How is Australia's intercity rail?

[Cirrus]

I don't think I've ever heard anything about Australia's intercity rail network. What's it like? Is it any good? Nationalized or private? Is there high speed rail?

With a couple of exceptions, most of Australia's large cities are clustered along its east coast. So while I doubt very much that Perth gets many trains, what about Sydney-to-Melbourne?

[Jasonhouse]

A nice conversation starter...




http://www.seat61.com/

[Swede]

As I recall one big issue in Australia for cross-continental lines is (or at least has been) that the states are using different gauges (in non-contiguous blocks).

[vid]

Much of Australia now has dual gauge track, where the rail lines have three rails instead of two and can accommodate two sizes.

[Fresh]

It's terrible, very few people use it to travel. It takes about an hour to fly between Syd-Mel (I believe it's the 4th or 5th busiest air route in the world), 8 hours to drive on a road that's 90% freeway, or 10-11 hours to take a train that is constantly plagued by delays.

Sydney to Brisbane has a similar sort of comparative times. I don’t have any ideological reason to play it down, it’s a truly neglected, rarely used backup, backup mode of travel and I don’t think I know anybody who has ever caught a train to Melbourne.

HSR has been talked about since the 80s and funnily enough your timing is good OP because Infrastructure Australia itself released apparently of the most comprehensive discussion paper on the matter just a few days ago. I’ve been meaning to get around reading it but haven’t yet, so thanks for reminding me.

http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/rai...eed/index.aspx

Price tag for Brisbane-Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne?

$114 billion.

Ouch.

[Swede]

What would be the investment needed to get the Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney part up and running? Both Sydney and Melbourne have good masstransit so getting core-to-core HSR makes sense as a next step.

@vid - I did not know that. Good to hear