Greens call for a high speed rail link (3 Viewers)

[aussie-boy]

ugh, they have there own lines but there are also points that must be crossed especially since the HSL would go to the central terminus which is on the northern side of the station. The other option is to use the spare underground platform at Central but that connects to the Illawarra line until Sydenham AFAIK, so the same problem. Not to mention there are many many curves there which means trains can't run especially fast through there anyway.

There is an underground tunnel that InterCity south coast services use to access Sydney terminal from the main Illawarra line

I still don't see how you can possibly make the line less than 1000 km or so though dude. They can't build it through the snowy mountains which means it more or less has to go via wagga and albury and then since skipping Canberra would be madness bam, 1000 km.

Theres no way they would make it go down into Canberra than back up to Yass and around the mountains... if Australia does something it's done properly - the French are building a TGV line through the Alps to Torino. The Brindabella's are nothing compared to that, a few tunnels and bridges wouldnt be hard at all.

Otherwise, it would go, as I said before, via Cooma and Bairnsdale - that route is about 900km total from Syd to Melb

---
Id post all my mad diagrams and topography etc but my proper computer is broken and this one crumbles under streaming video, let alone vector graphics processing

 

[aussie-boy]

If there was a metro from parra->central that'd be a great option. Problem is nowadays Parramatta is pretty much in the geographic centre of Sydney, and buying that much land, or tunnelling under it would be prohibitively expensive which means you have the same problem of running on existing track. Otherwise a high speed line up the coast would be bloody awesome, driving up the Pacific Highway is just awful.

Parramatta would be easy to build a HSL to without tunnels; there's tons of land around the main south line... problem is most businesspeople who travel interstate a lot come from the lower north shore and eastern subs

 

[Richard Gilmore]

ugh, they have there own lines but there are also points that must be crossed especially since the HSL would go to the central terminus which is on the northern side of the station. The other option is to use the spare underground platform at Central but that connects to the Illawarra line until Sydenham AFAIK, so the same problem. Not to mention there are many many curves there which means trains can't run especially fast through there anyway.

dude no lines would have to be crossed until like....redfern. a bridge could be built over/tunnel under the part where bankstown joins the corridor, and other than that there's a big gap on the west that doesn't intersect with anything.

like i said, go there.

and im not offering any resistance to the point between redfern/central but like, it's five minutes so who cares.

 

[Optimus Prime]

I've been there, can't remember exactly, just know trains go real slow from Sydenham to Central.

 

[Richard Gilmore]

i know, it's pretty absurd but i think that's more a relic of the pre-clearways business and trains all intersecting over lines etc. a grade separated line from wolli-creek to redfern (with a bridge over the sydenham intersection) would be faster - perhaps not 300km, but fast enough to make the travel time less of a problem.

by comparison, going through sydenham to redfern currently is about 5-10 mins quicker than going through the airport. that's right now with all the big problems.