\u201cA second airport for Sydney has to be connected to Sydney by both an expressway and a railway or perhaps some rapid transport system \u2026 a high-speed rail could be constructed,\u201d the late Liberal MP for Mackellar, Bill Wentworth, said in 1971.<\/p>\n
More than 50 years later, the federal government has announced construction of a bullet train line from Sydney to Newcastle will begin in two years.<\/p>\n
The planned high-speed rail will \u201cchange the way people live, work and travel in our country\u2019s most populous region\u201d, the infrastructure minister, Catherine King, said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Up to 16 million <\/a>people a year could end up using it by 2041, while it will also contribute to the government\u2019s net zero emissions by 2050 target.<\/p>\n Once it\u2019s up and running, commuters will be able to travel between Newcastle and Sydney in an hour (for $31<\/a>), instead of more than 2.5 hours, and from Gosford on the Central Coast to Sydney in 30 minutes, down from 90.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n King has pledged another $230m for detailed design work, taking the spend in the development phase to $659.6m.<\/p>\n The Sydney to Newcastle stage will cost $61.2bn overall, and the bill goes up to $93bn once the line goes all the way to the new Western Sydney international airport<\/a>. The government is looking for private sector investor to pick up part of the tab.<\/p>\n Proposed high-speed rail stations on the Newcastle to Sydney part of the line.<\/a><\/p>\n The world\u2019s first high-speed train, the Shinkansen<\/a>, started operating in Japan in 1964, not long before Wentworth proposed a system for Australia. But despite multiple announcements since then, it has not yet happened.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re a little bit unusual in that most countries that have thought about doing high-speed rail have actually gone ahead and built it,\u201d University of Sydney senior lecturer in transport and logistics management, Dr Geoffrey Clifton, says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of those carrots that gets pulled out at election time \u2026 when governments actually get into power they do the numbers and find it\u2019s not value for money.\u201d<\/p>\n The plan is to link the cities with 140km of track for trains that can go up to 320km\/h.<\/p>\n The infrastructure minister, Catherine King, released a business case which found the Sydney-Newcastle rail project would generate more than $250bn in economic activity, almost 100,000 jobs, and see up to 160,000 homes built in the region. Photograph: Lukas Coch\/AAP<\/p>\n King said the spending announced on Tuesday was for very detailed design work.<\/p>\n \u201cLike basically going metre by metre along the entire track and designing this thing to make sure we know every single cost, we actually understand the geotechnology and we get all of the planning approvals,\u201d she told ABC Sydney.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a costly and expensive project, but we\u2019ve got to get it started.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t want to be one of the few populated countries in the world that does not have a high-speed rail network.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve done before is \u2026 we\u2019ve had vision, we\u2019ve started to do the work, we\u2019ve then lost office and not been able to continue that.\u201d<\/p>\n There have been multiple iterations of the visions for high-speed trains, but so far they have all been derailed.<\/p>\n In 1984, the CSIRO took a proposal<\/a> for a very fast train (VFT) from Sydney to Melbourne via Canberra to Bob Hawke\u2019s federal government, as well as the state governments of NSW and Victoria.<\/p>\n In 1998 the then prime minister, John Howard, announced a proposed Canberra to Sydney route<\/a>, but it proved too expensive.<\/p>\n In 2008 Anthony Albanese, then the infrastructure minister, talked up the merits<\/a> of a VFT between Sydney and Canberra.<\/p>\n In 2011, the Gillard government announced a feasibility study <\/a>for a high-speed rail line for the east coast.<\/p>\n In 2013, Kevin Rudd pledged $52m towards a multibillion-dollar high-speed rail line<\/a> between Sydney and Melbourne, to be delivered by 2035.<\/p>\n