1. Problem
Australia is massive. Population is tiny.
One key problem is transportation of both goods and
people.
This problem is not going to change in the near to
distant future. At the moment; planes have a
monopoly on people transportation, trucks and ships
have a duopoly on goods transportation.
These methods are not renewable. They are not
sustainable. Trucks destroy the roads with their
weight. Ships along Queensland have caused
incredible damage to marine life and to the Great
Barrier Reef. Planes charge incredible prices for their
service as they have a monopoly on going from one
city to another in a single day. Something has to
change.

2. Idea
High speed and capacity rail will combat
these transportation issues. A rail
network that runs around the coast of
Australia will access around 90% of the
Australian population with sustainable
infrastructure and long term benefits.
Trains are sustainable in that they can
run on renewable power. The tracks
trains use aren’t vastly resource guzzling
and last for long amounts of time.
Trains could be the future of carrying
both goods and people around
Australia.

3. Positives
To start with, Australia would simply have to
invest money into the rail network. With high
speed rail, trains have the capacity to store cars
in an under-carriage and take passengers from
Brisbane to Sydney in around 3 hours, or from
Brisbane to Melbourne in 6 hours and the
passenger can drive their car away at the other
end. This system will mean that passengers and
inter-city travel becomes affordable and
possible. Inter-state travel can become easy.
Rail networks have the ability to move almost
infinite goods. This is due to the fact, the more
goods needed, the more engines are used. This
does have a limit but it removes the current
amount of trucks on the roads and the damages
this causes.

4. Long Term Impacts
A high speed rail would remove the need for ship
transportation to the Coast of Australia except for
Sydney. It would be possible to therefore help
Queensland marine life by simply banning ships and
making all companies and cargo use the rail
network. This would also force mining companies to
pay for the upkeep and bettering of the rail system
to keep their mines running at full capacity. This will
cause more inter-city communication.
The most important fact is that it will reduce the
amount of damage done by trucks to roads. Even a
look at Toowoomba’s roads at the moment shows
the problems trucks are causing. It will cause our
system to become much more sustainable and will
push research into sustainable energy.

5. Implementation
Trucks and cars won’t be replaced for their
manoeuvrability across the Australian
landscape. What will happen is a vastly reduced
use of them to move between major cities and
along the coast where the most damage is
caused.
A wheel and spoke style delivery system will
mean that central goods will arrive in Sydney
and be distributed out along the spokes to each
other hub; Brisbane, Melbourne, etc. This
system will be more efficient then currently and
will mean that goods distribution can be easily
monitored and financed.