Why Passenger Trains Suck In Australia

put simply passenger trains in australia suck and i'm not talking about trains within urban centers trains connecting the suburbs to the cbd are generally pretty alright no what this video is about is regional trains trains to go into city connect smaller towns and travel hundreds of kilometers why there's so few of them why is their frequency so bad and also why when you desperately [Music] improve there are a few places in the western world where trains have been left in such a state as australia for the past 40 years since the adoption of the private motor car paving of highways and the deregulation of the airline industry passenger trains have been on the decline in australia for many years although it's fair to say this decline reverse around the mid-2000s australia's regional rails are still far from their halo recently there have been improvements made such as the victoria's original rail revival but we're not here to discuss the success of that scheme we're here to talk about why can't i get from adelaide to perth for a reasonable amount of money how are there only two trains a day between sydney and melbourne why are there only three trains a day between sydney and canberra why is melbourne and sydney one of the busiest air corridors in the world and why don't many big towns in regional australia have passenger trains and why when it comes down to it does australia lack access to affordable and fast regional rail solutions i know it was like the wendover video and the not just bikes video but ignore that now some might say australia is just too big and too wide for passenger railways i mean after all australia is about a billion kilometers big and there's only like four people that live here so how could we have trains but on the off i want to say this simply isn't true australia does have many towns and cities with populations to sustain a regional rails and more have them than you probably already think most australian towns used to have a reliable passenger train service but they do not today and unfortunately to understand the position that our rails are in today we have to go back all the way to federation in 1901. australia has never had an integrated rail operator or at least it didn't have one up until the 1990s before federation and even long after each australian state had its own government railway operator they owned and operated all track and trains within the state the names of these aren't really complex western australian government railways south australian railways of victorian railways queensland railways etc etc basically all along the same lines but this also meant these systems basically never interoperated with each other for example the border between south australia and victoria despite the rail gauges being the same in both states their locomotives were switched from one operator to the other a whole town was developed around simply the swapping of locomotives and associated railway personnel in fact it was called serviceton there was a very little cooperation between railways in australia and this is part of the reason led to the gauge problem because australia for its entire railway history and still today has been left with three railway gauges railgauge being the distance between each track and the trains of different gauges cannot operate with each other and cannot travel on other gauge track these gauges are standard broad and narrow and while i keep promising myself that i'll eventually make the gauge video to be put simply gage in australia has always been a major issue for all operators not just passengers but also freight through a series of complicated but also extremely funny dumb occurrences australia has been left with three railway gauges narrow gauge dominated wa in queensland it was considered the cheapest and easiest gauge to build really it was an economic issue it required less earthworks smaller bridges and carried trains that were though less powerful were cheaper to operate and run as these states were basically the poorest in the 1800s it led to them building the gauge they could best afford next of course we have standard a gauge up to the 1930s was only used in new south wales new south wales is one of the states in australia that basically has the most political influence and this was part of the reason that led to the adoption of standard gauge nationally now we have victoria nsa the two users of broad gauge how would while they end up using a different gauge to new south wales is a story in itself but i will not be covering that in this video however it is very funny but this meant that victoria and south australia were the only two states in the nation with railways that connect to each other with the same gauge as you can imagine all these separate gauges led to a lot of impossibilities when operating passenger trains between states where these train lines met at different states was known as break of gauge this happened almost every state in the country but was particularly prevalent between new south wales and victoria the most populous states in the nation a broken gate station meant every passenger piece of post and all goods had to be swapped between trains of different gauges this took time money and a lot of effort and made trains slower than they should have been in fact before 1918 you couldn't even get a train from one side of australia to the other the trans-australian railway was the solution to this 1500 kilometer gap in australia's railway infrastructure it was originally proposed as part of a promise to get was joined federation in 1901 and it was also seen as a key piece of nation-building infrastructure but a trans australian was built with a lot of future proofing in mind to standard gauge despite the fact at either end it meant narrow but to really exemplify the gauge problem