High speed rail in Australia

Mr Okajima, general manager of the Sydney office of Japan’s biggest railway company, is waiting for the day Australia builds a high-speed rail line between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, the subject of a federal government study. Waiting for a train that has yet to be built

This man ought to get an award. Either for “most patient businessman” or perhaps “figuring out how to get the best job ever”

Will high-speed rail ever happen here? I’m not sure. It’s a huge project, and it would be up against some pretty tough competition. It would need to cost $100 or less (in today’s money) between Sydney and Melbourne, and can’t really take more than two hours, end-to-end. While the fight from Sydney to Melbourne is about an hour, factoring the airport-hassle-time and the time taken to get to the airport in the first place, that’s about two hours. At about 900km apart, that train would need to average about 450km/h. I don’t think they’ve invented one of those yet.