HSR versus fast rail: Let's be direct, Newcastle loses with high speed rail

I've been sceptical for a long time that investment in HSR is better value than modest spending on improvements to existing rail services, to create what many call 'fast rail'. The thing about fast rail investments is that improvements come in a sequenced, timely, affordable manner. In contrast, HSR is complex, big bucks stuff with delivery way down the track, if ever.

So why go for HSR? Potentially, the economic benefits of a HSR link from Newcastle to Sydney are enormous. Sydney CBD has more than 500,000 jobs that would become accessible by HSR commuters in under one hour's travel. Sydney firms and government departments could re-locate staff to Newcastle and enjoy the convenience of fast inter-office travel. Newcastle businesses could collaborate readily with world-best professional services firms, meaning low-barrier access to global markets.

The problem with this scenario is that no one is proposing a HSR service between downtown Newcastle and the Sydney CBD.

The preferred corridor - identified in a report in 2013, commissioned by Mr Albanese when he was infrastructure minister - runs parallel to the M1, with a 'Newcastle' HSR station located somewhere around Cameron Park, intersecting with the Hunter Expressway and the Newcastle Link Road. Apparently, other than by expensive tunnelling, a HSR route to inner Newcastle, and across the sensitive landscapes surrounding it, isn't possible. Ourimbah is nominated as the site for the 'Gosford' station for similar reasons.

Then, at the other end of a Newcastle-Central Coast-Sydney HSR corridor, it seems there is no intention of arrival at a terminus in the Sydney CBD.

Certainly, the 2013 report commends the benefits to Newcastle of a direct journey to the Sydney CBD, but the report says this route would need a complex, expensive tunnel from Sydney's northern edge.

The compromise solution is a HSR station somewhere around Sydney Olympic Park. Mr Albanese hinted at this when he talked-up HSR to Newcastle voters last January, dangling the strange bait of a rail journey of less than an hour to watch the Knights play at Stadium Australia. But, with fewer than 10,000 jobs in the Olympic Park precinct, the employment and business benefits of this HSR destination for Newcastle workers and businesses are meagre.

A drive to Cameron Park or Ourimbah to pick up a HSR service to Homebush, followed by a slow metro ride to somewhere in the Sydney CBD, erodes the high-speed benefits of the journey, no?

Yet, for property developers, a HSR service running up and down the western fringes of Newcastle and the Central Coast, steering across western Sydney, through the Southern Tablelands townships to Canberra, is a tasty opportunity for cookie-cutter residential developments. Needless to say, lobbyists for property developers are all over Mr Albanese's HSR corridor planning announcement.

Meanwhile, NSW government plans for fast rail persist, albeit at a snail's pace and at a humble scale. In September, the NSW government released its Future Transport strategy. It includes aspirational statements about fast rail from Newcastle to Sydney and follows modest funding promises in the NSW state budget.

The risk, now, is that debate over the merits of HSR vs fast rail will be swamped by HSR boosterists, especially as developers start sniffing prospects for windfall profits from new housing estates on cheap paddocks a long way from town.

Better, of course, is for state and federal departments to open up their planning for scrutiny: what are the proposed routes, where are the stations, who are the land holders, what are the public benefits, how much will it cost, when will it be delivered?

The alternative is political deal making, poor scrutiny of petty bureaucrats, lobbyists lurking in corridors pressing the interests of their developer and property-owner clients.

For me, given there is zero chance of a HSR connection direct from inner Newcastle to inner Sydney, let's proceed with pace on fast rail improvements to the existing line, a line that already makes this critical link.

Let's back a winner for once.

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