for a fun exercise let's go through the process you would have had to travel through to get from sydney to perth between the years of 1918 and 1936. but in 1918 there doesn't currently even exist a link between sydney and south australia so you're going to have to go the long way round this means you start out going sydney to melbourne this is not so simple because at all bro you have to change trains between different gauges the journey between melbourne and adelaide is fairly simple it's one of broadgate's train and once you're in adelaide you have to swap onto a different train north this train goes to tarawih terawa is the furthest north of broad gauge goes in australia at this time and then after that you must swap trains onto narrow gauge narrow gauge will take you from tarawi up all the way around kwon to port augusta this finally gets you onto the trans-australian railway and another thing i think bears mentioning about the trans australian is just how terrible the track quality was for much of its opening years there wasn't even ballast placed on the track for a very long time this finally gets you into wa where again you must stop trains at kalgoorlie back onto the narrow gauge to complete your journey to perth it's understandable why so many took the although longer less complicated steamship around the coast as an alternative to having to transfer between this many trains and also needing to have a ticket for each different railway operator slowly this trip did get more simplified in 1936 a broad gauge line opened between adelaide and port perry and standard gauge was extended south from port augusta meaning the trip through sa was much less complicated for transcontinental journeys but not until 1970 did a train make the trip between sydney and perth non-stop to achieve this a gage was converted between calgary and perth as well as between port perry and broken hill this allowed for one standard gauge line that stretched across the country another thing about australia's passenger rail is unlike the us canada and countless other countries australia has never had an integrated national passenger rail operator such as amtrak or via rail now overall that's a pretty good thing as regional rail hasn't been at the whim of federal governments in their budget except an sa but that's another video but this also means australia's regional rail integration has always been very limited a different ticket is needed for each operator the closest australia has ever reached so far has been australian national national getting there is half the fun a company that was fairly short-lived between 1975 and 1997 when it was very typically of the era privatized but australia national is a company i'm sure i'll make a very long video about one day but regardless aen was really the first operator to really allow integration between australia's passenger trains under australia national there was really a successful attempt to allow pastner trains from east to west without stopping there was not so much switching of operations at the state border there was integration between west rail vic rail and the sta except into sydney where electric locomotors were used that combined with gauge standardization that happened throughout australia between the 1960s and early 2000s did allow pastner trains to finally reach some sort of relative comfort but it was largely too late by that time passenger trains importance in society had dwindled as people moved towards the motor car domestic air travel became a thing highways were improved and paved while australia never really had such a thing as the interstate highway system with much of australia's national roads still being tulane past new train usage still dropped however perhaps more than highways the real death blow to long-distance passenger trains in australia was airline deregulation throughout the early 1990s falling past new numbers and australian nationals refusal to innovate caused cutbacks and cancellations patronage further dwindled by the time the passenger division was privatized in 1997 the trains they operated were a skeleton of the 1980s selves of course airline deregulation in of itself isn't a bad thing but as we do move towards a low carbon future we should re-evaluate our transport choices even long-distance passenger trains they are often one of the most environmentally friendly ways to travel and we should really look to further expand them in our modern era but to put the current state of passenger rail into context let's go through some modern example sydney and melbourne are two cities that have a fairly similar population both are over five million they account for something approaching 40 of australia's entire population and they are only 900 kilometers apart that's about a nine hour drive that is less than one day and yet only two small trains make that way between them this train takes about 11 hours due to a winding route over the great dividing range the sydney melbourne xpt as it's known although it doesn't currently have a lot of life left in it as it will be replaced by brand new calf trains in a couple of years but yet it currently remains the only train traveling between sydney and melbourne and even with the introduction of these new trains in the mid 2020s there will be a further reduction in trips between sydney and melbourne as the current timetable stands there is one day trip and one night trip these new long distance trains will not have any night sleepers and it seems the plan is to reduce the sydney to melbourne train to occurring only once a day long distance train travel in australia isn't really getting any better at least in this one context but then we have another example and that is of australia's transcontinental trains these being the ghan and indian pacific although once run by australian national these trains