Відео

Rail freight will never be successful because it’s too efficient. Government is far happier living off the tax dollars that the road freight industry generates. Trucks, buy tyres, pay rego, employ mechanics, accountants, buy fuel new trucks trailers etc. You get my drift. I’m positive that the horse has already bolted. Rail freight carries around 2% of freight between Melbourne and Sydney. Check out the number of truck next time you travel on the Hume.

Update : Melbourne airport has finally agreed to a station above ground as they could not produce a business case for underground.

Even if 50% reduction in fare say aud 100 or 4 weeks will be a win win situation for both, travellers n govt. Anything giving free is not fare. But increasing public transport is a must because atleast in melb, buses run empty or 4-5 passengers at d cost of bus, driver salary, petrol, maintenance, wear n tear which pains a lot. So if made free, atleast per passenger cost will come down drastically. Let us see what happens in brisbane from 4th aug making even state transport free for 6 mths.

Australian politicians have worked out that lots of haulage semitrailers on the road means more taxation, more money for the government

Because cars get in the way, that's why they are so slow.

I was serious

Not the onlyfans isn’t coming 😭

I was trying to guess where your accent was from...

The East Coast neds a relatively high speed roll on roll off train that most probably leaves on demand when it is loaded. Trailers on and off without prime movers and the trailers hooked up to a prime mover at the destination city. Anyone who has any knowledge of the transport industry would back the idea of a 5 hour trip city to city and the efficiencies it would achieve.

loved hearing you unscripted, you’re a natural! definitely consider more off-the-cuff content in future :) and congrats on 10k!

Was this video made when you were still in Sydney?

if man made climate change was an actual issue the gov would ban city to city road freight and have it transported by rail but of coarse the gov would lose far too much tax and registration income if they did that.

An unusual challenge our freight has is that (in the capital cities) it has to compete with our suburban passenger rail systems for track space, which are increasingly trying to operate metro esq services. In the absence of proper inner city metros, our suburban trains basically perform the transit role a metro service would for most the capital cities. The suburban networks are increasingly pushing for higher all day frequencies due to this. Problem is, in a lot of place these services share track paths with freight. When you are trying to run a minimum 4tph, fitting in slower, longer freight trains becomes difficult, especially if there are any at grade crossings involved. Given the frequencies of the inner city passenger services, trying to run rail freight through Australia's capital cities during peak hour would be the equivalent of trying to run freight through the London Underground or NY subway. When it's a choice between higher passenger service frequencies or allowing track space for freight, passenger services have always been prioritises, which is arguably fair, but what is absent is the investment necessary to accommodate freight in a network rapidly running out of space for it. Brisbane has huge issues here, with freight practically being locked out of the rail network during peak periods. It's still possible to move freight around in between the peaks, but there are a lot of major at grade crossings that will only become harder to manage as the push for better all day frequencies on the passenger serviced increases. Sydney invested a lot of money over the past 2 decades building a dedicated freight corridor to ensure their most of their freight trains had 24/7 access to track paths not utilised by the passenger services. They've set up a clear, dedicated freight path from the port through to western Sydney (along the Syd-Melb rail corridor) which i believe is free of any at grade crossings with the suburban rail network. Unfortunately freight from the north and south is still forced to share tracks with suburban services. Melbourne has a few freight only rail links that help it manouver freight trains in and out of the city, but there are still some frieght services that have to share corridors with the suburban passanger trains. Most notable of which being a freight service that serves the region of Gispland. This service has to run through the CBD to get to Melbourne's major freight terminals and port facilities. This means it must cross the 6 track viaduct between Flinders St and Southern Cross stations, in amongst the heavy traffic from Melbourne's suburban services. Finding space for those movements must be a scheduling nightmare.

Would you kindly look into the Iron Boomerang?

Folks that say Australia needs more rail just have no understanding of the environment of the bush. 45 to 50 degree heat for months on end means thousands of klm of warped lines and next year it gets washed away when the wet season dumps hundreds of millimetres in a single day across hundreds of klm. It’s bad enough having to repair hundreds of klm of roads every year let alone a rail system. Let’s build billion dollar infrastructure that has to be repaired or replaced every few years just to service a few outback towns. Now ya thinking😂.

