Every decade or so political leaders, ambitious entrepreneurs and, in some cases, a heady blend of the two tease the Australian public with yet another plan for a "very fast train" linking the major capitals of the eastern seaboard.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
While Brisbane usually makes the cut it has been omitted from the latest proposal, the brainchild of privately owned Consolidated Land And Rail Australia.
The company, which estimates the project will cost $200 billion and take 40 years to complete, has apparently been attempting to secure options on land along the route for at least six months now with Yass Mayor, Rowena Abbey, saying she had been contacted by local ratepayers who had been approached.
Real estate appears to be integral to the project with CLARA's website stating the key to its success will be the development of eight new regional cities, presumably on greenfields sites, along the route.
Two of these will be in Victoria and another six will be in NSW. They, along with spur lines to Albury, Wagga Wagga and Canberra, would provide the critical mass of people needed to make the investment viable apparently.
CLARA's website states it already has "legal control" over the land on which the new regional cities would be built.
While some sceptics may suggest the plan could be more about making a killing on the property market than it is about providing a viable alternative to air travel as the quickest way to get from Melbourne to Sydney and vice versa, that does not mean this isn't going to happen however.
And there's the rub for Australia's largest inland city and only city state.
Because the dirt on which Canberra stands is already owned by the ACT Government and then leased to its occupants for very long periods of time the opportunities for a third party to start the cash registers ringing with land sales of their own are limited.
This would appear to be at least one of the reasons CLARA has chosen a route that appears to follow that pioneered in the days of steam and which bypasses the national capital.
That seems shortsighted in the extreme given the ACT's potential to grow in population over the lifespan of this proposed nation building project.
While CLARA's promoters are quick to claim Australia's population will grow by 14 million people by 2050 it does not appear to pick up on the fact that many of those will be opting to live in the ACT where jobs, services and housing developments are already a part of the physical and social landscape.
Canberra is long established as the defacto capital of southern and southwestern NSW with health, educational, commercial, transport infrastructure that is used every day by people from hundreds of kilometres away.
Any serious fast rail proposal linking Melbourne to Sydney, and possibly Brisbane, must include the ACT on the main route, not dismiss it as an afterthought serviced only by a spur line like a grain siding from yesteryear.
