Isn’t it that this is just design/survey/ research stage? Project can still flop if builders can’t do it with whatever budget they previously settled on, if I understand correctly.

How many times has this been promised?

I worked on the Inland Rail project in far north NSW

I expect to be dead and buried before it sees service, particularly passenger rail

The corruption, the mismanagement, the ignoring engineers in favour of buying land from the friends of politicians (I’m looking at you, Barnaby Joyce, you revolting corrupt cunt) when it’s guaranteed to wash away from being built on floodplains

I was installing buildings chained to anchors in the ground so they would float, but not wash away when the inevitable floods come

Look at Moree a few years ago.

That’s where it’s going, and it’s known that it’ll happen again.

So that some people could sell their land for absurd amounts of money to their friends in power.

Sydney to Newcastle is going to have bigger problems because of having to buy residential properties, and the tunnelling that is ironically more fraught because of the soft stone it’s going through

I think it’s a great idea, but the execution is going to be the problem

Especially when it’ll be built by companies owned by offshore entities because the Libs deliberately gutted the ability of the NSW government rail employees to build it

Sounds like an episode of Utopia… is there an election in 2028?

Construction is said to begin in 2 years. The train could be running as early as 2039, which means probably some time in the 2040s.

Then they can start thinking about a high-speed line to Canberra or Melbourne, which if we’re lucky will be operational by the 2060s. Until then, there’s the XPT, the Spanish trains that replace it (which hopefully someone will have ordered sleeper carriages for) and possibly a successor to that.