If only there were some uch solutions in Federal and State “plans”.

Who knows what will happen but we can be sure that Australia’s distances and low population densities are crippling.

“Value capture” will never work, it never has, and rural regions need results not dreams and promises.

The CSIRO dreamt, in 1984, of a VFT between Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney.

It has long been called the “only privately financed project” in Australia, except it never was and never will be.

The Prime Minister has put $8.4 billion, sort of, into an inland freight line but left out a few details like connections to Sydney and Brisbane. 

Oops.  The “sort of” is that he expects to be re-paid.

The Very Fast Train or High Speed Train has options such as magnetic levitation, tilt trains, French TGV and Japanese Shinkansen, and “tubes”. 

The ACT Government is committed to Spanish tilt trains which were rejected in the 1970s in NSW and which cannot be believed if Canberra is to be a branch line on a Sydney toMelbourne flyer.

This is a bit like Badgerys Airport.

There is a dream, promised, funded a bit here and there, then becoming something of a pork pie with lots of bits and pieces but jelly too.  

Conversations get caught up between local access in existing places, mixing freight and passenger flows.

And having a station at Wilton to service part of 350,000 as though the Melbourne and Sydney commuters will tolerate local crowding and short-distance stopping.

The Grattan Institute recommended that we get politicians out of “planning projects” in its Roads to Riches.

Who could disagree when we think about broken promises and the bits’n’pieces compromises. 

I know the Prime Minister’s $8.4 billion could be better spent by simply using common sense on “local solutions”.