High Speed and Faster Rail Frauds

UPDATE 3 March 2023 but same as so see below this first block.

UPDATE 1 December 2022

In 29 November the Minister for Industry, Catherine King, was reported in Rail Express in these words – which continue the deceit and extend the PM’s inability come to grips with the real needs of Australian regions and cities:

Federal Parliament has passed the High Speed Rail Authority Bill 2022, an important first step in the Government’s commitment to establish the High Speed Rail Authority that will guide the development of a high speed rail network in Australia.

Same comment

A high-speed rail network along the east coast of Australia will be a transformational project that has the ability to touch the lives of all Australians.

Infrastructure and Transport minister Catherine King said now, after a delay of nearly 10 years when nothing was done to progress high speed rail in Australia, that vision is becoming a reality.

Untrue that “nothing was done”

• Albanese’s model failed miserably
• CLARA and 13+ other projects failed miserably – fully exposed  was the gross cupidity of Baird, Berejiklian, Perrottet, Turnbull, Morrison, Frydenberg, Kennedy and increasingly Labor
• Centurion’s idiocy failed
• The Central Coast upgrade removed a few bottlenecks and leaves the others- it is a con and the local MsP are gooses (aka geese) cf Port idiocies, I pity the poor fool Berejiklian brought out from England
• There is no reality in Albanese regurgitation of his complete idiocy, the thing that has not  changed is (ahem) the “shameful tolerance of corruption”
• I developed my valid option, had  it approved  by Tim Fischer  and publicised it from Campbelltown to Shepparton including in  The Land and Border Mail

“The Authority will provide independent and impartial advice on the policy and standards of high speed rail; and plan, identify and secure corridors. It will also oversee the construction and operation of the high-speed rail network, and coordinate with state and territory governments, industry, business and communities to enhance Australia’s long-term rail investment,” she said.

None of these will happen except if they report honestly AND  Albanese is still around, they will be sacked

“The Authority will build on previous work, including the comprehensive study, commissioned under former Infrastructure Minister and now Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, that found high speed rail was not only viable, but would return over $2 for every $1 of investment.

Simply not true, the report was deficient as I published and the Minister has had the references today but also previously  my major reports including  on the failure of climate change mitigation due to corruption and stupidity in economic and medical administrations Vs World Bank and  OECD protocols which Albanese does not  acknowledge or observe.

Not true of BCA results as the analyses assumed the system could  and  would work which was always untrue.  iA has never observed Self’s “Nonsense on  Stilts” nor Mishan’s and Pearce & Dasgupta’s work inter alia (including mine always)

“A high-speed rail network could allow passengers to travel between major cities and significant regional cities at speeds exceeding 250km/h.

1. Strange shift in numericals
2. Creative writing standard
3. Wrong about significant  regionals due to confusion of roles – must exclude commuters (no choice) but need to be very precise about bullshit here

“The passage of the Bill delivers the Australian Government’s election commitment to establish the Authority, which will get to work on the $500 million downpayment for the planning to secure corridors and commence early works for the Sydney to Newcastle section of the high-speed rail network.

Being an election promise is as valid as Berejiklian’s vast  and corrupt betrayal of Sydney in June 2012 – it is a bolt hole  for cowards and scoundrels, IT IS NOT  RIGHT PER SE Whoever wrote this does not understand statutory planning, Fair Terms or  due diligence i.e. a trainee in  diapers

“This commitment will see work progress in this fast-growing region of the east coast.”

Inaccurate understanding of the highly dispersed nature from coastal developments which are distant from inland regional corridors – a foolish statement and see above report similarities

King said that while the Authority worked closely with the New South Wales Government on this section, it will continue to advance plans for other sections of the high-speed rail network, which will eventually connect Brisbane to Melbourne, with stops in Canberra, Sydney and regional centres.

Continuance of corrupted politics, not sound economics or engagement. Creative writing, unreal  and unprofessional – such development  will never happen –  see my web page on the REAL NUMBERS and understand the marginal costs of serving minority localities like Brisbane

The Authority will be overseen by a Board which will include experts from the rail and infrastructure sectors.

