”. The samples will be used to help determine the design and depth of potential rail tunnels.

Phil Davies, a former Infrastructure Australia chief executive, told a conference recently that the Sydney-Newcastle leg was probably the most expensive of the entire alignment from Brisbane to Melbourne. “That’s a big chunk of change for a connection in NSW. We need the narrative and the broader economic story around the whole alignment,” he told the Australasian Railway Association high-speed rail conference.

Parker declines to reveal the cost of the first stage from Newcastle to Sydney, other than saying it will be “expensive but for good benefits”.

If the federal government makes an investment decision to proceed early this year, he says the authority will look to award by late 2027 the first major contract for a Sydney-Newcastle high-speed line, which would take 10 to 12 years to build. The project will require planning approval and land acquisitions.

An artist’s impression of a high-speed railway station.Credit: Federal government

Parker adds that average fares for high-speed trains will be competitive with existing transport. “[Coach bus] is $39; the unsubsidised Sydney Train fare is around $35; and we’ll be competitive with those,” he says.

High-speed rail expert Romain Bosramiez, who works for French train manufacturer Alstom, says scepticism towards the projects is a worldwide phenomenon. “It takes time, and we see that all over the world. You need convincing; you need funding; you need clearance; you need alignment between one local administration and another. But eventually, it always pays off,” he says.

Alstom, which built driverless trains for Sydney’s M1 metro line, manufactures one in five of the world’s high-speed trains, including those for a 323-kilometre line in Morocco which has cut travel times between Tangier and Casablanca from nearly five hours to just over two.

Considering the enormous cost, Bosramiez’s advice is to start with a small section of high-speed line and gradually extend. In Morocco, trains run at up to 320km/h on a dedicated high-speed rail link from Tangier to Kenitra before continuing along an upgraded section of conventional track to Casablanca at 160km/h. “It’s a good example for Australia. One of the key lessons is to make sure the high-speed line can offload into the conventional network,” he says.

In the UK, high-speed rail has been controversial. The British government recently committed to extending High Speed Two – a line from Birmingham to London – to Euston station in the capital’s centre, instead of ending at Old Oak Common in the city’s north-west suburbs. “It would have just been a crazy decision for it not to,” London’s public transport chief Andy Lord says.

Based on London’s experience, Lord says it often makes more commercial, economic and customer sense for a high-speed line to extend into the central city where there is “better connectivity, you can feed the line and people then have the distribution network to travel elsewhere in the city”.

In Sydney, Parker says the rationale for settling on Central Station as a hub for high-speed rail is that it locates it in an area most people can access. “The name Central is not by accident. It is central to all major transport in Sydney. Just about every major train line goes through Central,” he says. “So wherever you are in Sydney, you can generally get to Central. And that’s why we think from a connection point of view, that means it will be best connected with high speed [rail].”

British rail expert Andrew McNaughton, who led a review into high-speed rail for the Berejiklian government, has reservations about Central Station as the location for the main Sydney hub for a new line. “It’s a very constrained site if you want to dig it up for a high-speed rail station. Whatever its merits, there are better places, and it’s not naturally given to getting you from north of Sydney to south of Sydney,” he says.

Render of a business-class carriage on a high-speed train.Credit: Federal government

While it might fail to quell angst from western Sydney mayors, Parker says Parramatta and Western Sydney Airport are on the cards for stations in future stages on the way to Canberra. “This is very much the first stage of a national high-speed rail network. If you were just tasked with building a link between Sydney and Newcastle to serve commuters principally, you’d perhaps have a different configuration,” he adds.

With an investment decision on high-speed rail by the Albanese government looming, proponents cite Sydney’s $65 billion metro rail network as proof that mega rail projects can be built, and succeed. Yet high-speed rail’s slide down the list of priorities at a state level in the past few years serves as a reminder that the window of opportunity can close quickly.

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