The lack of progress since then, which came on the back of the inertia that killed a proposed Bicentennial Sydney to Canberra rail project in the early 1980s, has been staggering.

It was, however, inevitable given a condition of the Federal government's involvement was any proposal would have to be "commercially viable". There must be a "zero net cost" to the taxpayer.

Canberra was too small, and the distances and the costs were too great, for any such initiative to succeed without public funding.

Fast forward 24 years and things are very different. Canberra's population has risen by more than 30 per cent from just over 300,000 to more than 400,000.

The number of journeys undertaken each and every day from Canberra to Sydney, and vice versa, has exploded. Work and tourism account for the vast majority of trips.

But, because today's Sydney to Canberra rail service is, if anything, even slower and less efficient than in the Howard era, only one per cent of those trips is by rail. The other 99 per cent fly, use a private vehicle or catch a coach. All but the last is costly and carbon emissions intensive.

This is why Infrastructure Australia has added the Sydney to Canberra rail corridor to its latest list of priorities. It found the existing service was constrained by "terrain, ageing infrastructure and track sharing with freight movements, leading to slow train speeds and slow journey times".

Improving the service "would provide more transport options... improve travel time reliability... and reduce pressure on the air corridor".

IA suggests a range of initiatives including track straightening and duplication, track formation renewal, electrification and signalling upgrades and new rolling stock.

All of this must come as a breath of fresh air to the ACT politicians, including Chief Minister Andrew Barr, who have been campaigning on this for years. They have failed to achieve any major breakthroughs for the simple reason nobody outside of the ACT seems to even care.

A succession of NSW governments have taken a look at a range of proposals and come to the conclusion they would achieve better value for money by investing in the Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong corridor where the bulk of the state's population live.

It's most recent initiative, announced just ahead of last year's state election, was to commit to upgrading the regional rail fleet with safer, more comfortable and more reliable rolling stock.

The one thing those trains won't do, as The Canberra Times letter writer Clive Williams pointed out last February, is "go faster".

Is it any wonder we are askance of a four hour train ride on a rattler that would be more at home in the middle of the 20^th century? The short answer is no.

While it seems unlikely Australia will have true high speed rail before the the last quarter of the century at the earliest, other, lower cost, alternatives are worth consideration.

It is now almost two years since Talgo, a Spanish manufacturer, proposed using fast trains able to operate on existing tracks to cut the journey time to less than three hours.

The one thing neither the ACT, the NSW or the Federal government should permit is for this debate to drag on for another quarter of a century at a time when traffic congestion, carbon emissions and transport costs are hot button issues.