I agree, but I wanted to look deeper at the issue of standing versus sitting on mass transit and commuter trains.

The first thing I would mention is that mass transit railways tend to put the longitudinal seats in not just to increase space, but it actually increases the comfort and flow for the standees. But you need to have many more places to grip.

One of the reasons people cluster around the doorway is the abundance of things to grab onto or lean on, and the fear of not being able to get off at a station if the train is full. Both issues need to be addressed with wide, open layouts and plenty of things to grab onto. Too many seats also mean too many objects to contort around.

I understand one of the complications is ferals and vandals destroying the train using the grips. The issue then is the ferals and vandals, not the grips.

The next point I would make is the condition of track and pointwork. It doesn’t just impact on running time, it also provides discomfort to passengers, especially standees. I couldn’t believe in Germany and Japan how trains I rode felt like they were on billiard tables. Provides a lot of confidence to stand and walk around whilst the train is in motion. Referring to my earlier point, again people will be more inclined to move away from the doors if they know they can stand anywhere on the train.

Another issue is personal space and intimacy. A subject people probably don’t want to talk about. Japan is famous for its chikan but is also famous for its pushers. At the end of the day they accept you are going to push them in until everyone is touching everyone else. Male and female, friends and strangers. Our culture is struggling to keep up with reality.

But then, if you can imagine feudal Japan in the 1860s with its stilted social norms, then imagine a Japanese train in the 1880s with people pushing them in, to maximise ridership, the reality is any culture can adjust over time. A feast for the chikans, unfortunately, but also a reality. If you want to see an interesting take on this, there is a film called “I just didn’t do it” about a young man charged with chikanning a schoolgirl, who, as the name suggests, just didn’t do it. Goes into some detail on the practice.

Finally, a word about rail versus road competition. Of course driving yourself is more comfortable than being crammed into a train, and 45 minutes is too long. However, this is where I would suggest mass transit and commuting really do part company. It’s not just a matter of journey length, but also journey purpose. No doubt 45 minutes in a Hong Kong train to the far edge of the New Territories, standing the whole way, is uncomfortable. I’ve also caught the loco-hauled train to Dongguan on the other side, beautiful long distance seats, buffet service, seat allocation and so on.

The reality is mass transit isn’t just about distance or haul, but about what is a reasonable service to provide for the price. If Pakenham or Penrith or Robina or Rockingham passengers wanted comfort, they would be paying what the people going to Dongguan were paying, maybe AUD50 each way. That’s where the journey purpose (business) feeds through into price.

It is to my eternal regret that we don’t have a way of ensuring people from Pakenham or Penrith, at least, are guaranteed a better quality journey, at a higher price, on the same routes as cheaper, less comfortable trains.

This post is mostly a very quick look at optimisation of the Melbourne Rail Network.

As we know, the current setup has approximately 16 lines converging onto four single track loops into the CBD, which creates a signficant bottleneck, reduces operational efficiency and can lead to cascade delays very rapidly. (a cascade delay is where one train runs late, causing every train behind it to run progressively later, and can really only be stopped by cancellation and transpositioning trains).

This proposal breaks the four Melbourne sectors into 7 sectors, (8 including interurban/intercity) and increasing frequency, using predominately the existing rollingstock and only minor additional infrastructure. This is shown in the image below

This proposal assumes the following: (figures from VicSig)

To do this i’ve had to make a sample/hypothetical timetable for the groups which probably have some mistakes within them, and i freely admit this) – to show that the proposal is vaugely workable. Each will be discussed very briefly below.

Upfield Line – 8tph – 10 trains required.

two new crossovers at Gowrie to enable trains to Upfield to bypass Stopper
Cost $2 million.

Sydenham Line – 12tph – 14trains required

Upgrade to Sydenham Station turnback facilities – 5million (Enable fast shunts into yard to minimise blocking of main line for Bendigo/Kyenton trains)

Seymour Line – 7 trains required. 1tph 2tph peaks – No upgrades

Werribee-Sandringham Line – 16 trains required – 6tph

Cragieburn – Frankston – 22 trains required – 6tph

Upgrade to Broadmeadows Line Flyover – Indicative cost 10million. (to enable Cragieburn trains to enter track 5-6 without interfering with Werribee trains.

Ringwood Group – 32 trains required – 6tph (3 stopping patterns)

Increase dual track for an additional 1000m south of Lilydale Station to enable 10minute service – 10 million.

Pakenham Line – 34 trains required. (6tph (3 stopping patterns)


4th Platform at Dandenong – 10million
3rd Platform at Pakenham 10 million
Central Westall Turnback (Under Construction?)

Glen Waverley Line – No upgrades – 6tph

Geelong and Newport Shuttles 6tph (Geelong/Williamstown) 3tph (Altona)

3rd Platform at Newport (Preferably 4 however) 10 million

Clifton Hill Group – 12tph Greensborough, 6tph Epping, 1tph Eltham, 1tph Hurstbridge

Dock Platform at Greensborough – 10million

Bendigo Line – No Upgrades 2tph Kyenton/Bendigo

Belgrave Line – 6tph

Additional Points at Ringwood to enable platform 3 to be separated from running lines 2million

So for 70 million in additional infrastructure you can separate out the lines and increase frequency on all lines (when additional rollingstock is ordered), increase reliability with the exisitng rollingstock (assuming Vicsig’s numbers are correct). Though that said some of the timings used are very tight, and probably wouldnt be feasible in the real world, but as a discussion point, is usable.

This shows that there can be an increase in services operating without the Eddington Tunnel, with predominately existing infrastructure. The Sandringham/Frankston groups could recieve a doubling of service without any additional infrastructure, and the Clifton Hill Group requires duplication to Epping for increased services.

Thoughts?

The Dandenong line is essentially a dual track line from Richmond to Pakenham, with a single track branch to Cranbourne. There is a small segment of quad track between Caulfield and Richmond, however in usual use it is two tracks for the Dandenong Line, and two tracks for the Frankston line.

The high level of patronage, coupled with only two tracks means that the absolute majority of services stop all stations, to maximise potential capacity.

The only way to increase speed on the Dandenong line is to introduce skip-stop services, close low use stations in peak periods, or expand to four tracks.

The Victorian Government originally proposed for a third track to be constructed from Caulfield to Dandenong costing approximately 1 billion dollars, which has now been scaled back to a third track to Springvale. Third tracks are highly undesirable, as they can only increase speed in the peak direction, and also work best if the train is only doing one trip (for example, Belgrave – City Loop – Flinders St – terminate, then run empty to Burnley) as there is little capacity in the opposite direction for these trains to run back to the end of the line.

This proposal looks at three ways to increase the speed on the Dandenong line;
1. Close little used stations and replace with a high frequency bus service (min every 10-15min)
2. Introduce a skip-stop pattern
3. quad track.

1. The most used stations in order on the Dandenong Line from Caulfield are :
a. Caulfield
b. Oakleigh
c. Dandenong
d. Springvale
e. Noble Park
f. Clayton
g. Huntingdale
h. Narre-Warren
i. Carnegie
j. Berwick
k. Hallam
l. Murrumbeena
m. Pakenham
n. Hughesdale
o. Cranbourne
p. Westall
q. Sandown Park
r. Yarraman
s. Merinda Park
t. Beaconsfield
u. Officer

This means you could potentially remove Carnegie, Sandown Park, Hughesdale, Murrumbeena, Yarraman, Westall stations between Caulfield and Dandenong. This would speed up services in this section by exactly 6 minutes.

This shows that a reasonably direct bus route can be implemented to replace these stations; however the disbenefits of closing existing stations needs to be looked at seriously, with such a proposal. The peak hour only or permanent closure of 7 stations; most within the inner or middle rings of Melbourne (therefore with the greatest redevelopment potential) is something that is unlikely to occur. Therefore this is an option of absolute last resort.

2. Introducing Skip-stop patterns

Skip stop is a simple way of increasing speeds on an existing line. This means that stations are identified as being either:
All Station
B Station
C Station
In this example all trains will stop at:
Caulfield; Clayton; Dandenong Stations
B trains will stop at:
Carnegie; Hughesdale; Huntingdale; Springvale; Noble Park Stations and the all stop stations;
C trains will stop at
Murrumbeena; Oakleigh; Westall; Sandown Park; Yarraman Stations and the all stop stations.

This would speed up all trains by the amount of skipped stations, which is traditionally 1 minute at speeds below 90km/hr and 2 minutes at speeds above 90km/hr. Given that the Dandenong Line in this area, you would receive a timesaving of approximately 5 minutes on the B and C trains; bringing down the entire trip time from Dandenong to 36minutes, compared to 41minutes now on an all stations train.

Clayton was chosen as it is the midpoint between Caulfield and Dandenong station wise, over any other reason.

Pros of Skip-stop
Enables maximum frequency on a dual track line
Enables maximum efficiency of the existing infrastructure
Enables a maximum frequency of 20tph (10tph on each pattern)
Minimal infrastructure cost

Cons of Skip-stop
Unnecessarily confusing; requires passengers to know which pattern train to be on
Minimal time savings in comparison to true express-local patterns
Requires a highly efficient signalling system to ensure bunching does not occur
If delays occur, the system will cascade badly.

3. Quad track to Dandenong
Quad track is the most costly option of increasing speed on the Dandenong line, as it requires the construction of two additional tracks, and the associated infrastructure.

For this process we are looking at the area between Caulfield and Dandenong for the implementation of quad track.
Given that there is approximately 9 level crossings between Caulfield and Noble Park, and an additional 1 level crossings to Dandenong, this requires physical separation of trains and cars to enable optimum use of the railway network. The Level crossing between Noble Park and Dandenong could potentially be closed given its proximity to the grade separated Heatherdale? Road.

