Andrew J Bromage
@MorpheusB @danielbowen I choose to believe that we would have had it by now were it not for the difference in rail gauge.
Oct 2, 2023 at 9:45pmWeb
Show threadJustified Ancient of MoominOct 2, 2023

@Pseudonym @MorpheusB @danielbowen there was a uniform standard gauge railway from Sydney to Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane well before there were any proposals for high speed rail in Australia… and let us not forget the “original” high speed railway, the Japanese Shinkansen, uses 1435mm standard gauge yet the rest of the Japanese rail network uses 1067mm narrow gauge.

The reasons we don’t have high speed rail in Australia are numerous but rail gauge uniformity isn’t one of them

Show threadOwen 🇦🇺🦘Oct 3, 2023
@ThermiteBeGiants @Pseudonym @danielbowen
Not resting on their laurels, the Japanese are currently building their mag-lev infra between Tokyo-Osaka-Kyoto to replace or augment the existing Shinkansens.
They will be double the speed of the Shinkansens.
If they can do it, there's no (practical) reason we can't.
Show threadJustified Ancient of MoominOct 3, 2023
@owen3d @Pseudonym @danielbowen there are practical reasons why it’s not necessarily the right choice. Maglev is horrendously expensive compared to conventional steel-wheel-on-steel-rail high speed rail. The Chinese chose conventional over maglev in the late 00s after comparing their existing implementations of both systems. We can build conventional HSR right now - the problems are not engineering ones, they are political.
Show threadOwen 🇦🇺🦘Oct 3, 2023
@ThermiteBeGiants @Pseudonym @danielbowen
That's my point - *any* HSR is better than what we currently have.
Show threadArfmanOct 3, 2023
@Pseudonym @MorpheusB @danielbowen to be fair we already have rail between the two and they're one gauge. Indonesia and Japan both built it in contrast with the gauge they had at that time.