Gippsland Push For Very Fast Train Plan
The Age
Monday June 15, 1998
Authorities and politicians in Gippsland have renewed a push to have the route of a very fast train between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne go through Gippsland.
Spearheading the drive is the regional development group Gippsland Development Ltd, local municipalities, and the Liberal member for McMillan, Mr Russell Broadbent.
Under the previous Very Fast Train project almost a decade ago, the Hume Highway corridor became the favored route mainly because of environmental concerns about a path through the East Gippsland forests. However, the supporters of the Gippsland route maintain that new technology has made those fears redundant.
The very fast train route through Gippsland would take about three hours. The backers of this route argue that the train would not only be a catalyst for development in Gippsland and create one of the world's great train rides. Gippsland, they say - with its brown coal, oil and gas, and agricultural and timber assets - is best placed to maximise the potential for Victoria.
The favored route would go south of Canberra near Cooma and Bombala roughly along the route of the Monaro Highway and the Cann Valley, and then through Orbost and Bairnsdale along the Princes Highway corridor to Melbourne. In this scenario, the very fast train would service the south-east of Melbourne, which is the fastest-growing region in the state and one of the most dynamic areas in Australia.
Gippsland Development's chief executive, Mr Geoff Carruthers, said the modern population trend was for people to live near the coast. The route through the mountains along the Monaro would make it a spectacular trip, and would not require ploughing through many kilometres of bush as many environmentalists feared with the previous very fast train proposal.
Gippsland Development and Mr Broadbent put their case to the federal Minister for Transport, Mr Mark Vaile, earlier this year.
Four bidders are competing to build the Canberra-to-Sydney very fast train route, the first stage in any link to Melbourne. They include tilt-train proposals by Capital Rail and Inter Capital Express; a plan by Speedrail to use the French-designed TGV bullet trains that can travel up to 350 kmh; and a proposal by the Transrapid consortium using magnetic levitation technology being developed by the German company Thyssen.
Tilt trains use existing and upgraded tracks and would require less capital investment. They are faster than contemporary trains but not as speedy as the TGV and Transrapid rivals, and not as competitive cost-wise against air travel over longer distances.
The Transrapid technology has advantages from the environmental point of view that Gippsland Development cites in support of its case. Having no wheels on rails, magnetic levitation is very quiet - hardly audible at 200 kmh. It can go up higher grades than its competitors, so cuttings and tunnels are rarely needed, and on much of the route, the magnetic levitation guideway would sit on elevated pylons so that it can cross land with a minimum of disturbance.
Mr Carruthers said the Premier, Mr Jeff Kennett, had brought major projects to Melbourne that were often of relatively limited benefit. "This is a major event for regional Victoria. The Government must put up some resources to make sure it happens," he said.
Mr Carruthers said Mr Peter Nixon, the former member for Gippsland and a former federal transport minister, had written a report on why Gippsland was the ideal route for the very fast train. This had been with Mr Kennett for about a year but it had not been acted on.
© 1998 The Age