This proposal looks at the construction of a trench between Noble Park and Caulfield, to bypass 9 level crossings, and enable the demolition of two overpasses that have significantly impacted on the urban form of those two centres.

This project would have to be split into two components to enable trains to run on the majority of the tracks:
Dandenong to Clayton,
Clayton to Caulfield

I have costed the trench at 30million per kilometre, a local station at 7million and a major station at 14million.
The trench is approximately 16m wide and 6 m deep for its length; without stations. With a local station only it is 22m wide; and a major station it is 28m wide. This provides for approximately 1.25million cubic metres of spoil for removal.

The total cost of the trench is approximately $400million.

One potential way that the cost of the trenching can be recouped is to deck over the newly created tunnel and sell off the land above. The Dandenong Railway line is in a corridor that is approximately 40m wide for its length from the first bridge from Caulfield to Dandenong. The area of trench between Caulfield and Noble Park is approximately 15 kilometres, which given an average land value of $250m2 (approx $25,000 per 100m2), which is the absolute lower end for average land values, could recoup approximately $152million, towards the redevelopment. This assumes that the bridging of the corridor would be done by the developer.

This brings the cost of the trenching down to 250million.

The cost of bus replacement services for the line has been calculated below:

It assumes that there is a requirement for 70 buses between 5am and 11pm (18hours of service) each costing $60/hour to operate. Of these buses, 40 would be express services, stopping only Clayton – Dandenong/Caulfield, and 30 would be all stops services). This would provide for approximately 5,000 people per hour capacity in each direction. This means that each day would cost $63,000 or $11.5million for the 6months shutdown.

This means that the total cost for this shutdown would be 299million, after land sales and provide for a significantly improved speed and capacity on the Dandenong Line.

The tme of closure could be shortened by spending additional money.

Thoughts?

I’m fascinated with a range of planning and design documents of late on this issue.

For example Ferny Grove is proposed to have a third platform.

http://www.qr.com.au/SEQIP/Images/KFG-Newsletter-Nov09_tcm30-28816.pdf

Leppington on the new South West railway is supposed to have four platforms. Pakenham was famously promised four by Mark Latham as opposition leader.

South Morang is only getting the standard 2 platforms though that is a considerable improvement on the 1 road that was once common here (Ashburton/Alamein, Hurstbridge, Sandringham, Williamstown, Upfield, and for a while, Cragieburn).

Cronulla’s unique long platform is getting a second platform, meaning in effect 3 terminating roads if I understand the practice correctly.

Perth generally has 2 roads at all termini, even Thornlie with its standard 15 minute service.

The argument for increasing terminating capacity by adding roads is of course flexibility for out of course running – though this could be substituted for strategies to reduce out of course running – by more reliable services.

As James notes, you should be able to get 15/h on a terminal road, and 35 per hour through a scissors crossover if you pursue the inevitable ‘best practice’.

Melbourne of course also has a bizarre situation where the terminus may lack roads, but an intermediate station doesn’t (eg Brighton Beach, Gowrie, Diamond Creek) and the service could plausibly be upgraded to that station – but isn’t mainly for political rather than operational reasons.

And the other 1 platform terminal roads remain constraints on the system for decades despite the obvious call for that constraint to be lifted. Coburg’s single platform for some years remained a constraint on better Upfield line services.

The final one of interest is Outer Harbour. The balloon loop provided an effective ‘double track’ to both reverse trains but add capacity. I don’t know if the signalling allowed a train to enter the platform while another left; it certainly would have boosted capacity simply by virtue of not requiring a reversal. Taking the balloon loop away simply means trains being limited to the single track terminus capacity.

Melbourne’s trams mostly enjoy single track termini, and the queuing to enter them presents an unedifying site, especially at busy places such as the recently built Box Hill terminus.

With the release of the NSW Transport Blueprint, and the release of the preliminary draft of the SMH Transport Inquiry, there has never been a better time for discussion of transport issues in Sydney. This is a transport strategy for Sydney that looks at the transport demand and expansion from more an operational viewpoint than the more traditional needs based viewpoint that the current plans use. The main reason for providing an increased emphasis on the operational viewpoint, is that many of the proposals within other documents can be difficult to implement operationally, and increase costs as a result (for example the UTS plan)

I have broken this down into two sections and four parts. Section one which is below deals with the railway network of the Greater Sydney Sydney Region and a brief look at funding, and Section two deals with Buses, Ferries and other transport modes. The Railways share of the funding for infrastructure is approximately 40 billion dollars over 30 years, which is less than the current spend on railway infrastructure. The single largest cost over this period is rollingstock acquisition which is around 8.4billion dollars.

Funding

At present the NSW government has budgeted 6.1 Billion dollars in general public transportation funding, including operations and infrastructure.

Rail is to recieve approximately 1.6 Billion for operational funding, and 2.6 billion in infrastructure upgrades.
Buses are to recieve approximately 990million for operations and priority works.
Ferries are to recieve approximately 83 million for operational and infrastructure works.
827 million for other general infrastructure works including commuter car parks, community bus services and the like.

The projects are outlined below:

Budget link 1
Budget Link 2
This shows that the Government is planning to spend 2.6 billion dollars in enhancing infrastructure of Railcorp in 2010, without providing any substantive upgrades to the network. Yes upgrading to infrastructure (it notes the majority of Capital Investment is being used to fund substation works) is important but the cost over this year alone was enough to build the entire Mandurah line in Perth 1.5 times.

This clearly indicates that the money is not being targeted efficiently. This said I do not doubt the need or priority for the various works, but the costs are staggering, especially when compared to the Victoria where the operational cost for operating the system is around 40% the cost for NSW. Victoria pays around 955million/year (pg 93 DoT financial report) compared to 2.6billion/year in NSW (Pg 11 MfTI annual report) for operational costs

Given that my total infrastructure spend is only 5.8 billion dollars over 6 years, projects from stage 2 could be brought forward to maximise efficiency and operational aspects of this proposal.

The construction costs that i have used for this plan are shown below. The figures have been updated to 2009 dollars.

Ground level cost: 4.94million/km (Delhi Rail 2004)

Ground level station cost: 20million

Elevated rail cost: 28.38 million/km (Delhi Rail 2004)

Elevated station cost: 30 million

Underground rail cost: 82.14million/km (ECRL 2002)

Underground station cost: 50 million (NCCCS 2002)

When tunneling through the CBD, or other difficult locations the costs above have been doubled, however are nowhere near the costs originally proposed for the metro lines, or even the Metrowest corridor in the Transport Blueprint. For example if Spain can build metro tunnels in most cities in Spain, for around AUD60million/km, through areas of high archaeological value, there should be much less reason for a tunnel directly following a road (except at near the ends) through easy tunneling material, cannot be built for under or at 160million/km, let alone the 900million/km required for the Sydney Metro, especially as the option of cut and covering exists. I freely admit that the cost of tunneling the segments through the building foundations will be trickier, but not that much more so, especially given international expertise.

It is assumed that the following figures are used over the lifetime of this plan, and indexed to CPI every year, to remain constant.

Railway operational costs 1.4billion/year
Railway capital works 1.35 billion/year
Bus/Tram operational costs 700million/year
Bus/Tram infrastructure costs 450million/year
Ferry operational costs 90million/year
Ferry infrastructure costs 160million/year (first 10 years only, then absorbed into misc.)
misc. costs 350million/year (commuter car parks and the like)

for a total transport spend of 4.5 billion a year, or 1.6billion yess than budgeted in the 09/10 budget or equivalent to the budget in the 08/09 financial year.

This gives approximately 66 billion dollars over the thirty years for operational costs, and 72 billion for infrastructure upgrades, with 40.5 billion for rail, 13.5billion for buses/trams, 1.6billion for ferries, and 10.6billion for misc costs.

Rationale

I have gone for an operational approach in designing this proposal, as it is attempting to get maximum efficiency and operationality out of the network. CityRail especially has suffered from the ‘incremental’ approach of rail planning generally since Bradfields time – we’ll just add a bit here, extend to there; she’ll be right, which has brought the system to its current form, where it is highly integrated, which causes problems as soon as anything starts to go wrong. Many plans, including the most recent plans are still more theory and incremental based approaches.

What is needed is an operational approach, which is not usually considered, where you lay the network out to the bare bones, and do a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and determine excatly what the network does well, and what it does badly, and then try and rectify its weaknesses. Without this you generally condem the network to mediocracy. You also need to consult with rail staff; especially those on the front line, who see the networks weaknesses day in day out- which almost never happens – The Bus reviews that have taken place are an example of this.

This operational approach enables the system to be looked at as a whole, and clearly identify where the greatest need for relief lies, and potentially provide for additional services in this area, whereas the current approach is incremental, ad-hoc and a mishmash, which appears to be further entrenched with the Transport Blueprint. An operational approach as advocated will lead to winners and losers, but overall the system will be improved, with a positive result, through improved frequencies and services.

The Transport Blueprint for example is improving the Western Line services, by building the Metro West corridor, but at the same time does not fix many of the problems that plague this part of the network; especially the variations in stopping patterns, and the frequency of services. Additionally in the short term if the government was serious about increases in services from Strathfield, they could reroute all western line services as i have done into Sydney Terminal, for a fraction of the cost. The construction of the North West and South West Rail Links without properly identifying where these routes are going and providing a complete overhaul of train routes; stopping patterns and the like (as in which direction to the CBD, or will they be cross suburban links etc) will place additional stress on the CBD network, which is not looked at, even though they are removing some Western Line trains into a new CBD line, to try and free up some track paths, which presumably would be used by these new services.

