High speed rail: A solution looking for a problem

It is good to see the federal government taking an interest in transport accessibility issues for the Sydney–Central Coast–Newcastle corridor. The recent findings on the investigation of high speed rail (HSR) options for the corridor, as outlined in Infrastructure Australia’s Business Case Evaluation Report (2025), raise important questions that should be debated, such as who it serves and whether the HSR proposal is the right infrastructure solution for the task.

The report states the proposal aims “…to be delivered in stages to meet the distinct needs of intercity and regional customers across the east coast.”

In addition, the proposal seeks to address connectivity challenges, including that a rail journey between Newcastle and Sydney takes about two hours and 40 minutes and was also “the most unreliable intercity corridor in the Greater Sydney area in 2024”.

These limited statements provide insufficient insight into the accessibility and land-use outcomes that the project aims to facilitate for the corridor.

For example, it aims to improve accessibility with just three stations north of central Sydney: Central Coast, Lake Macquarie, and Broadmeadow.

This limited stop approach (assuming journey time is a barrier) suggests that users will likely need to drive to one of these stations, which also indicates the need for large commuter car parks.

As those familiar with the dispersed and complex settlement pattern of this corridor understand, public transport journeys are slow and offer limited services, connecting residents to multiple train station destinations, such as Gosford, Wyong, Cardiff, and Hamilton.

A few travel time examples include (TripView App):

• Maitland to Broadmeadow Station, via Hamilton: variable around 50 minutes
• Belmont to Broadmeadow Station, via bus to Cardiff, then train: variable around 50 minutes and limited off-peak services
• Terrigal to Gosford Station: 40 minutes and limited off-peak services

Moreover, with Broadmeadow identified as the station serving Newcastle, it means that patrons from the south, such as Sydney, need two additional trips (rail then light rail) to reach the Newcastle CBD.

Patronage data from the 2021 Census indicate that only 2.6 per cent and 1.7 per cent of resident workers from the Central Coast travel to Lake Macquarie and Newcastle, respectively. Notably, this connection is the focus of Stage 1A of the proposal.

For Newcastle workers, only 1.1 per cent travel to the Sydney CBD. Additionally, the intended travel time from Newcastle to Sydney is 1 hour.

This indicates a daily commute of over two hours, when including travel to and from the station at each end, or well over 10 hours per week. Whether this is an acceptable daily commute is questionable. The principal issue is that the purpose of the rail connections along the corridor is unclear.

The documentation outlines the dwelling and employment benefits associated with the proposal.

However, the NSW government already has numerous development initiatives for this corridor, such as the Gosford City Centre Revitalisation plan and the joint initiative with the City of Newcastle for the transformation of the Broadmeadow precinct, as well as the City of Parramatta’s extensive plans for employment and housing for the Parramatta CBD.

Clarity is required as to whether there is any double-counting of benefits between state and federal government initiatives.

For a potentially transformative project, the projected scale of change appears modest at 46,000 households, when just two of the NSW government’s Transport-Oriented Development (TOD) projects, Bankstown and Homebush, are projected to deliver 32,000 additional dwellings collectively.

The report includes a discussion on economic opportunities, such as:

The project is forecast to improve productivity through the better integration of the Newcastle to Greater Sydney economies, more productive business connections, greater competition, access to markets and higher paying jobs and labour supply.

However, on the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development’s website there is an outline of the government’s approach to regional economic development strategies, where it indicates that the strategies relate to functional economic regions that are made up of “one or more local government areas in regional NSW that work together to create smaller economies with strong economic links”.

For the corridor, it identifies two regions outside Greater Sydney: Central Coast and Lake Macquarie, as well as Newcastle. Consequently, the term “better integration” in the report requires further clarification.

The report also indicates that the proposal will unlock 90,000 new jobs. Does this mean these are in addition to the total jobs forecast for the corridor in the absence of the HSR, or are they relocated jobs from elsewhere in Greater Sydney?

If the former is the case, it would mean a demand for around 66,000 additional occupied dwellings for the corridor, considering jobs-to-population ratios informed by the 2021 Census.

The proposal extends west of central Sydney to the new Western Sydney Airport, with a stop at Parramatta. The NSW government is already committed to a new metro rail corridor from the Sydney CBD to Westmead, via Parramatta, with the potential to extend through to the Western Sydney Airport. It would be a poor outcome if these two projects were competing for the same funding.

It is recognised that the HSR proposal – from Sydney to Newcastle – is part of a much wider proposal, from Melbourne to Brisbane.

It should, however, deliver local transport and land use benefits for each section, and considering the likely cost, be transformative in nature.

the base infrastructure for automated vehicle services on the corridor already exists – the Pacific Motorway

The documentation so far does not appear to acknowledge the scale of Greater Newcastle, at 561,308 (the seventh-largest urban area in Australia), nor the Central Coast, at around 360,000 people (just a little smaller than Canberra).

Before embarking on a limited-stop HSR proposal, it may be worthwhile to explore whether this corridor has adequate metropolitan-scale public transportation services and how federal government funding could support state resources to improve public transportation accessibility, which can also inform and guide land use outcomes.

Stepping back from the HSR proposal, if the objective is to significantly enhance accessibility in the Sydney-Newcastle corridor over the medium to long term, an alternative approach appears to be on the horizon.

A recent report by McKinsey & Company – Autonomous vehicles moving forward: Perspectives from industry leaders (2024) suggests that autonomous robotaxis (vehicle-on-demand) will emerge by 2030.

A recent media report (Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November 2025) indicated that “Google’s parent company Alphabet is getting ready to bring its Waymo self-driving taxis to Australian roads.”

In this context, in 2022, Transport for NSW released the NSW Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) Readiness Strategy, with Transport for NSW’s overarching Future Transport Strategy stating “CAVs and new mobility services will transform how customers use the road network and may require changes to pricing and funding in the future.”

As structured, what is proposed appears to be simply a segment of a more ambitious east coast HSR – a transport solution looking for a problem.

A recent report by the International Transport Forum of the OECD – Preparing Infrastructure for Automated Vehicles (2023) indicates that existing road networks will accommodate automated vehicles, with the infrastructure area of focus being “invisible” infrastructure – specifically, the digital infrastructure.

Hence, the base infrastructure for automated vehicle services on the corridor already exists – the Pacific Motorway.

The task ahead would be managing autonomous vehicles along the corridor, including digital infrastructure requirements. In this scenario, it is not difficult to envision higher-speed autonomous vehicles providing an on-demand small bus service directly from a residence in Greater Newcastle (on-demand services currently exist in Sydney), with connections to Greater Sydney’s Metro network or other activity nodes.

The cost implications of the proposal also require reflection. No costing for HSR is provided, though there is emerging clarity on the general cost of road and rail tunnels, with numerous being delivered in both Sydney and Melbourne.

They suggest costs significantly higher than those previously referenced for HSR, especially with 115 kilometres of tunnels and 38 kilometres of bridges and viaducts.

More importantly, there is a need to reflect on the federal government’s general allocation for transport infrastructure investment programs for all states. Currently, combined, they are in the order of $13 billion each year for the next four years (2024-25 Budget paper No. 3, Infrastructure), which is clearly insufficient to support such a project.

Whether there is private sector interest will remain to be seen. The fundamental question here is whether HSR is the best allocation of scarce resources for improving accessibility, land use, and economic outcomes in regions across the east coast of Australia.

As structured, what is proposed appears to be simply a segment of a more ambitious east coast HSR – a transport solution looking for a problem.

What this corridor needs, as with many regional corridors, is an integrated transport–land use initiative with clear objectives that provide clarity as to the outcomes sought.