By CHRISTINE LAI
A secret review of high-speed rail possibilities for New South Wales has recommended prioritising rail lines between Newcastle, Sydney, and Wollongong at speeds of up to 250km/h.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the publication reported the findings but noted that they had yet to receive a copy of the report. The report is led by Professor Andrew McNaughton who developed a strategy which canvasses four routes for faster rail travel nominated by the government.
The four routes include: south to Wollongong and Nowra, north to Newcastle and the Hunter, west to Bathurst, Orange and Parkes, and south-west to Goulburn and Canberra.
The rail strategy was commissioned under Gladys Berejiklian’s purview and has been kept secret by the state government for almost three years.
In 2018 the NSW government identified four potential fast rail routes to and from Sydney with claims that the lines would cut journey times by up to 75 per cent. The four potential fast-rail corridors included: The Northern route (including the Central Coast and Newcastle), South Inland route (including Goulburn and Canberra), Western route (including Lithgow, Bathurst, and Orange) and a Southern Coastal route (including Wollongong and Nowra).
Then Premier Gladys Berejiklian ordered an additional review by expert Andrew McNaughton, but it was never released publicly. The report, excluding expenses, cost $390,000.
At the time, Berejiklian asserted that the high-speed rail plan was designed to make it more practical for those living in regional areas to commute to Sydney for work.
“This is about giving our citizens, now and into the future, the choices about where they want to live, where they want to work,” Ms Berejiklian said.
High-speed rail plans set to “change the face of NSW”
Professor McNaughton chairs the UK’s Network Rail High Speed and spoke to The Herald discussing his research on the rail plans for NSW, stating that joining Wollongong and Newcastle to Sydney by fast rail would “change the face of NSW”.
Also a former technical adviser to the country’s HS2 rail scheme, McNaughton emphasised that a project at this scale would require new track with tunnels under suburban Sydney. The aim of the project would put Newcastle and Sydney within an hour of each other, which would allow for speeds of up to 250km/h.
“You go as fast as you need to, not as fast as you can,” he said.
McNaughton expressed his frustration on the report that was planned for release upon Berejiklian’s resignation last year.
He spoke to The Telegraph, stating that the NSW government had asked him to record a launch video a few months prior, but it had never been published.
“I don’t know where it stands now,” McNaughton said. “It can’t be a [political] football every four years. It’s got to be something which everybody says is a fundamental part of the future of the country.”
Plans for high-speed rail claim to slash travel time in half
Earlier this year, Greater Parramatta was identified as a location for a major hub dedicated to fast rail lines connecting Sydney to Newcastle, Wollongong, and other areas in the west.
The Future Transport Strategy: Towards 2061 strategy estimates fast-rail trains will slash travel times by about 50%. Routes that would benefit from this include Sydney to Newcastle (reduced to an hour), a 25-minute trip from Sydney to Gosford, and a 45-minute travel between Sydney and Wollongong.
McNaughton spoke about the potential for the Northern line to be built to accommodate a future high-speed rail link to Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
“Getting out of Sydney is never going to be more than 250km/h. It’s all going to be in tunnels. Once you’re clear of the Hawkesbury, if you were building with an eye to a bigger future, you line it up a bit faster. It doesn’t mean you have to run it faster”, he said.
Australians facing skyrocketing domestic air fares have also opted to find cheaper alternatives including interstate train travel, which has seen patronage between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane more than doubling in recent months as services are booked to capacity.