Operationally the system is generally a mess – high levels of stopping patterns (30+ on the North Shore line alone), irregular frequencies especially in peak in the inner areas, (10,20 is more common than the clockface 15,15) and major track sharing of various incompatible route types (all stations, express and limited stops trains all sharing the same track pair) lead to major operational inefficiencies, that could be rectified, enabling a higher throughput of trains without building new lines, if the system is looked at operationally (as in my proposed Stage 1).

These impediments listed above mean that the system is not at capacity. The CityRail system at present suffers from a severe lack of rollingstock, drivers, antiquated thinking and entrenched ’self-defence of incompetence’.

Self defence of incompetence does not mean that the staff are incompetent - far from it. What it means is that certain ways of doing things have been done for so long, that they have become entrenched, and no other way of doing things can be entertained. In Sydney one prime example is that there are no shuttles in use anymore (with the exception of the Carlingford line, due to the short platforms) where shuttles could be used on many other sections of the network, and provide a greater service as a result. An operational review should remove as many of these impediments as can be practically achieved, which is what i have tried to do with my proposal below. Other examples include guards, use of double deck trains on unsuitable routes (local short runs, say Inner west line and Hurstville locals), high variation in stopping patterns and so on.

In making this proposal, i separated out CityRail, and looked at its strengths and weaknesses. The dominant weaknesses that the network has is the use of a one seat journey, a very high peaking gradient (majority of services in peak times only), poor service patterns and a very high level of integration between lines (this is a strength and a weakness however). This proposal looks at the current infrastructure, and what easy solutions there are to increase capacity and usage of the system, then looks at expansion. By seeing how the system can be optimised operationally, you can add in additional capacity to service the current demand, whilst building for the future demand.

It makes many current through lines into shuttles, to enable a high frequency service on the main lines, and minimise branching. Branching leads to reduced capacity on the main line, especially at flat junctions, and reduces capacity overall. If the system is running at maximum capacity, and one train runs late at a branch point, it can potentially lead to a cascade failure (where every train runs progressively later until trains are transposed to bring them back into order). CityRail suffered a cascade failure in 2004 before they brought in the new timetable, which restored some semblance of order, but at the expense of a large number of services, and the overall speed of the network.

In expansion, this proposal is designed to link into the various major centres of Sydney, where employment is to be generated, and with the bus network, provide easy access to the majority of Greater Sydney. It also attempts to service the areas of highest density, and provide for renewal corridors, to enable the majority of the suburban area to be left ’suburban’.
Most importantly it tries to separate out all the lines into discrete sectors, enabling maximum frequency on each line; reduce any interaction between the sectors to a minimum to reduce flow on delays, and to enable the separation of local, intermediate and long distance journeys so that appropriate rollingstock, and frequencies can be tailored to each sector.

STAGE 1

Stage 1 is a 6 year project. (the project time is determined by the time required to procure additional rollingstock)

Rail

Below is an image of how you could operationally change the railway system to run at maximum capacity, trains per hour and maximum (theoretical) loadings are shown beside the various lines. This should also enable a full 20tph through the city underground, as people will just be getting on the first train, reducing the amount of crowding on platforms as they wait for their preferred train; as happens now.

To enable this project to work, there is only one stopping pattern per line, with all trains stopping at stations indicated by the interchange or tick symbols. Running multiple stopping patterns increases congestion at major stations as people preferentially wait for their preferred train, and reduces maximum capacity of the line.

It is also assumed that the NWRL and SWRL will be constructed and completed within a 10 year timeframe of this plan starting, however are not costed as part of this proposal.

It is assumed that the carrying capacities of the various trains would be 250 for Diesel trains, 1000 for intercity, 1500 for Double Deck Trains and 2000 for Single Deck Trains.

The following improvements are required to enable this particular system to operate at maximum capacity:

This enables the Pink Line, Orange Line, Light Blue Line, Dark Brown and Dark Green lines to be converted to single deck rollingstock, with the remainder of the lines left as existing double deck rollingstock. This would allow for a theoretical 330,000 people an hour into the Central Complex (Chalmers St, Central Electric and Sydney Terminal) and 240,000 people an hour into the City Underground, assuming the single deck trains are operating at 20 trains per hour. 330,000 people/hour into the Central Complex is a doubling over the existing 154,000 people/hour that can currently use the system.

The New York Subway had approximately 1,000new cars delivered within 4 years which means that the amount of cars required can be delivered in around 5.5-6 years.

Maintenance facilities for the new rollingstock would be procured by construction of the proposed facility at Leppington, and moving all Intercity trains out of Eveleigh and Flemington, to expanded facilities at Mount Victoria, Wollongong, Broadmeadow and Moss Vale, which can be done relatively cheaply and out of the normal capital works budget. This should provide enough capacity for the new Single Deck rollingstock, and if more is required, the majority of Clyde Yard would be used for stabling, leaving only a few roads for the garbage train and existing freight marshalling.

Sydney Terminal would have 57 trains per hour terminating at it during peak hour which gives a turnback time of 15minutes per platform, which is well within the turnback of terminating trains of the major London Terminii. The maximum amount of trains over any single crossover would be 30 trains/hour which again is below the maximum that can theoretically crossing which is 48trains per hour (Brixton scissor crossover on the Victoria Line LU). it is also assumed that there would be simultaneous crosses, and upgraded signalling to allow this to occur. It also assumes that there are no country services operating during the peak periods.

A timetable and stock allocation matrix has been roughly made to show the concept above, which can be shown on request.

Stage 2

Stage two compromises approximately 24 years, and is the expansion phase of the network, and providing greater interconnections between Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong, and the Southern Highlands/Canberra. The Blue Mountains and further west is generally a lost cause, due to the length of the climb, and the urban nature of the Blue Mountains ridges, which makes it generally infeasible to look at a new railway line in this direction. The general lack of population in the region also makes large scale base tunnels unlikely as well.

To minimise the amount of wordage here, i am only going to review a couple of the select projects:
Newcastle Express Line
Wollongong Express Line
Southern Highlands Bypass
CBD Lines ( King St, Sussex Street, Pitt St)

CBD Lines

The CBD will require new lines as part of expansion, simply to enable greater throughput of people, and to minimise the inconvienience of the forced changeover of passengers at Sydney Terminal. It requires a quad track bore down both Metro West and Metro Pitt corridors, providing 8 new tracks in a north south direction. One track pair from Metro West and Metro Pitt would then continue over the SHB underslung, as proposed in the SMH inquiry (this actually seems like an appropriate option), or one pair would terminate at Wynyard, and the other pair would continue over the SHB, if this cannot be achieved.

The King St line forms the core of the East West lines, being part of the Parramatta – Kingsford line, providing a valuable mid-city interchange with most lines.

These 10 lines would provide all the capacity required for the long term future in the CBD.

It is assumed that all costs building through here have doubled. (160million/km for tunneling, and minimum 100million for stations). The SHB additional works have been guestimated at 500million.

Newcastle Express Line

The current proposal for bypassing the slow and windy Cowan Bank and Mullet creek look at a long tunnel stretching from Mt Ku-ring-gai to Hawkesbury river, costing approximately 8 billion dollars; which does not enable freight trains to use (unless they bring back electric traction). This is a significant amount of money to spend, especially when it does not increase the speed and ability of freight services. It also does not speed up services along Mullet Creek, of which will be affected by global warming, if the expected sea levels occur.

My propopsal is a high level bridge accross the Hawkesbury, near Cowan Creek. This bridge would then have viaducts and small tunnels connecting it on either side into the existing railway network at Woy Woy and near Cowan. I freely admit that this line runs through the Ku-ring-gai National Park, and will have environmental impacts, but the impacts of building such a line would be singificantly less than the impacts of the new Sydney-Newcasltle Freeway that will be required in the coming decades, with the growth of vehicular traffic. I believe that given the two impacts, the railway line is more likely to be able to get through, than a new motorway.

This would enable a significantly faster route into Sydney, and potentially would enable sub 100min trips from Newcastle.

Wollongong Express Line

Given the extensive history the Illawarra region has had in coal mining, the area is riddled with abandoned mines, shafts and this creates significant subsidence issues, which makes the building of a new base tunnel very expensive, if not infeasible. This proposal, has a new line running on a elevated viaduct from the University of Wollongong to Bulli Interchange of the Southern Freeway, along the escarpment. It then travels mostly at grade along the Princes Hwy to Darkes Forest, then uses the Southern Fwy alignment into the existing trackage at Waterfall. Bridges can generally be built in a way that can deal with subsidence issues at a much cheaper cost than tunnels. This route again will have significant environmental impacts (mostly on the views), but these can be minimised with various techniques (such as tinting the concrete of the viaducts green, and allowing vegetation to grow close to the viaduct). This is probably the only feasible way of getting a new railway line into Wollongong at a reasonable cost.

The Wollongong Express line then deviates from the existing lines before Loftus, and continues up the abandoned F6 alignment, with a slight deviation to enable a stop at Miranda. It would then have a station at International Airport, and then into Sydney Terminal.

This will provide a significantly faster route into Wollongong, potentially bringing the trip to Wollongong down to around 45minutes.