The break of gauge issue in Australia has attracted far too much negative press, so much that it has become a distracting truism that makes most researchers waste a lot of documentary time, going over the same stale ground. The position is a lot simpler and more fascinating if the politics is diminished to irrelevance and the practicalities considered as prime. The railway author John Knowles is authoritative about this. Queensland sensibly chose 3’6” gauge because her railways were dedicated to hauling primary produce from inland to one of her port cities up the coast. The distances were vast, the population was small, materials were costly, all the locomotives and rolling stock had to be made, not imported and the landscape is surprisingly hilly for a place so flat. So it made sense for Queensland to build lighter infrastructure using a smaller gauge that allows tighter curves and lower axle loads. Sydney/NSW is 4’81/2” gauge because of the Pacific connections to US railway developments. Sydney was not the easiest port to get to by sail from England. The NSW colony struggled and nearly died a few times in the first fifty years. Sydney did not get the best of the English second-wave developments and settlers, the southern states did. As the Americans traded more and more in the Pacific in iron-hulled ships, Sydney tended to look more in that direction for the newest, best and cheapest. Adelaide and Melbourne, both founded later than Sydney, chose Broad Guage because that was considered the pinnacle technology of the day, with the best potential, by the squatocratic overlords who dominated the destiny of the oldest and most heavily English-settled areas where the most preposterously snobby anti-colonial attitudes became most encrusted. Mostly the push to standardise was driven by NSW, who wanted what was best for them, which meant least costly. She wanted open access to the growing southern markets on behalf of all the imports she could sell there.

Y'know what would be bonkers? Developing a transport hub system for Australia. Minor lines between major cities directly, with a hub somewhere centralised that deals with higher throughput. The goal being that you could take stuff off a boat in Sydney and send it direct to Melbourne or Brisbane, but for Adelaide, Darwin, or Perth it goes through the central hub. That means you could have a single train loaded with three cities worth of freight, that then gets fed out into the relevant locations. Each capital acting as a hub for other places within the state. It wouldn't have to be Sydney, it could be whichever has the best port potential for international trade.

No place for purists criticism of what is a welcome resource for outer suburbs. These commenters could also consider many people may prefer or need a car based outer suburb lifestyle over a green square like high density option.

Here in South Australia all our rail is privatised besides the federal line, this has resulted in almost ALL rural lines getting neglected and closed, also mix in our grain handling being owned by a Canadian company means it is the perfect poo sandwich. Basically almost everything has been shut down because you have lines not being maintained so hauling grain is slower also many silos are not being maintained either so they also closed and I am certain various large trucking companies have the governments ear. But it creates this fallacy of "saving money" but when you have hundreds of thousands of tons being hauled by an ongoing stream of B-doubles this very quickly roots the roads which in turn have to be repaired and resurfaced again and again, but most of these roads where built to handle trucks from the 1950s at best going to a local silo of freight facility not 100s of KMs to a larger bunker for example. Speaking of the Murrayville line, the SA Mallee was upgraded to standard gauge in the 1990s up until the border but like I mentioned was so poorly maintained that Vertera decided to no longer use trains in 2015 and as I mentioned the roads went to poo very fast. But what is so daft is you now have a no mans land of broad gauge between Pinnaroo and Murrayville and many cases trucks haul from a lot of that area in Victoria and before MV by semis to get grain to Port Adelaide when a train stopping along the way is logistically better?!? But somehow all this is apparently economical and makes sense??

When do you reckon high speed rail from Melbourne to Sydney will be built?

Congrats on the 10K! If you do want to see a moose, maybe after London you should take the (slightly) "long way home" and ride the rails across Canada.

As I am typing this down I can hear a freight train go past my house LOL. This video is very true.

You’re a handsome guy. Surely you’d realise that sex sells. Even for train videos.

You have the exact same accent as @Mrwhosetheboss what's up with that?

Yeah Brisbane metro is a BRT. And I suspect it’s going to confuse the granny out of all foreign visitors during the Olympics as Cross River Rail is likely to look far more like a metro to foreign eyes. Apologies in advance.😊

I love the minties advertising at museum. Probably the last advertising for the venerable product in all of OZ. Having said that. I haven’t used museum for 20 years so maybe the ads are no longer there.

The problem with Australia's freight trains is Linsey Fucking Fox.

You should probably mention the trucking union too. I'd say they've probably had some implication in blocking freight rail development. You know "without trucks, Australia stops" BS

Here's the thing. Progressively upgrade Sydney-Melbourne (plus Canberra branch) to 200km/hr standard, progressivel add in Sydney-Brisbane and Melbourne-Adelaide. (Electified or not depending on how battery and hydrogen technology go over the next 10 years ). Run fast but not HST trains during the day - affordable 5 hr city to city would take a big chunk of air traffic backed up by lots of reagional services. At night the line converts to lower speeds and carries freight, piggy-back trucks like the channel tunnel, and sleeper trains. All affordable and deliverable in reasonable time frames and provides the widest benefit.

