Fast track to economic recovery: South East Queensland Fast Rail Network

What is the future economic value of having four international airports across South East Queensland connected by a regional fast rail network?
As part of the SEQ People Mass Movement Study, the Council of Mayors (SEQ) proposed a bold vision of a 45-minute region for South East Queensland. This would mean all city-to-city trips could be completed within 45 minutes, even in peak times.

What is the future economic value of having four international airports across South East Queensland connected by a regional fast rail network? For the tourism industry, it’s an economic game changer that will help unlock $20 – $30 billion in additional visitation and spending in a post COVID-19 environment.

For South East Queenslanders, the real benefit will come from a twenty-year injection of jobs that will ensure the economic prosperity of the region while providing a solid buffer for any future economic events that could impact Queensland.

While immediate stimulus is needed to keep workers and businesses afloat, major infrastructure spending provides one of the greatest returns on the investment of public funds. This is why catalytic infrastructure represents such a powerful tool for economic recovery.

The Council of Mayors (SEQ) first proposed the concept of a South East Queensland Fast Rail Network as part of its 2019 SEQ People Mass Movement Study. The Study outlined a list of 47 priority projects aimed at accommodating the region’s growth and avoiding the future economic burden of congestion.

As congestion returns to normal across South East Queensland, it’s time for the Queensland Government to balance short-term stimulus with catalytic infrastructure that can kickstart the economy and continue to address the economic challenges that the south-east will face in the future.

Fast Rail in South East Queensland

Currently, the Citytrain network is stretched beyond its capability and struggles to effectively service the outer areas of South East Queensland. While Cross River Rail will unlock the bottleneck that exists in the centre of the network, Citytrain is poorly placed to take advantage of this new capacity.

Citytrain New Generation rollingstock has an average running speed of approximately 60 km/h and a top speed of 140km/h. At these speeds, Citytrain is too slow to offer commuters in the outer rings of South East Queensland a reason to leave their cars behind and use public transport.

Fast Rail offers a realistic solution to this challenge, one that has been tried and tested with success in both Australia and abroad.

The South East Queensland Fast Rail Network would be operating at speeds of 160km/h + and delivering significant travel time savings compared to the Citytrain network. It is worth noting, this is not high speed rail / bullet trains which operate in excess of 250 km/h.

As part of the SEQ People Mass Movement Study, the Council of Mayors (SEQ) proposed a bold vision of a 45-minute region for South East Queensland. This would mean all city-to-city trips could be completed within 45 minutes, even in peak times.

While that aspiration comes with a significant price tag, its overall economic impact in terms of a more efficient transport network, freer movement of freight, tourism visitation and expenditure, and the social and environmental benefits would be enormous.

As this new research will show, even a 60-minute region (with its smaller price tag) would still generate very competitive travel time reductions for commuters while also generating a large degree of the aforementioned economic benefits.

Potential stops and proposed travel times

Fast Rail is critical to improving travel times and the efficiency of the regional economy, as well as giving residents more access to jobs and services across South East Queensland.

One of the huge benefits of Fast Rail is its ability to service the outer areas of South East Queensland like Gold Coast, Sunshine Cost and Toowoomba as well as providing fast and efficient public transport to the region’s fastest growing areas such as Ipswich, Logan and the Moreton Bay region.

Below are the indicative travel time reductions that Fast Rail can deliver, even in peak times:

Note: All times and costs are indicative and require further investigation as part of a detailed business case. 

Job creation and economic benefits

Regardless of which scenario is considered by the Queensland Government, the job creation benefits are significant – and the economic value of those jobs represents a massive injection of activity into the Queensland economy.

Using the standard Queensland Treasury multiplier of 3.1 FTE’s supported per $1 million in capital expenditure, the 45-minute Fast Rail Network would generate 4,464 jobs per annum, with a peak of 8,700 per annum at the height of construction, across a twenty year project timeline. The economic injection to the economy directly from the creation of these jobs would be $12.6 billion.

A 60-minute Fast Rail Network would generate 2,619 jobs per annum, with a peak of 5,000 per annum at the height of construction, across a twenty year project timeline. The economic injection to the economy directly from the creation of these jobs would be $7.3 billion.

These figures do not take in the broader economic benefits that would flow from the completion of a South East Queensland Fast Rail Network.

The benefits from reduced transport congestion and improved road safety, freight movement improvements, tourism expenditure, development uplift around key precincts, and many others are enormous and require a detailed business case to adequately capture the full economic impact of Fast Rail.

Kick starting the tourism industry

According to Tourism and Events Queensland, better transport links across the region is the biggest single factor in driving future demand among domestic visitors.

As revealed in the Future SEQ series, Star Entertainment and Tourism and Events Queensland research showed that a South East Queensland Fast Rail Network is the missing link in capturing an additional $20 – $30 billion in visitor stay and expenditure between now and 2031.

A South East Queensland Fast Rail Network is also an essential component of the region’s proposal for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In what is becoming a competitive race to secure the 2032 Games, IOC concerns about spectator travel times and the region’s ability to manage the movement of an additional 500,000+ visitors are the region’s Achilles heel.

Fast rail is the obvious solution to this challenge, and the key to unlocking the proposed $28.8 billion in economic benefits from the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The cost of doing nothing

Infrastructure Australia forecasts that congestion will cost the South East Queensland economy $6 billion per year by 2031. This mirrors the findings of the SEQ People Mass Movement Study which predicts that, based on the region’s current transport planning, all major road corridors will be gridlocked by 2041.

The SEQ Regional Plan, ShapingSEQ, forecasts that South East Queensland’s population will grow to 5.3 million people by 2041, making the region as populated as Greater Sydney is today. And like Sydney, the region’s leaders need to plan for the most effective way to manage this growth.

The NSW Government is currently in the midst of delivering Australia’s biggest public transport project. Sydney Metro is a combination of 31 metro stations and more than 66 kilometres of new metro rail aimed at transforming the way people move around Greater Sydney.

The cost of retrofitting Australia’s most populated city with a world class public transport system is estimated to cost well over $30 billion. However, the complexity of building transport infrastructure when population growth has filled key transport corridors is the true challenge.

The cost of the Sydney Metro project has already blown out by $3 billion, a figure that is likely to continue to rise across the life of what will be a very challenging project.

Similarly, the Victorian Government has announced its intention to deliver the Suburban Rail Loop in an effort to accommodate the 8 million people who will live in Melbourne by 2050. Starting in 2022, the Suburban Rail Loop project will cost more than $50 billion to deliver over a 25-year project horizon.

It is inevitable in the next twenty years that South East Queensland will require a future public transport solution like Fast Rail. The Queensland Government has the option to kickstart the exploration of Fast Rail now and use it as a smart investment for the state’s economic recovery – or miss this opportunity and know that the Queensland economy will pay a hefty price for it in years to come.

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