A new year’s revolution

A new year’s revolution: Build the high speed Australian ring rail

“In this New Year, Australia must urgently take a lead from the Chinese, and build a high speed rail network to conquer Australia’s ‘tyranny of distance’ and open up vast areas of Australia for future economic development,” Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood said today.

Mr Isherwood said that China has just commenced a regular, scheduled train service on the high speed railway between central China’s Wuhan and the southern coast city of Guangzhou (formerly, the British Canton). The 1069 kilometre journey, which used to take 10.5 hours, can be now completed in three hours. The train’s average speed was 350 kilometres per hour, reaching at one point a speed of 394 km/h. For comparison, the average speed for high speed trains in Japan is 243 km/h and in France, 277 km/h.

“This would be brilliant technology for Australia!” exclaimed Mr Isherwood.

“In 2010, we need to start building Professor Lance Endersbee’s 1997 proposal for an Australian Ring Rail, which is a rail system to connect Melbourne through inland Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, to Darwin, and then from Darwin to Perth, Western Australia. His proposal means that we could take a trip from Melbourne to Darwin, via inland towns of Shepparton (Vic), Dubbo (NSW), Narrabri (NSW), Moree (NSW), Roma (Qld), Charleville (Qld) through to Darwin, a distance of about 4,000 kilometres in around 11 hours.

“Australia with its large open plains means that, even without improvements in technology, these high speed trains could develop a higher average speed than the Chinese are achieving now. And, we have not even discussed the potential for magnetic levitation train systems which travel even faster!

“Lance Endersbee designed the Ring Rail as a new fast freight system to service the growing trade between Australia and East and Southeast Asia with seven key objectives which would increase the potential for real growth in Australia’s physical economy:

• Access for Australian traders to the busy Asian maritime network;


• access for Australian rural industries to Asian markets and supermarkets through regular, fast deliveries to major Asian centres;


• quicker deliveries by Australian manufactures to Asian industries and markets;


• rail access to the large oil and gas resources of the Timor Sea;


• rail connections within the Ring Rail to assist the development of metal smelting and refining (so we don’t just ship raw materials overseas!);


• the continuing development of northern Australia, with national benefits overall;


• national integration of economic activity.

“Australian leaders are pathetic on real national building projects”, Mr Isherwood declared.

“In September, Chinese officials said they planned to build 42 high speed rail lines by 2012 with a total length of 12,920 kilometres as part of efforts to spur economic growth. When completed the high speed rail lines will service areas including about 90% of China’s population. This is part of an ambitious rail development program aimed at increasing the national network from the current 85,295 kilometres to 120,700.”

Mr Isherwood stated, “Building the Australia Ring Rail is a crucially important, genuine nation building step, which must be combined with the other urgent measures I outlined in my 10th December webcast for Australia’s mission:

“We must break from the British Commonwealth and its anti development, raw material looting policies that have destroyed our physical economy; dump the foreign Queen as our head of state and establish a true republic, and then nationalise our huge raw materials deposits; and using major rail infrastructure, establish new farms and industries to export manufactured goods and produce into Asia.”

ENDS

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