Southern Highlands Bypass Route

The Southern Highlands route is a 93kilometre Bypass (and 20km existing track) stretching from Macarthur to Marulan. It runs down the Hume Fwy from Macarthur to Braemar, then uses the existing tracks to Moss Vale, where it then roughly follows the alignment of Sallys Corner Road back to the Hume Hwy, which it uses to Marulan, where it rejoins the existing alignment. This enables for a high speed alignment out of Sydney, whilst serving Bowral, Mittagong and Moss Vale (the largest centres in the Southern Highlands) – potentially bringing the trip time from Canberra down to 2-2 1/2 hours, which is competetive with driving and potentially flying if appropriate amenities are provided. This line woudl also enable for faster freight times along the Main South line to Melbourne and out to the west via Stockingbingal.

I will post Part 2 shortly.

The start of a new year turns our thoughts toward the year ahead, while the end of the first decade of the 21st Century in one year’s time gives us further pause for reflection and thought.

There’s been some points about the rail industry ripe for debate that have been rolling around in my mind for a while that I think are worth sharing. In no particular order, they are as follows:

1. Australian railways are world leaders in the bulk haulage of minerals across long distances from pit to port. However, the mining industry and the minerals they extract will be among the first to suffer in any sort of any scheme to price greenhouse gas emissions. Does this mean that our world leading heavy-haul railways are fast becoming dinosaurs?

Are the extensive investments by government (particularly in NSW and Queensland) to upgrade the rail element of the coal supply chain and the heavy private sector investment in the Pilbara iron ore railways an example of poor decision making by rail operators and infrastructure owners? While the miners of the Pilbara could be excused for trying to maximise their profits and get as much out of the ground before an ETS starts ‘taxing’ their off-shored profits, are ARTC and QR gambling on a losing horse by expending a big chunk of the finite budget for rail infrastructure on mineral heavy haulage? Could that pot of money have been ‘gambled’ on rail technology that had better long-term prospects, such as upgrading the interstate mainlines for intermodal freight or improving urban public transport?

2. Over on ‘the ‘Page’, there’s a spirited debate about electrification of the interstate rail network. While most of the commentary is pure pie in the sky, an important question is raised about how the power will be produced for mainline electrification (and also for any future high-speed rail corridors). Again, one of the fundamental issues is the reliance on black and brown coal for baseload electricity generation in Australia, largely due to plentiful supplies and the relatively low cost and short lead times for building new coal-fired power stations.

Again, the introduction of some sort of ETS or other pricing regime for carbon emissions could place other sources of baseload generation on a more competitive footing with coal. This would mean that the nuclear option for baseload energy generation comes back on the table for rail electrification, along with other, renewable sources of energy generation, as outlined in this report from the Parliamentary Library. This prompts me to ask the question, does supporting mainline electrification and high-speed rail in Australia necessarily mean supporting nuclear power in Australia? It does seem to be presented as a mutually exclusive argument that you can’t have one without the other. On the other hand, do new models of distributed generation of baseload power using renewables at a number of dispersed sites (based on solar thermal concentration and geothermal technology) for traction power supply and augmented by solar photovoltaics and hydro-electricity provide a better way to electrify the interstate mainlines and future high-speed corridors than a cluster of nuclear reactors along the Great Dividing Range of the eastern states?

Personally, I’m still undecided on nuclear power in Australia and if there were an alternative to coal and nuclear generation of baseload power, I’m all for it.

3. What to do with the spiderwebs of rural branchlines that are the legacy of the high-water mark of railway construction in the 19th and 20th Century. Do we declare them as assets of importance and try to keep them going, even with the ‘last resort’ traffic of seasonal grain? Do national and state governments pass legislation to compel the carriage of dangerous goods (fuel, chemicals) by rail to provide some additional non-seasonal traffic for these lines and fund an upgrade to the lines serving the major country fuel depots so that derailments don’t shift the danger of dangerous goods from road to rail? Are there other options for revitalising and upgrading these rural branchlines?

Or is the decision made to abandon the rural branchlines and many of the settlements they once served (and now only pass through) to better consolidate settlement in rural and regional Australia into the larger centres? There would perhaps be a new role for these branchlines in supplying the great retreat of European settlement in Australia and the remediation of the landscape to provide a buffer zone between the consolidated settlement and the desertification, salination and erosion that climate change is sure to bring.

4. Climate systems are not behaving as many people would believe them to. Instead of global warming meaning that average temperatures everywhere are rising, average temperatures are swinging to extremes. In Britain, extremely heavy snowfalls over December and January have brought transport networks to a standstill, including the Eurostar services under the English Channel, while in Australia, extreme weather has seen wholesale cancellations on Melbourne’s suburban network and shut down the Adelaide-Darwin railway line. Other weather extremes such as strong winds and heavy rain test the resiliance of transport networks across Australia and around the world. While governments make promises about measures to improve the resiliance of public transport networks and oppositions criticise them for not doing enough, others argue that the costs of preparing transport networks for extreme weather events that may occur relatively rarely (at least 1-in-20 year events) is not a good use of public money.

Yet, strategies to mitigate events that occur more regularly as the climate begins to ‘flicker’ between extreme highs and lows (such as heat related failures) probably are worth investing in. How then do we harden urban public transport networks against extreme weather events and how do we build in resilience in people and infrastructure to keep the network running? And how do we achieve this hardening and resiliance building without robbing urban public transport of funds for more immediate and pressing matters like addressing long-term maintenance backlogs, ordering new vehicles and extensions to the network?

So there you have it. Four thoughts to ponder in the New Year. I hope this provokes some good responses (I’m sure that it will).

As we enter the second decade of the C21th we are now 100 years from the flowering of this movement in Australia and its finest moment – the competition for the design of a federal capital. As history records, the capital, eventually named Canberra, was designed by Walter Burley Griffin though the Canberra we see today is a significant departure from that design.

Given the book is devoted to an architecture topic outside the scope of this forum, I’ll confine my notes to the ramifications of the original and subsequent design work on the federal capital to the transport/urban planning interface – which Freestone hardly mentions but will be of interest to readers of this forum.

I’ll start by mentioning that Griffin’s design was 1 of over 100 submitted to the competition; that the original design was only expected to cover a township of 25000 (though clearly a stencil for future growth); that bureaucrats in the Department of Public Works already had their own bottom draw designs and were working on these even during the period Griffin was appointed to oversea development of his design.

Much of the criticism of Griffin, as pointed out by Freestone, related to his personal management style and was also in large part self-serving, rather than directed at fundamental weaknesses in the design. It was said to ‘lack detail’ – I’m not sure how realistic it was in 1912 for an architect entering a competition at his own expense (only compensated if he won) to provide much more than inspiration and some lovely artwork.

I’ll also jump in at this point to state my respect for his original design – I’ll come back to some of the specific transport issues shortly. And my respect is not to denigrate some of the alternatives. which Freestone comments on. The year 1912 happened to be right on the cusp of the outbreak of modernism, the penumbra of the classical and it is no surprise that the competition entries straddled the divide. To paraphrase Frank Lloyd Wright, the “Roman”[classical] period was complete and did not need to be added to.

Alternative plans mimicked Washington DC closely; the same park setting but classically dressed public monuments and free standing government buildings rather than the modernism which defines Canberra today.

Griffin’s Canberra was not really built, except for a limited precinct around the Civic/Capitol/War Memorial axis. The Canberra we see today is a the 1950s vision, and quite a different rendering of the bush capital. In some ways, more Australian though I don’t mean to flatter by that remark.

Urban Planning

It is clear from the early drawings that Griffin’s federal capital, though considerably smaller at approximately 75,000 people (3 times the design requirement) was also a denser city. It would be polynuclear in the sense of separate land uses (administration, retail, housing, municipal and so on) but mononuclear in the sense that each of these land uses need only be provided once within the stencil.

It was certainly a city you could walk around. You would be able to walk around the precincts that involved your daily business (eg if you were a public servant, the government district was compact enough to walk, if you were a shopper, the retail district would be similarly walkable)

As stated above, Griffin was not providing the detail – but I would imagine that his assumption of housing density would be as prevailed in the early C20th – and he would not have been averse to walk-up multistorey developments if this suited the economics of the city.

Transport

In addition to the motor car, which at this point was still a luxury to most, Griffin assumed a tramway would be built, and an underground railway easement is marked. The mainline railway is shown as having a terminal and yard in North Canberra – which is no doubt consistent with a line from Yass (or a diversion of the Sydney-Melbourne railway). It has been my understanding that the Queanbeyan-Canberra railway was touted as a ‘construction railway only’ and temporary, as with much of Canberra.

While one is tempted to be cynical about the claim of ‘temporary’ – I suspect it is true in so many ways. And that transport and urban planning was sabotaged in Canberra as much as was every other aspect of Griffin’s plan by the usual suspects. The Parliament building was not completed until 1927 (temporary) and much of the federal bureaucracy was yet to move to Canberra even in the 1960s.

And what are the usual suspects?
The Department of Public Works and the parsimonious bureaucrats could be the symptom, the tip of the iceberg, but then what is the iceberg?

I put it down to the fundamental factors that really delayed and marred the development of a national capital.

First, the lack of real support for a federal capital in the first place. Freestone mentions this as a recurring theme, particularly in the context of the lack of support for public monument building. In one sense, Canberra was one big public monument, and therefore suffered in toto.

This lack of support ranged from Western Australian secessionism through to Melbourne and Sydney supremacy in the economic and political spheres. All the money to pay from Canberra came from taxes, there was no incidental development of a commercial and public city from the outcome of market interactions.

It wasn’t so much that transport modal choices were being deliberately biased; but that Canberra simply lacked the population or development to make much beyond private motoring worthwhile until well after WWII, at which point it was bound to be caught up in the pro-road policies of post war governments.

