Image: Consolidated Land and Rail Australia (CLARA)
If you watched The Chaser’s recent informative segment on High Speed Rail, you probably would have felt sorrow beneath the laughs when Kirsten Drysdale laid out the amount of paperwork that’s taken decades to model “the possibility of one day, maybe considering” such a network.
And when you consider the sheer billions of dollars that’s been proposed to make the project a reality, the highest being $114 billion from the Rudd government to create a fast train link between Sydney and Melbourne, the grief cuts even deeper.
But after decades of waiting from the federal government to make a formal move on this crucial piece of infrastructure, and witnessing other nations across the globe building their own High Speed Rail networks, it seems the private sector is saying “enough!” and having a go at it on their own.
A company called Consolidated Land and Rail Australia (CLARA) has outlined an ambitious plan to essentially build a High Speed Rail network itself, using funding through a process called value capture, which is “the use of proceeds from the uplift in value of land that comes from transport and other infrastructure being built nearby”.
The CLARA plan proposes to build two in-land “Smart Cities” in Victoria and a further six in New South Wales, and connect them between Sydney and Melbourne via High Speed Rail.
“Phase One of the CLARA Plan is the proposed leg from Melbourne to the Greater Shepparton Region. This will involve a $13bn high speed rail into northern Victoria and the development of two new partner cities in the region over a 30 years. Phase One can begin within five years, with the high speed rail connection and first stage of the new cities online within a decade.”
If CLARA wants to make this happen, it better get cracking if it listens to Federal Shadow Minister for Infrastructure Anthony Albanese, who warned at a conference in November 2015 that time is running out to build such a network.
Mr Albanese told the conference that the opportunity to build a corridor is being “slammed shut” as a result of the urban sprawl.
Albo did his own slamming at the Coalition for “refusing” to invest in rail infrastructure, in favour of building more roads – especially to-and-from the new Badgerys Creek airport that currently being developed.
