A business case cannot be made for bullet trains in Australia, but faster rail connections in and around Sydney and Melbourne would be a winner for decentralisation.
The first time my 97-year-old granddad took a bullet train in Japan was during the 1970s. He was supposed to be shaving 23 minutes off what would otherwise have been a half-hour drive to a business meeting, but that seven-minute trip ended up taking him more than a day. Why? Because he didn’t realise how quickly he would be disembarking and ended up nearly 200 kilometres away from his intended destination.
When we think about high-speed rail, we often think big: a bullet train network connecting Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, for example. But it might pay to focus on smaller distances and trains that go faster than our existing ones, even if they don’t quite hit bullet train speeds.Currently, the train from Wollongong to Sydney takes about 90 minutes, Newcastle to Sydney 150 minutes, and Geelong to Melbourne about 75 minutes.
If NIMBYs are unwilling to accommodate density, they need to be prepared to foot the bill for better transport.
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