If Canberra had thrived in the immediate aftermath of the federal capital competition and Griffin’s plan, I expect we would have seen both a tramway network, and a more compact city to support it. It would remain to be seen whether such a tramway would have survived the tram-removal fetish of the 1950s – with wide streets, newish rolling stock and fewer economic booms and busts (such as characterised the lot of the state capitals) it is possible it might have been retained.

Wide streets, no, boulevards may not be unambiguously good for PT. The Griffin template had a network of “St Kilda Roads” with four carriageways, the centre occupied by trams. As Freestone points out, Boulevard in the French mind is many things, an evening stroll, a frontage for cafes and markets, and a grand street for processions and parades. The strolling and cafes probably wouldn’t have flown, Freestone suggests. And while St Kilda Rd does permit continuous tramway traffic to permeate it even today, it is not the quickest way of delivering people to the city – numerous traffic signals slow progress. Those signals reflect the importance of private road transport – which was facilitated by Griffin’s plan.

Cities of boulevards are quite difficult for pedestrians to go about their daily affairs. Buenos Aires has one of the world’s widest, and it makes it quite unpleasant to go from one side to the other. Even in Paris, some boulevards become a matter, for the tourist, of which metro station to alight at, depending on which side of some roundabout or park you want to get to.

Those European cities in the mediaeval mould, on the other hand, can be difficult to get around by car, but wonderful for pedestrians (depending on their approach to managing traffic, and the availability of PT). Freestone also makes the side note that it isn’t just scale, but building frontage that makes the city ped-friendly. The grand monumental public buildings proposed (and delivered) sitting on their own sites tend to frustrate and block the pedestrians. Such buildings are rarely permeable, the parkland looks nice but serves no other purpose, and the result is distances that are difficult to walk.

Would the underground rail network have worked?

Not for 25,000 people I dare say or even 75,000 – the sorts of ridership you would be looking for, say 8000 pax per hour, would be hard pressed to find enough people to actually ride such a system (assuming, for example, 10% of the city’s population are riding the trains at any one time, who’s running the place?) And that is on top of the population otherwise riding the tram, driving, walking, cycling and however other methods might have been found.

If Griffin’s template could have produced a city of millions – Washington style, then of course it is a different matter. Each of his separate precincts, retail, government, municipal and so on, would have almost required an underground railway. So the clerk in the Prime Minister’s Department could have his beer in the retail district pub after work, but then ride to his home in the residential suburb, and maybe take his kids to the public monument district or park districts on weekends.

But Canberra could never be a city of millions while Australia barely had that to its name as a whole. Which comes back to the failure of the Australian promise – the failure to be able to attract settlement (of the desirable kind: white, English-speaking and loyal to the Crown) in sufficient numbers.

Of course you don’t attract millions so that you can build an underground in the nation’s capital (at a time when the state capitals were underserved by underground railways and had many more people).

And the mainline railway?

This comes back to the general gripes with the NSWGR. Though the Commonwealth Railways owned the short Canberra branchline, they were in effect dependent for the whole period on the service of the NSWGR, who operated it as a slightly more prominent branch service off their vast but poorly built statewide network.

It had a through sleeping car – but so did Coonabarabran if my memory serves me. No real attempt was made by the NSW authorities to accord the service the dignity that even Newcastle received with its Flyer, and as if to spite the national capital, places like Goulburn were made the local hubs of activity and terminus for major passenger trains.

The NSWGR was built as an agricultural development railway, but kept as a pork barrel for Country Party voters – with funds for marginal services ensuring those lines of business that might have been worth pursuing – high density urban passenger rail, premium intercity passenger rail and heavy freight (either forwarded general freight, or bulk) were kept undercapitalised enough to give the road competition the head start.

If the focus had been kept on reducing journey times, upping axle loads, payload lengths, loco sizes and operating efficiencies, it would not be difficult to imagine a straight and fast line from Sydney to Goulburn and Canberra, such that an off-the-shelf tilting train today might be doing the run in say 2.5 hours, and competing centre to centre with aviation.

And a sensible heavy railway on the direct route might have a freight yard for local produce, containerised general freight into the city from Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane or beyond.

Such a railway might have also supported a modest interurban rail service out of the area – with settlements such as Yass being confirmed suburbs of the city. Certainly the desirable Southern Highlands towns of Bowral, Mittagong and so on would be as much Canberra’s playground as Sydney’s.

Again, the NSWGR would have been within their rights to say they staged development of a Canberra railway around the Fed’s progress with actually building the city.

By the 1950s when a real prospect of a federal capital was in reach, the feast had moved on, with road and air links being more important. Canberra has certainly never suffered a lack of domestic aviation into its airfield, definitely ahead of cities that were already larger such as Newcastle or Townsville.

[As an aside, I never thought a bog-standard NSWGR trestle across the Molonglo, or potentially across the ornamental lake, did justice to Griffin’s plan. .They might as well put the whole thing out of its misery and sell the Kingston site if they need the money. Any future fixed rail in the ACT depends on urban passenger traffic, including potentially to Queanbeyan, and a high speed train would be better coming from the north.]

It is also not just the failing of the original Australian promise of settlement and growth, but also the lack of economic growth and economic development. Add in that the Great Depression probably on the ground hit Australia harder than most developed economies, that WWII, while not physically disruptive, was not the economic enhancement to Australia that it was to much of the developed world.

Just to diverge: The UK Treasury estimated in 1952 that the entire cost of WWII to the UK had been regained in improved productivity from wartime capitalisation, and stopped just short of thanking the Germans for their aerial demolition of London’s redundant port facilities, which were superceded in more productive ports elsewhere in the UK!

But that was not really the case in Australia. So much lost time between 1912 and 1950. Not just within Canberra, but also in the states, whose economies did not really develop much during that time.

Economic development also drives sophistication in political policy and regulation.

Washington was already, in 1912, a significant place for businesses to lobby, for economic policies to be made, for the indulgences of the rich and powerful to be played out in the political sphere. This didn’t matter whether you were cattle baron, speculator, property developer, industrialist or whatever. DC was the place to be.

Australia remained a state-focused place for many years. The levers of political influence remained in the state capitals for decades (as did many of the federal bureaucracies in the event). Basics such as company regulation, infrastructure and industrial standards were state issues. Our cockies and squattocrats looked to their state representatives to protect them, even as Section 92 marched on.

And Australia never had the military procurement culture of the US. Even if Defence had been in Russell in the early years, I suspect we wouldn’t have seen the revolving door of influence in Russell that exists in Washington.

The Constitution was a shopping list of minutiae – with the Feds getting the post office, the lighthouses, meteorology and other trivia.

Even where constitutional law was screaming out the possibility of centralisation, such as through the corporations power, the Interstate Commission (that never was) or centralised wage fixing – it was a long time coming. One can imagine the Engineers Case of 1920 as a bridge across the Rubicon of States’ rights that was never crossed – well not until the recent Workchoices case. We did not, in that sense, use the scope that the US Congress was afforded under their constitution to expand the power of Washington over the economy.

So one wonders, even if the population had been there – what would there have been there to do in Canberra, such as would merit a large capital.

Maybe Griffin was right – and a constitutionally modest Canberra, administering a limited range of national functions (and the lighthouses), would have been best kept within say a 5km radius of Capitol Hill, with a small tramway network and a nice big railway station in its northern quarter.

I have argued before the whole ACT was a mistake – the Federal territory should only ever have been excised from NSW around the actual institutions of the Federal Government – to encompass the Parliament, the Executive, the GG, the foreign embassies, the High Court, and perhaps the Defence/Security establishment. Such a territory could have easily been a mere 10sqkm or so. Any extra land required for public servants’ housing, retail and so on, could have been within NSW, within an extended Queanbeyan.

A real Washington DC, with a Maryland and Virginia to house its people.

Federal capitals are always fraught, and as Freestone points out, for grandiose schemes to succeed they need authoritarians behind them. Just as Haussman needed Louis Napoleon, and Speer needed Hitler, so to did Putrajaya need Mahathir in our time. There is no shame in wanting a city to be a national monument. We should never pretend there is an economic payback – but realise that having a capital is the curse of being a nation state.

And having a federal capital is the curse of being a federation.

It is interesting to see how Europe is dealing with this. Brussels was only ever an obscure political compromise of the 1960s and now seems irrelevant and redundant coming into 2010. If anything, the only payoff seems to be to hold the centrifugal forces of Belgian bi-communalism together a few more decades. Brussels is of course “Francophone but not in France” just as Canberra is “in NSW but not of it”.

A real European capital would probably be closer to the geographical centre, more steeped in the angst of pan-European conflicts and culture (perhaps on the Germano-Slavic divide) and potentially a new city, or a “Bonn” built up. I’d wager somewhere near Trieste, Ljubliana and Klagenfurt – the interaction of the Germanic, the Slavic and the Romance.

At least Brussels has a good modern transport system, to bring this post back to the topic.

A modern enclosed shopping centre is arguably the new walkable retail district, in the original mould. Having an enclosed shopping centre in each of the towns means that the original retail commercial centre at Civic can never be much more than the walk-about centre of its mmediate environs.

While you are free to live in which ever suburb you wish (or across the border), in practice the homogenous nature of Canberra housing means there is no particular reason not to live in a suburb of the town you work in. And much of this type of commuting is of course done by car.

And judging by the ABC News Radio traffic broadcasts in the morning, it is rare indeed for Canberra to suffer the all encompassing congestion and slow journey times that keep rail transport in business in the five mainland state capitals.

