Anthony Albanese will meet with Japanese makers of super-fast train capable of travelling 600km/hr

HIGH-SPEED rail from Brisbane to Melbourne is back on the agenda but is it still just a pipe dream?

Screen grab of the Monorail that featured in a episode of the animated TV program 'The Simpsons'.

ALL aboard!

That’s what Labor’s Anthony Albanese wants the Australian public (and Malcolm Turnbull’s government) to do with his latest push to have high-speed rail running from Brisbane to Melbourne.

‘Albo’, who has been campaigning for super-fast trains for years, this week was once again touting the economic benefits of having such a transport network capable of cutting travelling times between our major east coast cities in half.

He reportedly was due to tell the Australasian Railway Association high-speed rail would turbocharge regional development and lead to an increase in property prices along the 1748-km route.

But will it be everything he claims it will be?

Despite the extraordinary costs, Labor’s infrastructure spokesman believes it will transform our regional areas and reduce pressure on our major cities which are expected to almost double by 2050.

However not everyone is convinced a super-fast train route will deliver.

Matthew Burke, deputy director of the Australian Research Council and Future Fellow and Principal Research Fellow Urban Research Program at Griffith University, told news.com.au not only would a high-speed rail network be costly, it might not be cost-effective.

He argues countries such as Japan and France which have well used high-speed rail have densely populated cities, Australia doesn’t.

“The settlement pattern of Australia doesn’t lend itself to high-speed rail,” he told news.com.au. “Japan’s system is only profitable on the island of Honshu. It services cities like Osaka and Tokyo that each have more population than all of Australia combined. It passes through lesser cities such as Nagoya that has more people than Sydney. But many of Japan’s other lines struggle.

“High-speed rail is highly subsidised in Europe but works best in places like France that have large cities connected up. Australia’s east coast just doesn’t have this population density and has larger distances to travel. Our city centres also aren’t supported by the great density of rapid conventional train services that feed passengers into Paris, Lyon or Bordeaux and that help make France’s TGV a success.

“Building links to encourage highly-subsidised intercity commuting from places like Canberra and Bowral into Sydney would be extremely hard to justify. Even if on public transport such long distance travel is not particularly sustainable.”

Lyle Lanley tries to convince Springfield to buy a monorail in The Simpsons. Are Australians being asked the same with high-speed rail?

When Labor was still in power, and Mr Albanese was Transport Minister, it commissioned a report into the feasibility of such a large scale project.

It found the project, which would run between Brisbane and Melbourne via Sydney and Canberra and stop at 12 regional stations — the Gold Coast, Casino, Grafton, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Taree, Newcastle, the Central Coast, the Southern Highlands, Wagga Wagga, Albury-Wodonga and Shepparton, was estimated to cost $114 billion, making it one of the largest infrastructure projects ever undertaken in Australia.

Last year climate change think tank Beyond Zero Emissions also released its own study which found a similar route could be built for $84 billion, a saving of $30 billion.

BEZ’s report also argued there would be a strong economic case for high-speed rail highlighting state and federal governments already spent a combined $18 billion each year on roads.

Construction was earmarked to begin in 2027 and the route operational by 2065.

However funding for the next stage of the super-fast train link was scrapped when the Coalition came gained power.

Determined to get the dream up and running, Mr Albanese reintroduced a private members Bill in parliament last month to establish a High-Speed Rail Planning Authority that would start developing plans for the route and acquire the land needed.

Writing in the Herald Sun in October, Mr Albanese said it was “time” for Australia to advance high speed-rail describing it as a “game-changer”.

He argued the comprehensive feasibility study completed in 2013 by Labor when it was still in government “recommended it proceed”.

“Based on that advice and further work by the High-Speed Rail Advisory Group, Labor allocated $50 million to establish a formal planning authority to progress the project and begin to acquire the corridor to allow it before it is built out by urban sprawl,” he wrote. “However, in 2013, incoming prime minister Tony Abbott cut the funding. He also sacked the advisory group, which included former deputy PM Tim Fischer, Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott and Australasian Railway Association chief executive Bryan Nye.”

But Mr Burke said at present it was still not feasible.

“We may get cheaper vehicles in future as the Chinese start to export their train-sets. But some of the big costs are bringing the tracks into the inner-cities. The former government’s study showed just how expensive it will be to bring a higher-speed link into Brisbane or Melbourne, let alone central Sydney,” he said.

Recently the Central Japan Railway company revealed plans for its new super-fast train, the maglev, which is capable of travelling in excess of 600km/hr.

It will reportedly cut travel time between Tokyo and Nagoya from five hours to just 40 minutes and uses magnetic force to float above a track and travel without friction.

Mr Albanese is set to meet representatives from the company this week to discuss the technology.

But Mr Burke says the maglev is still very expensive.

“The maglev technology is now proven, having run many years in Shanghai,” he said. “But it is incredibly expensive. The tracks costs way more than conventional rail. Maglev lines can’t be used by other trains like high-speed rail tracks can. And levitating a giant train takes a lot of energy.

“Maglev is also more difficult to bring into the centre of any of our cities. It needs to be kept significant distances from neighbouring buildings or it can suck the windows out. It’s still noisy. It tends to require tracks that are elevated, like the system in Shanghai, which even the authorities there couldn’t find a way to bring into the heart of the city.”