Which shows the flaw in the idea - what happened to the fantasy replacement to Spencer St station with a bit of rain?
This was a really interesting one....the damage wasn't caused by the rain or hail hitting the roof. What happened is that the hail blocked up the drains on the roof (and then froze solid). This caused water and hail to back up which eventually pushed through the skylights. The skylights are made of inflated plastic bubbles - they'll be replaced shortly. Shouldn't have happened, but quite an interesting problem that no one really anticipated. So yes, railways and aviation both have problems with ice from time to time.
You also have Governments that have sold off railways left, right and centre, railways that while costing money to run, also provided Governments with tidy profits at the end of the financial year that made them a worthwhile investment, but they were sold off to make a quick buck, run into the ground, and now require massive expenditure from the various Governments who've brought them back again to return them to their pre-sale state.
That's not exactly true. You're talking about some of the freight operations, but don't forget that there are lots of freight operations that have been started by the private sector. I think we're up to about five private operators running trains from Perth to Melbourne. They have massively increased the amount of freight on train. If your objective is to get more freight onto rail, then you need more private operators involved who can then provide end to end solutions.
It's all well and good to suggest private industry involvement in such an endeavout, but, private industry in rail is a nightmare. Training is limited or non-existent, equipment is barely maintained in an operational state, yet alone a safe state, and most operators seem to be screwing everyone over in an attempt to make money by saving money, with these same opearators being the same people who'd tender to run such a railway.
I don't think there's any evidence for this in the Australian context at all. Rail operations are heavily regulated. The same arguments were used in relation to aviation for years. Doesn't make them true. There will always be good and bad operators - in both rail and aviation, but to suggest that there are systemic problems would be hard to justify. Personally, I'm more nervous when travelling on RailCorp services than those provided by many private rail companies.
At the end of the day, unless the Commonwealth Government comes up with the dollars, it ain't gonna happen. NSW is flat broke, Victoria wouldn't want a bar of it after their RFR fiasco, and Qld would barely benefit, if they would benefit at all.
Absolutely right - the Commonwealth is the key.
Concentrate on upgrading the freight and interstate lines to get trucks off the roads instead of some VFT pipedream that won't come to fruition until my grandkids are of retirement age.
That's already happening - significant investment going into the rail freight network. But the VFT is about passengers, not freight.
Anyway, the relevance of the VFT to this forum is the link between a second airport and funding for the project - its going to be one or the other....and I think the choice between the two is a lot more balanced than most people think.
Check out how many people a VFT can carry:
SNCF TGV Duplex - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Two TGV Duplex coupled together (which is how they normally operate)can seat 1090 passengers - that's quite a few 737s