If Griffin’s electric tramways had been “US Interurban” in flavour, with long sections of rail-style cross-country running on separate corridors, they could have been a template for a modern inter-town electric rail system.

Of course, this idea has also considerable weaknesses. The town centres are not compact in themselves either – so unless multiple stations/stops were provided, it might be hard to use them to get around locally. And by definition the town centres are supposed to be very similar – providing very little reason to leave them. There is no sense leaving Woden Plaza and journey for 30 minutes to …visit another shopping mall in Belconnen?

I would be interested in a US perspective on Canberra’s prospects for fixed-rail transport. The low density, car friendly characteristics have been overcome in several US light rail schemes – but the city is very small.

And ‘commuter rail’ in the smaller cities that have benefited from it have often used it to overcome freeway congestion (more cost-effective than extra lanes) which is absent in Canberra, and the freight rail infrastructure they are using is in better condition than the former NSWGR.

The public debate has moved away from privatisation of government functions, but has not swung back in any big way to a larger state sector.

Canberra may yet grow from accretion, but I doubt it will grow in the Whitlamesque way, with active consideration of new state functions and the staff to support them. Which means no grand plans for transport which can’t be justified by extra population.

Now the ACT is self-governing and has dreams of its own light rail network, I’m not sure there is any constituency for this thinking though. The Federal Government is still the largest employer in town – and they conspicuously recruit Australia wide, permanently turning Canberra into a city of migrants, never quite interested in its fate.

Too many Commonwealth public servants I have met still cast one eye towards the house they hope to buy in Sydney or Melbourne or Noosa, when they have had enough or saved enough. You still experience the mad rush on a Friday night at the airport and the expression “Last one out please turn off the lights” is still widely used. {I suspect the MPs and their vast legions of staff are also largely responsible for this effect, as they conspicuously crowd the airport}. I even recall when the hospital implosion tragedy happened, they said they staged the event to stop people leaving on weekends!

I therefore suspect there are too few people in Canberra with enough roots there to make it want to prosper, even before you have to deal with the other 21 million Australians and their views of the place.

The Ottawa model might be better for Canberra (better for Canberra than Ottawa I suspect). Buses along busways with a bit of fixed infrastructure in the town centres, and dedicated lanes on the intertown highways.

If the towns were able to build up density in their centres, that might at least provide a constituency of people who don’t use private motor transport for their every move—that might be users of PT in a future life.

And we should not forget the enthusiasm for cycling. You can get them out of their cars in the right circumstances.

But Canberra is definitely ‘pro-road’ in extremis, its town planning, modal investment, its size, and operational policies like parking completely unfriendly to PT.

I don’t know if Griffin’s Canberra could ever have lived down the ‘bush capital’ label; but it could conceivably have been a very diffferent place to live. A mini-Washington and a small European new town at the same time. A pleasant university campus of a place, with a little tramway and compact walkable centre. Dreams are free!

I’ve been a bit guarded about my line of work but let’s just imagine this post is relevant to it.

I caught the end of an exchange in the Herald Sun letters section. The person was chastising another, presumably an employee of Coles or Woolworths, for a remark contributed. The chastiser was pointing out that employees of the supermarkets should not be supporting the self-serve checkouts, lest they deal themselves out of a job.

It follows the old furphy about whether you should deliberately leave a mess at McDonalds, to give their staff something to do; and therefore their bosses a reason to employ them.

It got me to thinking about the public transport system and what level of support there should be from staff for improvements to productivity, some of which might cost jobs, others of which might boost ridership, and therefore save, or even create, jobs.

NSW and Queensland rail operators still have guards on board the trains. NSW still has considerable numbers of staff in ticket boxes selling tickets, in most cases parallel to machines that can also sell tickets.

Releasing this labour could both save costs and also improve service quality, for example, by improving the frequency of trains by diverting guards to the driver pool. Of course this is somewhat simplistic but in the longer term, would boost service quality and therefore ridership and bottom line.

A driverless metro would do even more to ‘multiply’ the productivity of such staff as are employed.

And finally, public transport reform boosts the productivity of the city as a whole – and that provides even more jobs.

The downsides are of course whether people’s existing skills can be transferred or upgraded. And the minutiae of current employment grades and rates. And all the status and kudos that people feel in their current jobs, which reform could undermine.

And the political system lacks the credibility to deliver on these ‘quid-pro-quo’ arrangements. Staff are rightly suspicious of undertakings for better or higher paid employment after a transition.

It takes a special kind of turkey to vote for Christmas.

The 2010 Australasian Transport Research Forum has put out a call for papers that closes at the end of January 2010. It will be held in Canberra, so it’s a good opportunity to go to a local conference on transport that’s not too expensive.

If you’ve got a piece of research that you’ve done on a transport topic, why not share it with the rest of the transport world? Just finished an honours/masters/PhD? – time to publicise your research. Alternatively, if you’ve just completed a transport project, it’s time to share successes and failures with your peers.

I know there’s a few contributors who already work in the industry who could easily do a paper and there are others who have lots of good ideas, but no ’serious’ forum (beyond TT of course) at which to be heard. Then its time to ‘put the money where the mouth is’ so to speak. A 200-word abstract is not a big investment of one’s time. The hard part will be putting the paper together if it gets accepted.

If anyone is interested in taking the first step into a wider world of transport research and policy, email me and I’d be pleased to lend a hand and give advice. For examples of what an ATRF paper looks like, there’s a great archive of papers from the first conference in 1975 through to 2009 on the PATREC website. There are so many good ideas floating around on TT that it would be a shame if they went no further out into the world of transport.

Source: Signalboxes.com

Recent issues of UK rail magazines have discussed the merits of extending conventional (medium speed up to 200km/h) rail services along the remaining non-electrified main lines in that country. Some of these have recently been announced, including in Scotland, while other iconic possibilities include the Great Western Railway territory, a famous home of fast but conventional trains and deemed for many years, too low density for electrification.

The UK is one of the rail systems in Europe at the low end of mainline electrification reach. While some of the important lengths of the country have been spanned since the 1970s and 1980s, such as both mainlines to Scotland, and the shorter network towards the south east on the third rail system since the 1930s, the UK has manifested some of the anti-electrification habits that we see in this country. While the 1970s gave everyone a shock on energy security and price issues, the UK felt somewhat insulated, for a time, by its oil deposits in the North Sea.

An immediate focus on the developing a medium to high speed option in the Intercity 125 (now class 43), the precursor to the Australian XPT, responded to the demand for a faster intercity service that forestalled, at least for a few years, the possibility of electrification on major routes to the North and West. With a passenger:freight traffic ratio favouring passenger, the UK had no major drive to reduce fuel costs for rail freight hauls, also tending not to push for electrification.

Notwithstanding this, the mainlines to Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester were electrified in the 1970s, while the north eastern mainlines to Leeds and Edinburgh with some local Scottish routes were electrified in the 1980s. With electrification came some limited attempts to increase mainline maximum speeds above what the class 43 had been rated at, with the north eastern mainline rerated at 225km, grazing the lower limit of what some would call high speed rail. However, this was not feasible on the west coast route which led to attempts to reduce transit time using tilting trains. The first such attempt in the 1970s was a failure, however, tilting trains have since found a home in the UK.

The only challenge to date from high speed rail has been in the SE, linking to France and the extensive continental high speed network. The technology and operating practices for this service have been unapologetically and explicitly Continental. It was not felt wise to be developing a home-grown template for high speed services, such as occurred in Mainland Europe, with separate seeds for high speed in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Conventional rail electrification in the UK is probably at its technological limits, but not its limits of extent, hence the recent debate and announcements.

In Australia there have been roughly three phases (but not three-phase, as such) to mainline electrification. The first was largely abortive, with planned developments to Newcastle not proceeding in the 1920s. Suburban railways in Sydney and Melbourne were electrified. The principal driver was to reduce the heavy loco operational and maintenance costs associated with steam operation, and increase speeds at the margin, and traffic density, within the suburban passenger area.

The Melbourne network was more extensive and took electrification a long way into the rural hinterland but generally not on the mainline network.

Electric locomotives were built, but only used on local shunting trips. St Albans was the extent on the Bendigo line however no attempt was made to use electric locomotives to haul goods or passengers to the limit and steam beyond, as occurred in Wellington. The same applied to Dandenong.

Broadmeadows, which might also have benefitted from electric haulage (at the top of a long grade) was probably also too close to Melbourne to warrant such a change – and a bypass freight line was built that reduced the consequences of the adverse grade.

Electric motive power was swapped at the boundaries of the electrified network at Lilydale and Frankston. These services were very low density and rural, and offered little practical benefit in swapping motive power. Services to the ends of the low density rural network at Hurstbridge and Upper Ferntree Gully were delivered, in all likelihood to remove the requirement for steam locomotives based at the extremities.

Sydney had a much more limited electric network. Hornsby and Sutherland, like Broadmeadows, sat at the top of a heavy grade and might have benefitted from electric haulage, however, no serious attempt was made to do so.

The other extremities were purely suburban and on easier grades. None was far enough from Sydney to provide any benefit from mainline haulage, as the swap would occur to close to the city centre.

The principal benefit in Sydney’s case of electrification was to enable an earlier start on a city underground than had been delivered elsewhere. As the 1920s came to a close, and economic decline set in, the Sydney and Melbourne networks stood as they would for another 30 years.

The 1950s and 60s saw the second push towards mainline electrification. In both the Victorian and NSW examples, this time the key driver was heavy mainline freights, and the cost of locomotive exchanging was factored into this case. In the NSW case, the extreme mainline grades on the Central Coast and Blue Mountains routes provided the main differential benefit over steam, while in Victoria’s case the expected high traffic densities meritted the work over a dense steam operation.