Highly problematic as seen in iA’s and iNSW’s failures, the TRANSAC model with such offshoots as container railing and snowfields access is arguably more suitable

Faster rail will continue to be advanced under the Authority, with the functions of the National Faster Rail Agency being undertaken within the Authority and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts.

Not under Kennedy, Chalmers or Betts

“High speed rail will revolutionise interstate travel on the east coast, providing a fast alternative for people to move between cities and regional centres, promoting sustainable settlement patterns and creating broad economic benefits for regional centres,” King said.

It will do none of these things in the likely timeframe of (theoretical) construction which is 40 years – this is a rotten model in regard to telecommunications trends (ZOOM etc), impacts of existing towns and cities which are necessarily by-passed, and impossibility of building new corridors into Sydney and Melbourne inter alia – and so on. The revealed motivation might be to preclude fast rail forever.

Update 3 March 2023

Guardian Australia reports that day follows night – they have have refused to listen to logic so now cannot report the truth (as above) – https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/03/nsw-government-slams-brakes-on-high-speed-rail-plans-after-spending-100m-on-studies.

It also breathlessly reports what they pages have been saying fosince 2009 (Rees) and 2017 – Berejiklian’s secret admission that is the case (which journos missed as they no longer “check facts) :

The decision to dramatically scale back its fast rail agenda comes as the NSW government prepares to go deeper into debt to pay for the state’s ballooning infrastructure build.

This is my email to the Fed Government:

I deliver quality that is why I must be suppressed, failure is in the comfort zone

Robert Gibbons <rpgibbonsvic@gmail.com>	3:01 PM (24 minutes ago)
to bcc: mark.dreyfus.mp, bcc: ed.husic.mp, bcc: Andrew, bcc: ged.kearney.mp, bcc: minister.gallagher, bcc: minister.king, bcc: senator.david.pocock, bcc: Patrick.gorman.MP, bcc: pat.conroy.mp

That is the message I have to deliver this afternoon,  a grim determination to avoid “I know I have to change and I will”.

With bushfire risk escalating again there is not one action in the October and May budgets because the first priority is to defeat Gibbons.  Linda is implicated.

The same applies to integrity and to climate mitigation where the world’s best example of Newcastle cannot be mentioned because the main priority is to suppress Gibbons. Chris and Ed. https://sydneybetrayals.me/climate-crimes-suppression-threatens-national-progress/

$800 million into fast trains and minister King cannot see that she is wasting money on duds as at the second Sydney Airport where over $5 billion has been put into a ghost train and sterilisation of Eastern  seaboard Logistics. https://sydneybetrayals.me/high-speed-and-faster-rail-frauds/ &

You happily say that Morrison was a disaster but you continue to employ Morrison’s people and policies, and even Berejiklian’s, with an absolute refusal “to change”.

I have pointed out your cruelty to me in physical and much wider terms so you are effectively killing children because like Morrison you desperately need to stop me from funding Save the Children, Police Legacy and forgotten heroes.  https://sydneybetrayals.me/why-i-could-not-get-justice/

With the May budget coming up the main feature will be embedded corruption and the main message PM and Chalmers have failed again.  https://sydneybetrayals.me/end-of-chalmers-at-his-start/

But we know that that is all of you because of the shameful tolerance of corruption.

Well Mark that is to be your remembrance, is it? What I will spend the weekend doing is recording and promulgating your message or failure, is it?

Peter Principas (@PeterPrincipas) tweeted at 2:39 pm on Fri, Mar 03, 2023:

Newcastle people sad when I pointed out Carr and Costa had tricked them on container port 21 years ago and that is still the case, now Albanese & King failed to deliver fast rail to the central coast & Newcastle as their deceit says they must, it is always disappointment

(https://twitter.com/PeterPrincipas/status/1631499433434140672?t=2MqMPCpYudim-KK6YWOhrw&s=03) 

Resumes

Labor resuscitated the traditional form of High Speed Train in 2019 after a period of revisionist thinking by Malcolm Turnbull, who was excited by the CLARA model of self-financing massive infrastructure through even more massive residential development.  Labor’s Anthony Albanese started the latest study of conventional Fast Rail about 10 years ago and sees CLARA and the Federal 5 and NSW 5 different Fast Trains as indecisive.