have been privatized since the late 1990s the only motive for the trains company is now profit this has led to prices increasing dramatically since the end of australian national control it is no longer possible to take a seated economy journey on any of these trains the only option is a cabin with beds which is very expensive this puts the price out of reach for almost every regular australian and assigns these trains just being luxury tourist cruises some might say it's admirable that these trains are receiving no government subsidies however this has led to them increasingly only serving people who can afford the luxury price tag and has assigned everyone else who cannot afford it to buses and expensive air travel this has also resulted in extremely infrequent service there is only one journey a week on each of australia's transcontinental trains and these trains no longer even stop at the towns they serve in south australia for example there are many small towns that don't have a rail service at all such as peterborough or port augusta towns the indian pacific and gan both pass through both have railway stations both are currently in reasonable condition they could start taking passengers next week but there is no motive for journey beyond rail to pick up anyone in regional and remote communities and assigns these people to sa's underperforming regional bus services this is especially true for the disabled who cannot properly enjoy coach services the overland while not a transcontinental service running between adelaide and melbourne is also showing the same symptoms with its service cuts in its frequency to only operating twice a week in each direction and becoming a daytime service it has become much less usable for much of the population like the garn and the indian pacific the services price is uncompetitive with alternative road and air travel options again due to the operator's attempt to morph into a land cruise this service has lost its edge in speed due to being diverted via geelong rather than ballarat and only limbs along today thanks to a massive subsidy from the victorian government the overland is probably the worst long-distance passenger train in australia it has no edge in speed frequency it is chronically underfunded the price tag is expensive and there is limited user friendliness so after all that are there any good regional long-distance trains in australia not realistically or at least not any that pass between different states because there are a few reasonable ones the prospector between perth and kalgoorlie is generally pretty fast it's a train with at least a daily service it beats driving it's cheaper than airfare and it's an all-around good experience the train travels at a maximum speed of 160 kilometers an hour and if you don't know that's the fastest a train travels in australia another example worth mentioning is queensland's tilt train it's a generally pretty good service that does some pretty reasonable speeds and connects very well with some of queensland's larger towns the key to these services are they are both government owned and definitely do not turn at profit but they are important trains to the communities that they serve they are good alternatives to driving and travel between distances where flying is still very expensive and they do offer a better experience than is taking the bus in those states but why are these the best two examples i can offer you there's no reason we shouldn't have better passenger trains and unfortunately that reason isn't very simple in the us or canada it's normally one culprit you know it's amtrak it's via rail it's the interstate highway system but because of the fragmented nature of australia's railways and therefore passenger trains the reason each state has for its services being so abysmal are different i am certainly not very well versed in all of them and i can't cover them all in this video but for a general guide what caused the demise of regional passenger trains is the desire of corporatized train companies to make money to put this in context most regional passenger trains in australia have never been profitable some have been in the 20th century where demand was extremely high and there was no alternative and the train offered a reliable and fast service while the only trains that turn a profit these days once again are the gun and indian pacific between the 1970s and 1980s australia's railways went under a process of rebranding and modernization this was generally in conjunction with a desire for them to turn a stronger profit previous to this many ramblers in australia had not been mandated to be profitable and overall operated at a loss they could really essentially be thought of as government departments almost all railways were rebranded at this time western australian government railways became west rail victorian railways became vic rail and later v-line new south wales government railways became the state rail authority the only real exception to this is queensland rail which never rebranded just keep the same name before corporatisation many railways were operated for community benefit states subsidized their hour operations for the greater good a particularly potent example of this is australian national a commonwealth owned railway operator that also owned and operated all lines within south australia australian national is well known for its desire to cut under performing lines and passenger services and as australian national was not accountable to the south australian taxpayer only the commonwealth it was able to do this without any real pushback the state of regional rails an essay today is probably the worst in the nation by which i mean there's close to none this can almost directly be traced back to australian national and its extreme desire to make a profit at any cost before the era of