Great clip. Particularly liked linking the concept of more manufacturing as a driver (no pun intended) for more, and more diversified, rail freight. Something that might be worthwhile for individual treatment is freight lines within cities. The South Sydney Freight Line (SSFL) is an example. We don't hear enough about freight and in some ways it is even more important to our lives and livelihoods than passenger rail. For example, compare the intense discussion about the various Metros in Sydney, with the almost complete silence about the proposed Western Sydney Freight Line, that will run out very close to the Western Sydney Airport Metro. Apparently 80% of the containers that arrive at Botany by sea end up in Western Sydney. As for high speed passenger rail I sometimes think that railfan's are their own worst enemy. For example: (i) Any use of 25v AC power for trains in Sydney is often trashed for standardisation reasons (even when they don't apply); yet it is a far cheaper system, and that sort of power supply is virtually a requirement for HSR. (ii) HSR projects are often promoted as one huge project, like Sydney to Melbourne. In comparison, the 4 lane motorway over the same route was not delivered that way. It was done in little chunks, each of which had its own value for people, and generated support for them in the general community. Rail should look at improving 'key chunks', places where upgrading a bad section gives a disproportionately good result that makes people crave more. For example, start with a straighter route than the current winding and slow Menangle to Mittagong section, bringing noticeably faster services to and through the southern highlands. (iii) We often idolise HSR networks in places that are not good models for ourselves. For example, SE Australia is more similar to Scandinavia in size, population and population distribution. They are a more relevant model than say Japan with its much larger population and smaller area (and also ignore that most of its trains are still very modest narrow gauge passenger trains serving rural areas.) (iv) Not enough understand transport economics. It's not useful to just "want" more trains. There needs to be sound cases made and supported for where and how particular projects really make sense, and understanding where they simply do not.

Agreed, museum station is the most interesting on the sydney network retaining much of its original decor and design.

Congratulations on 10,000 subscribers! Definitely would be keen to do a collab sometime in the future ;)

Great content and a really interesting Q&A. If you ever do more, I’d love to know what your favourite global transport networks are and which you think would be good to use as models for future expansions in Australian cities.

We have to get serious about removing some of the enormous problems of the legacy rail network, WA+VIC (and to a lesser extent SA, more on that in a second) have fairly high average rail speeds due to the relative flatness of most of those state; but NSW and QLD have some INCREDIBLY shit track from the steam days that needs to be completely bypassed in order for rail to be more competitive. TAS seems to do alright but desperately needs more funding. Inland Rail is part of the solution if it actually makes it all the way to Brisbane which isn't looking great. A separate HSR system with its own dedicated tracks between Newcastle, Wollongong and Canberra would allow more capacity for freight on the existing tracks in this corridor, but the alignments themselves are largely crap. Completing the Maldon-Dombarton link and extension of the electrification to make it sensible for freight to use more electric traction might contribute more to the necessary shift. The Adelaide Hills remains a big problem as it prevents double-stacking of freight trains from running between VIC-SA-WA or VIC-SA-NT directly, is incredibly slow and winding which is uncompetitive for SA regional passenger rail to the Hills, Mount Barker & Murray Bridge.

Yes please - vid on Perth's MetroNet would be great.

Even if you halved the time from Sydney to Melbourne pallatised freight would still go by trucks. You need an overnight Japanese SC maglev container train to replace trucks and planes through the day.

Yes we do need more freight trains. But governments do not have the guts to give them separate tracks from metro or regional passenger trains. In fact governments need to untangle almost all of our train network to separate them out.

Good work man~!

Trains are rad.

Yes us gunzels need more to film

I think the reason quite a few people ask if you're "AI generated" or a real person is because the majority of communication is done through body language like movement of hands etc but when your camera is so close to you and cuts off your arms, watching just your head move while you talk is a bit strange.

Australia's inland rail project will NEVER happen. The overall cost just keeps escalating to an unreasonable amount of money. Also any government won't see it as a vote winner

The answer to Australia's lack of trains and rail...is more trains and rail.

I was actually talking to a mate about the rail network in NW Western Australia this morning. The network up there is huge and surprisingly complex. It’s really part of why WA iron ore is so competitive - WA invested in great logistics to keep the ore price competitive and attractive. WA does minerals very intelligently and is now able to export that knowledge too.

Would love to see you playing cities skylines 2 on the channel tbh.

look at mt gambier and millicent where almost all of australias toilet paper is made, they stopped using the freight lines which they need to re open today

What are your thoughts on the port dock extension in Adelaide? And would you make any videos on Adelaide? As recently the government said theyre starting scoping studies into extending the network

Its so nice seeing an Aussie urbanist/public transport channel here, so many are European or North American. Love what you put out.

I don't think using rail is actually more economical than trucks, unless you have low-value, low-priority container or bulk freight where the trains can actually go to the origin and destination warehouses, factories and ships. Otherwise, the cost of warehouse-truck-railyard-train-journey-railyard-truck-warehouse is more than the door to door warehouse-truck-warehouse offered by truck transport. Plus, your freight and truck spend most of the time sitting in the railyard waiting to be unloaded or loaded. I know this with some authority, having written container-handling software for V/Line's South Dynon rail-yard.

We need more nation wide rail projects and more awareness for the benefits of rail over other forms of transport. Especially to combat tax dodging air lines.