Drill rigs have started boring into rocks and riverbeds to determine the best route for the tunnelling megaproject needed for a high-speed rail line between Sydney and Newcastle, but the fast train’s future is far from certain amid questions about its cost.
Almost three years after Labor came to power on a promise to build the fast train, two drill rigs have begun geotechnical examinations on the Central Coast of New South Wales, the Albanese government announced on Tuesday, as its newly formed High-Speed Rail Association (HSRA) works on a business case for the project’s first stage.
The HSRA is investigating the “optimum route” between Sydney and Newcastle through rugged coastal inlets – an engineering headache which has led rail experts to call for the government to start with an easier stretch along the Melbourne to Brisbane route – before it delivers a business case to the government by the end of the year.
Despite geographical challenges along the corridor, strong commuter patronage on the existing rail service between Sydney and Newcastle, which takes about two-and-a-half hours to travel roughly 120km, and population growth predicted for the Central Coast region have led the government to earmark it as the first stage of high-speed rail. The project is also expected to deliver jobs to the Newcastle region, which is expected to transition away from coalmining in coming years.
The two drill rigs, installed on barges that took three days to assemble, have started work on the Hawkesbury River at Brooklyn and at Brisbane Water near Gosford. They will drill six boreholes, some to a depth of 140 metres, with the barges in operation for up to two months.
“The rock and sediment samples will be analysed, with the results helping inform construction methods and key details such as the design and depth of potential rail tunnels,” the government said.
Geotechnical drilling while investigating the line will ultimately include about 27 boreholes between Sydney and Newcastle to help plan rail tunnel depths. The extent of the investigative works is “recognising the geological complexities of traversing the escarpment into the Central Coast”, the government said.
“High-speed rail means generations of new opportunities for regional Australia, creating more jobs in more locations and giving people greater choices in where they live, work, study and play,” the transport minister, Catherine King, said.
The HSRA chief executive, Tim Parker, has said a trip time of one hour should be possible between Sydney and Newcastle, with an intermediate stop at Gosford on the Central Coast about half an hour from each. Parker has also told Guardian Australia of his intention for high-speed trains to run to Sydney’s Central station, as opposed to previous plans to route through Olympic Park.
Previous plans for construction of the corridor have identified about 50km of tunnelling, including an individual section as long as 30km to the Hawkesbury River as well as what would have been Australia’s longest rail bridge, as part of a megaproject.
Reaching the geotechnical drilling stage means the federal government’s high-speed rail ambition has progressed farther than the most recent failed push, when the New South Wales government cancelled geotechnical drilling plans and quietly abandoned its vision to build its own line between Sydney and Newcastle in late 2022, after about $100m spent on studies.
However, it’s not yet clear if the latest attempt at high-speed rail will become reality. The Albanese government has committed $500m for the planning and corridor protection stages of the Sydney-Newcastle trunk, of which about $80m will be spent on the business case.
Even if the government moves ahead after considering the business case, it could ultimately be axed by a change of government, after years of scrutiny and comparisons with the TV satire Utopia at how long Labor took to establish the HSRA.
Guardian Australia spoke to several rail industry sources who had been proponents of the high-speed line, anxious that a change in government could see the HSRA axed as a politically motivated move. The federal Coalition is yet to commit to the project.
Bridget McKenzie, the opposition transport spokeswoman, has questioned how the project – expected to cost at least in the tens of billions of dollars over several decades – will be funded.
The government has not provided a ballpark of the final cost of the project, with the current geotechnical testing expected to shed light on how expensive the tunnelling between Sydney and Newcastle will be.
“Six holes in the ground at the end of the first term of the Albanese government is a Utopia-like stunt to suggest ‘work has started’ on a high-speed rail,” McKenzie told Guardian Australia.
“We are waiting for the Albanese government to provide any details at all on how they intend to fund a high-speed rail and then build it.
“Minister King can put out a press release with a stamp that says ‘work has started’ but until the prime minister comes clean on how he will deliver on his election promise, it is just another infrastructure fantasy project.”