corporatized operators there was a general understanding that railways were simply to serve people and businesses before making a profit that is however not to say they were free or anything ticket prices were certainly very expensive for thousands of regular australians many of the lines made up for their loss were the justification they over or helped the local economy these types of lines are generally two categories one is grain lines where dedicated freight trains are operated to take grain for export to other parts of the country and the other is regional passenger railways but these railways attempted to turn a profit on their business and not to mention other things such as the growth of trucking and the deregulation of the airline industry saw corporatis railways seek to make a profit in any way possible generally this included cutting passenger service and it can be generally said that any currently operating passenger train today is out of a deliberate political decision to keep that service around [Applause] for example during the 1980s in new south wales there was a proposal to cut all long-distance routes every one they were considered unnecessary by the sta but the final decision was down to politicians but such a move would have been politically untenable especially in marginal country seats so many of these lines stayed with extremely bare bones service and this results in the new south wales rail map they have today ultimately the only long-distance service that was cut was the northern river's xpt but in essence that is why australia has such terrible regional rail passenger trains today they never entered in a big bang they ended in a slow fizzle out over decades the desire of corporatis railways to make money was the end of a long downfall for regional passenger trains however that's not to forget the renaissance we have seen in regional rail over the past decade and a half they are much better than they were previously and they are getting better there are good signs like new south wales fast rail might happen eventually that's something i don't think many of us could have imagined 15 years ago but it's important to remember if you try to catch a train tomorrow it's not going to be that good it's probably a better option to drive or take the plane where possible that's not to say the services are all bad they are generally pretty clean reliable but they take such long slow winding routes and the age of the rolling stock on each of the railways is different some of them are quite good such as the velocity train but others such as a v-line's a coach stock is just terrible the same goes for new south wales endeavors but what about looking towards the future because in a decade australia's regional rails will be much better than they are today they are not fizzling out really anymore they are only progressively getting better that rate of progression is slow and has been abysmal but it is there railways in australia suck and i can't tell you we have the freight to make up for those underperforming passenger railways but there is no simple solution to reverse the decline that's happened to regional rail but as we seek to reduce our carbon footprints and encourage more people onto public transportation real efforts should be put into seeking the resurrection of australia's long-distance passenger trains i'm not just talking about ones that go transcontinental i'm talking about connecting tens of towns and cities in inland regions and where service exists at the moment make it better make it daily much of new south wales long distance trains only run once a week or so when they should be at least once a day because it's not just about the infrastructure to enable passenger railways it's about the service they receive it's all good to say the ghana might serve darwin alice springs and adelaide but if it's only operating once a week is that really useful to the general public even if there was an economy service the story isn't just about the trains existing the stories about the usability of those trains and in addition they all need to be affordable you can have first class but economy ticket needs to be pretty damn cheap because what i want to see is railways return to their goal of public service the privatization that followed corporatization throughout the 1990s and early 2000s was a mistake and especially those privatizations only encourage the dissolution of passenger railways at the end of the day i should be able to catch a train to almost anywhere in the country with a population north of 20 000 and i should be able to catch one of those trains at least once a day and ideally the average speed should be fairly high trains serve real community benefit they serve the broader community along their routes they are green travel they are far more accessible than coaches they benefit regional tourism and sustained regional populations and that is why at the end of this video our country desperately needs more regional passenger rail thank you for watching this video this has been the most time consuming and longest produced thing that i've ever put out on youtube and i thank you so much for sitting through it all this way i am not going to make another 20 plus minute video for quite a while this has been enough for me i'm probably going to go back to making shorter form less than 10 minute videos for a while because this has been many hours of editing and a lot of research and the script for this one is about 4 000 words so that has been fun thank you for watching this video please like subscribe to this channel there is more content that will be coming out eventually and thanks so much for the support that i've received [Music] you

Channel: Aussie Wirraway

Views: 102,328

Keywords:

Id: Gr-njiHfU6Y

Length: 24min 24sec (1464 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021