Nation Building !

Forward thinking people must be appalled at plans for another big housing estate on Sydney's outskirts.  We are simply gobbling up precious farmland to create what is fast becoming an unworkable city.  Sadly, the bulk of the Australian population is concentrated in each of the state capitals which all crowd along our coastline.   The only inland city with more than three hundred thousand people - is Canberra.

The airlines are very aware that the air corridor between Sydney and Melbourne is the fourth busiest in the world.  We should be well on the way in connecting those two cities with a very fast train network - but that is not even in the planning stage, and yet driving the Princes Highway is only a thousand kilometres between the two cities.

Japan invented what it called the "Bullet Train " and both France and Germany quickly followed with the GTV.   China is fast developing an extensive fast train network and even more exciting ideas are in the pipeline.   Fast transport of people is a development that many countries now consider to be the basis of nation building.

The logic of connecting Sydney and Melbourne with a fast train is inescapable. It removes the tyranny of distance between home and work for most people.  It enables new cities along that route to expand as industries gain elbow room to grow and attract widely dispersed workers.   The thought of people living in Sydney and travelling to work daily in Goulburn could become a reality.

It would breathe new life into country towns that are withering away.  It would enable us to disperse our population and absorb the numbers that world events may add to our country in the years ahead.  It should be high on the list of our priorities.  Just as the NBN was intended to deliver universal fast communications, a fast rail connection would integrate city and country at somewhere similar to airline speed.

It seems that fast transport may be on the cusp of a new development.  Some people consider than Elon Musk is a genius similar to James Watt or Thomas Edison.  He made a fortune when he developed a payment system he called PayPal and he has created the worlds first high volume electric car with the Tesla brand.  Another of his companies - SpaceX - has developed the ability to have space rockets deliver their cargo into orbit and then return to their launch pad for reuse.

He is developing a form of transport based on the vacuum tube common in commerce back in the 1940's.   In that era, when you made a purchase in a department store the attendant took your money and put it in a container that was sucked along a pipeline by vacuum - to a central cashier.   The container returned with your change and receipt to that point of sale.

Musk envisages small carriages capable of comfortably seating about twenty-five people travelling between cities at warp speed.  This may compete with the conventional fast train concept and with magnetic levitation methods to even exceed the speed of air travel.   Instead of rails, the coverage would consist of sealed tubing to accommodate this form of travel.

Sadly, devising and building the transport of the future in Australia seems bogged down with the usual political inertia.   Not only would it need consensus in Canberra, but it also involves two competitive states and the vast array of local government in between.   Achieving approval of a common plan would be unlikely.

Australians journeying overseas and experiencing the advantages of fast transport must wonder why this concept is not even on the drawing board in this country !