Jetstar will be at Avalon for as long as Andrews/Labor is in government, which will probably be forever. Fox is in on the deal also, and is well and truly in bed with Victorian Labor.

A lot of dollars changes hands between Collingwood and Spring st.

The most sustainable option is for Jetstar to pull out and Andrews stop supporting his best mate Fox with our dollars which is just subsidizing loss making airfares, completely pointless exercise.

Unfortunately no government is going to invest in more airport capacity when the buzz word is hyper loop. Eco friendly and high speed.

The set up costs are horrendous and there’s still tech to get sorted but it’s happening. The world is going to plunge billions into tech that reduces carbon and the 1 hour flights over the golden triangle are prime targets.

China only just released a new maglev capable of 600kph, that's Melbourne-Sydney in around 2 hours, which considering it would be walk on/off each end like a commuter train would kill aviation on the route. I really don't know why the tech is super expensive as it can be prefabbed concrete lanes and just placed on basic concrete stumps across the countryside. Of course Australia would make it stop every 10 km at country stations to deliver milk, haul coal or the odd passenger making it never exceed 100kph. Meanwhile the backwards Nationals are still thinking 'high speed rail' is the answer....

Simple answer, which land are you going to put it on? Compulsory buy back? Rail reserve? Huge cost there.

You really think those facts have not been discussed over Cognac and Cigars the last twenty years. Certain business people lobby governments to keep high speed rail off the agenda.

In another view, look at the grief HS2 is giving the UK.

I only meant cost relative to HSR track. Estimates run at about $40-$50 million per km of 500kph maglev track for construction, which would put Melbourne - Sydney at about $50 Billion, give or take a few bil for land and such, much of it could be built directly over existing rail. The Japenese SC Maglev needs straighter track though, although in reality it's speed is not really that much greater than the Chinses system to warrant the extra cost and restrictions.

This is the real issue in Australia going back to facilities. Certain nameless companies thrive on maintaining duopolies by restricting access for competition to expand. This occurs in all fields from telcos to aviation and supermarkets. One master company rules and lets one or two other companys expand enough to keep monopoly fears at bay. Throw in some feigned competition in areas of the business while fleecing the public on other items, and keeping the gov happy by focusing on keeping CPI items at low cost to alleviate wages growth. If your cohort companies step out of line, give them a good smacking of market swamping until they bleed down to a level they pull back and cooperate or go broke and another sucker steps in.

I believe that to be a good summary of the Australian corporate landscape at present,

That will all depend if it is subsidised by the government or not. Rail is uncompetitive with aviation if it is run as a real business like aviation where the customer is paying the full economic price of the ticket. The cost of a ticket on a high speed train would be eye watering if the customer paid the real economic price. For some reason however railways seem to get a free pass in this area. The same people who advocate railways always want the government to pony up regardless of cost or efficiency. High speed rail in Australia is just another white elephant which gets a free pass on economic and environmental grounds. I have never understood why it is always pushed along as some sort of solution when it is quite obviously not.

Bonzas biggest worry will be airport access not High Speed Rail.

In the telecommunications world, legislation was passed that allows a telecommunications company free access to almost any piece of land in the country they choose to put their infrastructure on, in order to give them greater opportunity to compete with the likes of Telstra and NBNco. I know this because I'm one of a few people fighting a telecoms company that have decided our rooftop, beside our pool, would be a good spot to build their "Low Impact facility"; a 3-5m mast with a number of antennae hanging off it.

Morph this into the transport/aviation world and with the right lobbyists you can do almost anything.

How does one calculate the "full economic price" of a fast train ticket?

Much the same way you calculate the full economic price of a maintained road to every possible place. You don't and pretend the cost of driving is just the car and fuel.

Trains become economic on the shear scale of use, when you realise that during peak each train is shoveling 1000+ commuters around the city at a rate of one every few minutes or less. It will be a very long time before planes or cars can produce similar results.

The new HC Metro trains will carry up to 2000 per set. That's about 1000 cars off the road per train assuming an average of 2 per car. Apply that to a properly set up city pair like Melbourne - Sydney and resonable travle time like 2 hours where you are in commuter range, the scale will be there. It's just a matter of initial capital to build it.

Having sampled the fast train service, such as Berne to Paris, train is the way to travel, city centre to city centre, Melbourne to Sydney would be an ideal candidate. See France has banned domestic air travel if there is a direct train service of less than 2½ hours, if only Paris to London was available, 2 h 17 min by train.

No ML-SY how RexJet gonna survive! 😂

What is the "full economic price" of a "fast train ticket" from Sydney to Melbourne?

A number, based on stated assumptions with actual numbers, please.

Here's a ten year old study pulled together by BITRE.

This from page 5 probably covers the economics;

I lost quite a bit of interest when that article said rail and cars have the same environmental footprint, both being less than aviation, with that statement high speed buses is what we need, thousands of them. Again they like to imagine cars travelling around like bubbles, not like a plane spreading nasty contrails and needing huge runways and trains cutting through forests and tunneling and destroying the landscape. No one seems to mention the millions of Kms of tar-sealed roads and the impact they have on the environment, let alone the cost of the roads, bridges street lights and traffic lights and the annual ever increasing budget to maintain such assets. Imagine what the electrical consumption of the road system in Melbourne or Sydney is and how that translate to coal burnt and cost to the community, that's before you take into account the actual car emissions, road emissions and a myriad of other nasty things.

I’d also like to see MAGLEV offer $29 fares to compete with Rex - after all, aren’t we all saying competition is good?

How many of those fares per day would be required to even pay for the running costs, even if the cost of infrastructure was absorbed by the taxpayer?

Actually, how many new power stations would be required enroute to provide the megawatts required? A new coal plant every 100km? MAGLEV is a little bit electrically thirsty, unless there have been new technology leaps I haven’t heard of yet.

Forget high speed trains.
As I said the future is Hyperloop. The decisions on future transport networks are going to be looking well into the future. For domestic travel/freight in 10 years aeroplanes are going to be number 1 target for carbon reduction. There's going to be a massive push for green sustainable transport not just pax but cargo as well. It's going to take time and whole lot of cash but why invest in domestic airports when you can invest in hyperloop. The pods can launch seconds apart to different destinations, no stopping at stations along the way etc and they will operate faster than commercial jets and direct down town. These things are going to have no curfews no waiting to load a full 767, freight can go 24/7 and you can have multiple city stations.
Multiple companies are investing in the tech now, flying in the future won't be cheap. It's going to get smashed by future world Governments to reduce global warming.

Looks suspiciously like a very fast train (in a tube).

Thanks for the linked info, Mick. Good point, 43.

Yep super fast train, levitating on a magnetic field, while in a near vacuum with no driver.

Hyper loop surfers the same constraint as roads and rail, it is limited to the linked cities. Aircraft have the absolute ability to link (almost) any two airports on the planet and can change their plans daily. Tunnels are hideously expensive, crossing the Atlantic or Pacific, mind blowingly so.
Meanwhile in the real world, we have three rail gauges in Australia and a state governement so inept they buy rail cars too big for the tunnels they use.
Edited to add; I just read ferry’s too high to go under bridges on the route they were bought for. Amazing.