Expert says fast trains need govt money

If Australia’s proposed east coast very fast train is to ever leave the station, Australian governments will have to provide most of the estimated $114 billion price tag.

A leading French train manufacturer has said in the current environment public-private partnerships (PPPs) do not work for very-high-speed (VHS) rail projects.

AAP Newsagency reports Alstom Transport president Henri Poupart-Lafarge said the projects were too expensive and took too long to give returns even if the venture was profitable,.

The amount of private equity was beyond the capacity of almost all investors and the debt took 30 or 40 years to mature, he said.

“Even in Australia, which is the country of a number of infrastructure funds and big funds like Macquarie and so forth, I’m not sure they would be in a position to really put this amount of money in,” he said in the French capital, Paris.

AAP reports an Australian government report released last year on the proposal to link Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne by VHS rail estimated it would cost $114 billion and not be finished until 2065.

The current conservative Liberal-National government has indicated its support and started to preserve a land corridor for the project.

Mr Poupart-Lafarge said it was important to have airports on board with VHS rail projects for them to be effective.

However he said this was unlikely if airports did not have congestion problems.

“Where it works with very high speed is because the airports themselves are happy to see some short distance trips being taken out of their own platforms to allow some space for the long distance ones,” he said.

“If you have no limit on your airport capacity then it’s more complex.”

Around the world, there was a lot of excitement about VHS rail about 10 years ago but there was no market now, he added.

Mr Poupart-Lafarge cited the case of Brazil, where the government is now guaranteeing 95 per cent of the financing for its VHS rail project.

It started with a full PPP, then took out the infrastructure component when it could not attract private investors, he said.

Later the government said it would guarantee 70 per cent of the debt for operations and maintenance and contribute a substantial part of the capital.

“It’s a PPP except it’s a very, very small P for private and a big P for public,” Mr Poupart-Lafarge said.

In Argentina, the enthusiasm for VHS rail had waned as people wondered whether the government would not be better off spending the money on upgrading existing urban rail lines.

A similar argument was happening in India, he said.

However, he said the perennial issue in Australia was not yet a lost case, with a growing appetite for public transport.