Australia needs to get its act together and build high speed rail lines. Their geography is actually fantastic for it, its criminal not to have done it 40 years ago.
their demographic sparsity on the other hand, is not fantastic for it.
You want high usage for rail. Unfortunately, there's not really enough people travelling to make it a profitable venture imho. Between sydney and melbourne, it's _just_ barely in the range for a flight, and so a rail will not beat it on convenience.
You are apparently being too rational with this answer. You are right. You can't spend 60 billion for something that 500 people a day will use when planes already do it for less.
Having something that is incredibly useful doesn't have to be profitable. High speed rail is infrastructure that will serve you well for literally the next 100+ years.
And as you improve your local rail network and amount of connections to that high speed rail, its a no brainer.
Those things are not opposed to each other. In fact one benefits from the other. One is national, the other is more local.
And the main thing holding back cities is cars and removing them is not primarily a cost issue, but a political one.
As for what will it solve, it decarbonize the most important air routes in your country. It will serve as a backbone for the transportation network of your country for next 100 years.