Resumes

Of course they are, CLARA was always a con, and the Business Chamber’s use of the Harbour Bridge and Centurion’s mixed fast and freight trains, the Chaser’s general diatribe, and the 10 with uncritical media acceptance, are (in Turnbull terminology)  muddle-headed, ideological and stupid. 

As someone who has been a THINKER for many decades, a different model was proposed in February 2018 and onwards:

Albanese said in 2022 that he would look at doing it differently which went straight onto my plagiarism list as I am the only person in Australia to do that thinking and had it endorsed by Tim Fischer before his death in October 2019 – in fact his last op-ed in the Border Mail mentioned neither CLARA nor HST as he told me he had been persuaded.  This is another case where I have worked hard to achieve Australia’s best interests and been suppressed by Labor and the Coalition.

It is worth asking the question:

Do we have to assume that a concept that was started by a scientist drawing a line on a map and projecting very shiny toys, that went through so many painful failed iterations, that seemed to die a natural death in a country that needs faster delivery of more cost effective infrastructure rather than 10 years of investigation and 30 years of construction, is still an acceptable option let along one worth now spending $1 billion on land acquisition AS A START?

The terms of reference given to Albo’s Feasibility team stated the expectations for routes and locations, type of service (over 300 km/hour) and term (to 2085). 

They conducted a professional study along economic and financial lines, with some environmental, taxation and customer factors too. 

They did not define peak and off-peak which makes some calculations difficult to check.

No route and service options were considered and time has moved on from 2014.  The format seems to make consolidated cost and patronage analyses as hard as possible.  The main conclusions which affect the socio-economic decisions are:

1. Operating costs total $189 billion (discounted to $2025) against a total capital cost of $114 billion, with a gap of $86.6 billion even with a 30% higher-than-normal fare level
2. Planning, appraisals and approvals would take a decade, land acquisition is a massive task, the investigations phases will cost some $10,400,000,000
3. Leisure fares are about half of business but how will the system know who-is-whom!  Avoiding Parramatta is said to eliminate a loss of $45 billion in user benefits!  That might fail the pub test Sydney Terminal patronage is 29 per cent of the total
4. Sydney to Canberra will be the first stage, followed hard by the Melbourne link, together accounting for 44 per cent of construction costs and 59 per cent of patronage.  It is inconceivable that an HST would avoid this corridor and Wagga Wagga, Albury Wodonga and Shepparton.  However, Wollongong and many North Coast towns are excluded, necessarily under the model, and the Southern Highlands’ towns will be remote from the line
5. Sydney to Newcastle – 17 per cent of construction costs and 4% of patronage
6. Newcastle to Gold Coast – 30 per cent of costs and 6% of passengers
7. Brisbane – 10 per cent of costs and 3% of patronage.

North of Sydney therefore accounts for 57 per cent of costs and 13% of patronage.  It has to be said, this is a no-brainer:  it will not proceed.

The Feasibility contains much detail on the types and numbers of vehicles and services.  There will be a fairly even split of 200 metre and 300 metre vehicles, respectively with 520 and 780 seats, with an overall loading of 90 per cent.  It was found on checking that the fleet total was calculated incorrectly and is out by 50 trains.

The truth about Fast Rail – February 2018

Background:  Developers around Wilton had Canberra support for Centurion’s preposterous hybrid fast rail model

South-eastern Australia is experiencing another epidemic of fast-rail fever.  Here are two conflicting objectives, to move some 80% of air travellers onto a fast, CBD-to-CBD 500⁺km/h train using the farebox and terminal rights;  and a land profit model using levies and prices, without/with government subsidies.  Both have new alignments through the bush.

As is usual in NSW, there is an option that it, the ACT Government and iA won’t look at, namely Perth’s Mandurah line©  which runs down the freeway.