In both cases passengers also benefitted, although only in NSW was a dedicated set of electric rollingstock provided for the service. This reflected much higher passenger traffic densities on the Sydney lines, while in Melbourne using electric locomotives to haul conventional long distance passenger services sufficed.

The NSW electrifications also provided the opportunity to extend suburban passenger services, in the western case, to Penrith, and in the northern case to the somewhat artificial terminus of Cowan. This pattern continued in the late 1960s as electric coal haulage to Glenlee provided the first electric suburban trains to Campbelltown.

In Melbourne this should also have been possible – except that apart from a few workers trains a short distance past the Dandenong limit, it was not taken up until the mid 1970s.

In some ways the 1950s electrification movement was a false dawn – not waiting to see the benefits of dieselisation, which reduced operating costs by a similar amount without the heavy capital requirement, and in many cases saddling the railways with 30 years of locomotive exchange and slower journey times. Transit times over the electrified section were only incidentally increased.

Only passenger services have endured to this day, driven as they have by urban growth rather than a preference for rail transport. Services beyond Pakenham have been de-electrified. The traffic for which it was electrified has not only reduced, it has completely disappeared. Not only was the electrification technology the wrong tech – but even the traffic was disappearing at the time they thought it was appearing, as people no longer needed brown coal briquettes for domestic and industrial use. Ironically, electricity itself was one of the causes for this displacement of briquette technology, as was natural gas which the government was promoting in parallel.

The 1980s saw the third burst of electrification – sadly, a rehash of the 1950s. This cements for me, how Australian rail planners not only make mistakes, but make the same mistakes again and again. Driven by the same resource boom mentality of the 1950s, the same responses were selected – electrify over conventional rail tracks, swap locomotives at the boundary, which was often a political or operational boundary rather than a natural limit to traffic. Mineral haulage estimates and fuel prices were again exaggerated and not achieved- and the benefits of improved diesel technology pre-empted.

In Queensland at least there was a singular advance, through the use of high voltage AC electrification. This was potentially available in the 1950s however was not quite mature enough in its use in Europe to be available here with few risks. For passenger services especially there was concern about reducing the scale of transforming equipment to fit onto a conventional multiple unit carriage in the early days – issues well resolved by the 1970s.

Queensland also made some attempt to reduce transit times by realignment but this exposed the issue somewhat – that the considerable cost of electrification might have been spent on more realignment, both in Queensland and NSW, and delivered measurable benefits in energy costs (through shorter, quicker, flatter journeys) and other benefits of transit time and reduced loco crewing, without the capital costs of wire and a dedicated fleet of electric rollingstock.

The criticism is particularly damning in NSW. Here, the case for improved passenger services was stronger due to urbanisation. However, lessons from Europe or Japan were not heeded – the availability of dual voltage rollingstock for example, the desirability of major realignments or new routes if real market share in passenger transport were to be achieved. Or the potential to build fast, comfortable and even tilting rollingstock to serve diesel lines (which in one sense already existed with the XPT, misused as it was on long distance slow journeys). A whole generation of 160km/h DMUs such as now exist with the Velocity in Victoria, was a technology available in Europe in the 1980s. Route improvements, such as deviations near Newcastle around the Awaba-Fassifern-Teralba area, or a reinstatement of older routes on the Illawarra, might have been more realistic. In Queensland, no new DMUs have been built since the 2000 class in the 1960s. A belated program of realignments, commenced again in the 2000s, has seen route improvements in Queensland that could have been facilitated 20 years earlier.

Like the 1950s, much of the 1980s has been unwound. Electric traction has disappeared from Emerald (another political and operational outpost, rather than a traffic-mandated one) and the Gladstone Gympie section and the Rocklands to Rockhampton section are down to one electric passenger train a day. The Illawarra network is down to the bare-bones passenger service to Kiama and Port Kembla, and the Newcastle one restricted to the Sydney to Newcastle passenger line.

It would be my contention that if route and transit improvements drive market share and density, and density then drives electrification, we might have had a more virtuous circle of dieselisation leading to route improvement leading to more traffic leading to electrification, rather than the path that was actually followed, which I would call “premature electrification”.

But with the pendulum in the UK, a lag-adopter by European standards, now swinging back to electrification, let’s look at the drivers and challenges for such an approach on conventional Australian mainlines (which I define as routes with general freight and a mix of long distance and local passenger traffic).

Traffic densities are not predicated around distance from capital (nor distance hauled) in Australia. Heavy hauls are seen on the lines north west from Newcastle as far as Narrabri but only one freight a day goes to Bomaderry. You will see a much lower amount of traffic at Virginia, within the suburban area of Adelaide, than you will see at Blackwater in rural Queensland. Even passenger densities are arbitrary, as explains a good service frequency to Lithgow ahead of a poor service frequency to Stony Point, albeit the opportunities to realise density gains are greater on the latter route.

Even the percentage of a traffic’s distance hauled indicates little. For example, using Stony Point as the example, the broad gauge haul from Dynon to Long Island is electrified most of the distance, from the Dynon area to Frankston. As a discrete haul (the load is transhipped) this line could be easily electrified, providing an electric passenger service to Hastings (most of the traffic) and a potentially faster, quieter and less polluting option within the suburbs. Of course, no such service is provided. Even traffics entirely ‘under the wire’ are no longer provided with electric haulage, for example, the Owanyilla woodchips were provided with electric traction to start with, but no longer.

Comparing the UK with Australia we need to examine the following benefits and challenges:
-capital cost
–sovereign debt financing
–construction cost
-operational cost
–fuel or energy
–incidental costs of swapping rollingstock and maintenance
-flexibility of rollingstock deployment
-traffic density
-higher speed of rollingstock
-incidental transit time improvements to route
-improved ‘image’ of electric rail

First, the capital cost is a ‘dead weight’ on any comparison of electric versus non-electric, and puts every other possible improvement ‘behind’ which we saw especially in Queensland. This is made up of two costs – public finance costs and construction costs.

Public finance is subject to a multitude of paradoxes – such as how the UK with a sovereign debt around 100% of GDP is able to offer low interest rates than Australia with only 16% (and with Malcolm Turnbull screaming blue murder about it!). One of the paradoxes is explained by the home country bias: people will lend to their own sovereign at cheaper rates than others, irrespective of the actual risks. That is how Japan has managed to stay in business at all – with Japanese people lending money for free to their governments.

Of course that in turn is answered by two realistic explanations – that people are in fact paying for all the economic stimulation their governments do, to protect their jobs and develop their countries – by subsidising their national borrowings. Secondly, they have some influence, through the political system of their own country on how it is spent and paid back. Equity, rather than debt. No Japanese voter can influence how another country’s government spends or repays.

Unlike Japan, Australia is a debtor nation. It is not the government debt causing interest rates to be above world levels, but private debt. Australia’s private economy is seen as too much of a risk, too dependent on low-value-adding industry and not much depth. And for Australian governments two risks: having to effectively underwrite private debt, but also having limited ability, though the income and consumption tax system, to pay off loans quickly, because our income and consumption tax bases are low by developed world standards. Hence worthwhile government expenditure is deferred, while unsustainable investments in housing construction and company acquisition (reducing the pool of economic talent further) are the preference.

This would explain Australian government’s fetish with being the ‘model debtor’ to the world – to make up for the private sector’s failure to generate sufficient wealth within our borders. A perverse sort of “crowding out” where private sector demand crowds out the public sector.

The long and the short of it is, a total project cost over 30 years at 6% is going to cost Australia far more to finance than the UK, dollar for dollar (pound for pound).

Looking at construction costs, this is a hobbyhorse of great age. The expertise and some of the equipment for electrification is highly traded and mobile. However, at the risk of overlapping with the sovereign debt argument, the real consideration is not traded prices but purchasing power parity (PPP) – what does it cost in terms of local opportunities foregone to pay for these projects, not the actual price.

While currencies move dramatically around conditions and whims (for example, the AUD:GBP rate has gone from 3:1 to 2:1 in a very short time). For actual traded goods, this can provide windfall gains and losses very quickly. For example, a UK electrification contractor might find a move to the Australian market very lucrative when reported in their own currency at present. It might change if we return to earlier levels. However, PPP rates do not change markedly over time because the economic fundamentals and the scarcity costs of all the different goods and services WITHIN the domestic economy do not change quickly. So the general labour cost of electrification workers in Australia is lower than the UK and will remain that way for some time. However, specialist workers are in high demand and Australia does not produce enough for itself – we pay over the odds for these people.

The real cost drivers are the lack of constant work (boosting the fixed costs of design and project establishment, equipment acquisition and recruitment), variable costs not able to be spread over large projects (long km lengths), and our sovereign debt rates.

Looking at fuel/energy costs it may actually favour diesel in the UK, as the electricity costs are higher than here, while diesel is actively traded around the world. I’m unclear on UK taxation of fuels as a business input, so won’t say anything more about it.

From our point of view, any differentials in prices in Australia must be artificial, we are a net energy exporter albeit an importer of petroleum products. I do not see energy price or security issues affecting the equation either way – it would come down to a simple fuel efficiency equation – does the generation of electricity and its transmission to the point of use, being cheaper than supplying that energy as liquid fuel, overcome the cost difference between a locomotive generating its own electricity, and the locomotive which doesn’t and therefore relies on lineside transmission and delivery equipment.

