“Faster Rail” conjures images of new-age trains hurtling to and from the Gold Coast in a blur. The reality is that most of the time, cars will be going quicker on the M1.
The federal body’s publicly available evaluation of the business case says trains will average 50km/h for all-station services and 73km/h for express.
Not exactly high-speed rail, is it?
“The Faster Rail name was a bit of a way of fooling people,” says Robert Dow, from advocacy group Rail Back on Track.
“And in the case of the Logan-Gold Coast Faster Rail, it certainly fooled a lot. They’re not getting anything like 160km/h.
Even the place names “Logan-Gold Coast” in the title are a tad misleading: the upgrades stop short of downtown Gold Coast by almost 50 kilometres. Finding a way around this, the government sometimes adds in brackets “Kuraby to Beenleigh”.
Not exactly high-speed rail, is it?
Doesn’t surprise me. I highly doubt we’ll ever have proper fast rail with trains regular going fast enough to count as fast rail in my lifetime
Who knows? Maybe a wealthy man might come to your town and start singing a monorail song.