The NSW Business Chamber proposed to run HST from Newcastle on existing track including the Harbour Bridge which Minister Berejiklian shot down, rightly.

The Consolidated Land and Rail Australia’ $200 billion system will have five, now eight, “new cities” of about 400,000 each, operational from 2026 or 2050 or whenever, with every $1,000 invested in land growing by 150 times.  Six will be in NSW, two in Victoria.  1.6 million new dwellings is a challenging environmental and engineering prospect, worthy of Hercules.

They say they own about half of the Melbourne-Sydney corridor already which needs to be tested;  while access to CBDs and metropolitan corridors will be a different matter altogether. 

Commuters will be locked out and CLARA acknowledges they will disadvantage existing cities.  Professor Paul Newman said that is enough to politically kill the concept.

There has been no real discussion about how people will live and work and how much they will pay the company upfront and ongoing.  John Alexander MP was reported as saying “You will push up prices enormously around Goulburn;  people will be delighted”.  “Value capture” has every potential to make landowners and buyers very angry. 

However reports are that PM Turnbull is keen on CLARA but his Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher is highly sceptical.

iA is following a Government-funded model of 4 capitals, 4 fringe cities and 11 regionals by 2065.  Is that the best governments can do?

Centurion plans a “heavy metro” service between Campbelltown and Wollongong as stage 1 of an HST between Canberra and Newcastle.  They include freight operations to/from Port Kembla.  The NSW Government says it will “unlock” Wilton to the tune of 350,000 people (the Council is planning 11,000). 

To make a big project feasible on the basis of betterment – and the reality would be a mix – 100,000 lots would have to pay some $2.4 billion a year over 30 years or $25,000 p.a. per lot.  Clearly that would be absurd.  Maldon-Dombarton will be carrying 110 container trains a day plus car-carriers so Centurion are wrong.

Locking high speed rail into a value capture contract killed every previous attempt and will do the same now.  Running a trainline largely down the freeway medians as in Mandurah in WA will better serve existing towns.  Bending at Goulburn and other towns and allowing some capture from new towns say at Marulan, would be cleaner, faster and more effective.

Mr Albanese started Infrastructure Australia and would be well aware that option-testing is an essential first stage, with needs assessment, of all due diligence protocols.  Sir Rod Eddington, in London especially, and Nick Greiner in iNSW, gave many examples of why this is vital to cost effectiveness.  The logic applies to HST and the West and St Marys Metros, the 3-Port strategy and supporting infrastructure, and innerwest congestion etcetera. 

As a reminder, the Australian Infrastructure Plan is clear:

Proponents of new infrastructure which do not undertake the prerequisite project development work risk poor outcomes, preventing the community from accessing the infrastructure they require, and restricting  economic opportunities.

Prior to investment decisions, governments should define the problem that needs to be addressed. Problems are identified through long-term integrated infrastructure planning and the analysis of strategic data sources such  as Infrastructure Australia’s Audit. Once the problem has been defined, early project development studies should then proceed. These include:

• Strategic options assessments: demonstrate the nature and  scale of the problem(s) and identify solutions which may or may not involve the delivery of new infrastructure;
• Feasibility studies: undertake engineering, environmental and economic assessments to develop  solutions into fully-scoped projects; and
• Project business cases: provide more detailed  economic assessments, including cost-benefit analysis.

These studies help ensure the right infrastructure solution is selected and that benefits to the community are maximised.

In Sir Rod’s words in London,

There are good returns across the priority areas, but smaller projects which unblock pinch-points, variable infrastructure schemes to support public transport in urban areas and international gateway surface access projects are likely to offer the very highest returns, sometimes higher than £10 for every pound spent. However, large projects with speculative benefits and relying on untested technology, are unlikely to generate attractive returns.

4. The policy process needs to be rigorous and systematic: start with the three strategic economic priorities, define the problems, consider the full range of modal options using appraisal techniques that include full environmental and social costs and benefits, and ensure that spending is focused on the best policies…

For these and other reasons, it is concluded that Labor should withdraw its(2019)  promise to start land acquisition at an initial cost of $1 billion, and adopt an iA-compliant protocol.

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