Both energy sources have extensive and established supply chains – liquid fuels via private supply and delivery, electricity via transmission networks. The main difference is the railways have to supply a ‘to the railhead’ electricity supply system, whereas a tank or 2 of distillate at a few depots is all that it takes to keep a diesel locomotive fuelled – the supplier does the rest.

Incidental costs including loco exchange and extra maintenance can be a killer. To minimise the amount of loco swapping – the electrification scheme needs to reach the limits of the traffic, not the limits of a political region or former rail operational base.

NSW readers will recall what happened with Lithgow. The scheme was supposed to reach Wallerawang and the mines in that area, so that end to end haulage (mine to power station or export loader) could take place with a single set of locomotives. However when the cost of the entire scheme got excessive they terminated it at Lithgow, a rail depot that had been located not because of its coal deposits or traffic, but because it marked the end of a difficult section of rail. As well it had become a large town in its own right – making reaching there a political imperative as much as an operational one – but ignoring the actual traffic to be hauled.

For the saving of maybe 5% of the total project cost by truncating the service at Lithgow/Bowenfels (which obviated a tunnel enlargement) the line was condemned to 30 years of needless locomotive exchange to reach destinations only 5% extra distance beyond from the end of the wire.

Too many other examples abounded in Australian electrification – traffics out of unwired sidings or branches which undermined the whole rationale for the electrification. Metropolitan Colliery, Sulphide works, Newstan/Eraring/Vales Point, Maryvale paper, Holmview cattle siding and the Ebenezer Colliery would all be a good place to start. They were unable to even wire to the gates of Goninan in Broadmeadow.

And its never clear just how many sidings are required to be wired. Most yards have a siding or crossover that’s hardly used, but is kept just in case. But unwired, it becomes unusable without a shunting loco kept on site, another cost.

And keeping diesels ‘around’ increases the likelihood they will be used, and the electrification scheme becomes steadily redundant. In Victoria, for example, they turned off the Latrobe Valley electrification every Sunday. With low service levels and a more efficient freight service actually provided on Sunday than during the week (for example, a Sunday Bairnsdale train could run right through without loco change) – the incentive to keep the wired service was reduced.

This also points to flexibility, another opportunity cost of electrification. This is fairly self-evident, but has become all the more so with generic body designs for passenger rollingstock, where the power unit is the only difference between diesel and electric. Think of the Rockhampton and Cairns Tilt Trains, for example.

Freight haulage today will depend on how well electrification maximises the heavy hauls, and the extent to which overhead wiring limits payload space, for example, trailer on flat car or double stacked containers. It is possible to install traction wires at heights that allow for double stacking – it has not been seen as important in Australia to date to do this – and many of the clearance adjustments undertaken in electrification schemes have been ‘barely enough’ to squeeze a pantograph down above the roofline of a conventional locomotive or wagon/carriage body.

Heavy haulage should be the domain of the electric locomotive. It was troubling that the 86 class running on low voltage DC electrification, though notionally rated a more powerful locomotive than the 81 class diesel of the same generation of purchases, was in practice limited to the capacity of the supply system installed. When 2-locomotive coal trains of 30 odd wagons was the norm, the difference was not evident. When trains double that length started to appear, the 4×86 combination was trumped by a 3×81 combination – a 33% improvement in locomotive productivity. As I understand it, high voltage AC locomotives tend to avoid this power drop.

Traffic density is now the key determinant from the need side of the equation. Tractive effort, which used to give electric locomotives a clear lead over steam, is no longer such an advantage against diesel locomotives. Higher speed (facilitated by lighter weight and track impact at speed) only favours electric at the top of the speed range (typically above 220km/h). Underground operation favours electric but with the cost of underground rail many times greater than above ground, any savings from the use electric traction will be marginal to the overall decision.

It is no surprise density is a key factor in a renaissance of mainline electrification in the UK. We are not talking population density, though that is part of it. We are talking traffic density, especially what I would call general intercity traffic – journeys from settlements of all sizes to others for business, for visiting friends and relatives and so on, not merely for the daily work journey or for welfare.

Because this traffic can be very non-specific (not focussed on a handful of large centres like in Australia) it is not easily amenable to replacement by grand high speed rail schemes, as in France. It is closer to the German example.

Any move to a renaissance of long distance passenger rail in Australia would more closely mirror the French example – justified by a few large cities, and the needs of smaller settlements en route or elsewhere would be irrelevant. It is hard to imagine for example, a journey from Wagga to Bathurst being of any great import to a decision to improve passenger rail in Australia. In Germany, however, two cities of 50,000 would be just the market for the sorts of journeys that network does well.

Mainline electrification has seen what I would call incidental improvements in transit speed. This is distinguished from design improvements, which might involve faster locomotives, rollingstock, track or signalling. Some of this can be regarded as consequent on catching up on deferred maintenance.’

It was noticeable that apart from the presence of overhead masts and wire, the 1950s and 1980s electrification schemes showed precious little evidence of the whole rail line being upgraded to meet modern requirements. The track and signalling often was unchanged from before electrification, except in some cases were track recircuiting required the signalling to be modernised.

Incidental improvements in transit time also came from the greater power on the hills, and quicker recovery from stops. OS Nock, in his seminal Railways of Australia, gave the example of the U-Sets in the Blue Mountains running the same timetable up the hill and down. This was not the case with the steam-hauled local trains they replaced!

Higher speeds should be possible from rolling stock, given two advantages of electrification. Opportunities to distribute power throughout the train, reducing axle loads from locomotives. Electrification allows EMU designs to be developed where high power to weight is achieved, compared with diesel equivalents. Higher torque allows power to be picked up quickly and applied to moving the train to cruising speed. Electric locomotives can also provide peak bursts of power, in excess of the continuous power rating, that can be used to start a train rolling to high speed, with lower power required to keep it at high speeds. This mechanism allows TGVs to develop 5 digit kw output for a short time to reach 300km/h, but not have to sustain it as the train has considerable momentum.

The case for electrification is often made by pointing the elusive preference people have for it. I would distill this into a few discrete factors: Electrification is often accompanied by new rollingstock and station upgrades, hence an association in the public mind with it being more desirable.

Because electrification requires higher traffic densities, a plan to increase traffic densities may occur concurrently with electrification, and the two become conflated. For example, post electrification, Nambour, Newcastle, Wollongong, Kiama and countless other places have better services. However, Ballarat and Bendigo also have considerably better services, as does Traralgon, which has more services now than it did when wired. Maitland and Nowra manage with excellent (for their size) diesel passenger services than are unlikely to see electrification.

And electrification may not presage the way to better service. Sunbury is not on the line to Geelong, but Sunbury definitely points the way to Geelong. One is currently unhappy and the other definitely would be. Because electrification has become conflated, in Victorian minds, with an inferior quality of service, with uncomfortable rollingstock, delays, strikes, lack of staff presence and social undesirables. Of course overhead wires and substations have nothing to do with this; but just as a good image can become conflated, so can a bad one. Some rail enthusiasts, who passionately advocate for electric services to places like Geelong, fail to see this.

Finally the environmental argument should win it for electrification, but often doesn’t. Coal fired, especially brown coal fired electricity might only move the pollution from city to powerstation. Renewable sources will clean up the emissions, however an empty train is still wasteful, taking renewable power in the grid from other industries who might have had a better use for it.

The most environmentally friendly thing a train can do is be full. A full train represents car or truck journeys not made, and improves at the margin, ie the marginal wagon or carriage will represent less of an impost on the environment than the ones before it, but draw cars and trucks away that had a constant rate of damage. But an empty train is wasteful. Socially, environmentally and economically.

So how and in what circumstances can Australia benefit from mainline rail electrification?

Given the limitations I’ve mentioned above, some key points are:

-the scope of the electrification must fit around a traffic, not a set of political or operational end points. Ending schemes at the modern equivalents of Lithgow or Rockhampton is doomed. The synergies of Glenlee for freight, and Campbelltown for passengers are the right way to go – the Ebenezer/Rosewood scheme the wrong way to go.

-if the traffic is high value, high volume passenger traffic, then possible mainline electrification is not the way to go, but to build a whole new line, which in probability will also be electrified. Mandurah and Bunbury are pointing the way. If Bunbury is worth having a passenger service, it will be worth having a high speed one, with new fast corridor, dedicated stock and electrification. Not a tacked-on arrangement on the existing route, dodging the slower freights. If it is not worth a new route, it is probably not worth doing.

-traffic density rather than haulage capability or speed are the most realistic options in Australia. If speed becomes make or break, as in high speed intercity rail, then electrification will be favoured. If it isn’t make or break, for example, in the case of Geelong or Sunbury, where rail is already faster than road on point to point (but not door to door) then electrification will make no difference. If however a 220km/h diesel train from Sydney to Canberra was simply not able to beat an aircraft end-to-end, but a 300km/h electric train could – then the case would be clear.

And to justify electrification would require the sorts of suburban densities we see now – out on the mainlines. We may yet see them in some places, for example, between Sydney and Brisbane, or between Sydney and Narrabri/Ulan. If Narrabri/Ulan electrification fortuitously provided a suburban service to Maitland that only required the short section to Telarah wired, then great. However, I can’t see that benefit without coal haulage driving it.

A proper carbon price might skew some of the decisions in favour of electrification, as with peak oil. However, to build the case for rail being a good environmental citizen, it needs to focus on core efficiencies – relieving congestion in the cities, including going underground if need be; hauling the big hauls on the rural mainlines; and possibly providing an alternative to air travel between the closer large cities on the coast. That way, it will kick the big goals against the other modes and develop a market share large enough to justify the electrification that will make a virtuous circle complete.