There's pages and pages of fun on fast trains in our new report. But you're a busy person! Here are some highlights for you in a THREAD. If it whets your appetite, you'll find heaps more in the report. https://grattan.edu.au/report/fast-train-fever/

Here's the bullet train from Melbourne to Brisbane. Yes, it looks cool. Yes, you'd probably like to ride on it. I would too. BUT

Its price tag is HUGE. $10k per taxpayer huge. 1 project for the price of 20 huge. Expensive things can be worth doing, of course. But when it's *this* expensive, you'd want to be pretty sure you're getting value for money.

Especially because big projects are NOTORIOUS for blowing their budgets. The UK is building a fast train that may be *three times* over budget already and it hasn't even made it out of London. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/nov/12/co-author-of-leaked-hs2-reports-demands-his-name-is-removed

And plenty of fast trains overseas run at a loss once they're built, because not enough people ride them. A quick glance at our population and distances is enough to make you a little worried - we're an outlier, and not on the good end.

In fact, other countries that look more like us (Canada, parts of the US) haven't got fast trains either. The idea that we're trailing the whole world isn't true. It's mostly China, Japan and Europe - very, very different places to here.

Yes, we've got busy domestic air routes. Which may be part of the reason why Labor's 2013 feasibility study predicted an enormous chunk of the benefits would go to business travellers. A very fast Qantas lounge?

But of course, planes pollute a lot, so is there an emissions argument? In the very long term, yes, but not in the critical window for emissions reduction. Over that period, construction of the train would *increase* emissions.

You might expect a boom in the regions, tourism etc, but the study authors weren't even convinced the economic effect on the regions would be positive at all. Plus the design shortchanged them - Newcastle station would be 20km out of town, and Wollongong wouldn't get one.

So that's the bullet train. The Govt has a different idea - speed up regional trains and you could encourage people to move out to the regions and commute in. Ease cities, boost regions. Some projects may be worthwhile, but would that goal be achieved? Probably not.

We've been trying to 'decentralise' our population for decades. It hasn't worked, maybe bc people don't like to move, and they also prefer cities when they do.

Also, commuters won't tolerate much more than 1hr. Even the sped up times in many cases don't look big enough to make a sizeable difference.

Some are pretty good - Geelong in 30m is eye catching - but when it comes to regional commuting, *overwhelmingly* the only people who take PT are CBD workers, so the pool of beneficiaries is fairly small.

But even if you did manage to inspire people to move out, it wouldn't make much difference to city congestion. Double the Geelong-Melbourne commuter population and that's still a tiny fraction of Melbourne's *yearly* population growth.

And it's not obvious this would grow regional areas, either. In fact, the international experience has often been the opposite of that - with faster trains, big cities can cannibalise small cities and small cities can cannibalise small towns

All these renovation projects should be assessed on its own merits, and there's every chance some of them could stack up on their own merits and be worthwhile. Of course improving rail lines can be a good thing! Business cases are on the way and will help answer this. BUT

In the meantime, if you want to help cities and regions, there are far more effective things you can do. Let's take a look at public transport connectivity, with the help of some colourful maps.

Outer suburbs are often just as poorly connected to CBDs as the regions we're talking about.

Projects like the Melbourne Metro tunnel address this, and the benefits are likely to be much more widespread (even regional lines benefit!)

Other things to consider for cities: congestion pricing, relaxing zoning restrictions. For regions, the independent infrastructure bodies consistently identify digital connectivity as an urgent need.

The upshot is this: govts should be clear on what problems they want to solve, and fund things that will get the job done, not 'big vision' projects that don't pass muster. Evidence-based policymaking is just as important now as it was pre-crisis, if not more so. End thread!