GEELONG-MELBOURNE IN 17 MINS? HIGH-SPEED RAIL PLAN:

A PROPOSAL for high-speed rail connecting Geelong and Melbourne in 17 minutes has attracted interest from the Federal Government.

The group behind the proposal said the service could attract 24,000 passenger trips an hour in peak periods and is billing it as a congestion buster.

But MegaRail, which also has plans for a Melbourne-Dandenong service, is yet to determine how the proposal for a single high-speed rail line running trains at 350km/h will be financed.

Project leader and former Victorian Department of Transport project manager Jeff Moran said 16-car trains were proposed to accommodate expected demand.

“The project is not fully developed and assumes use of the existing rail corridor,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done. In concept this stacks up but it needs to be refined before anyone will spend money on it.”

The MegaRail group, made up of engineering academics, transport consultants and rail experts, will put its proposal to the Government next month, and hopes to gain a share of $20 million to develop a business case for the project.

The group was established after the Federal Government set aside money to investigate rail improvements between capital cities and regional centres in the May budget.

Trips on the Geelong line made up about 44 per cent of those taken across the regional network last year and patronage on the line increased by 95.7 per cent between 2012 and June 30 this year.

More than 680,000 passenger trips were recorded on the Geelong line in September.

According to the Government’s faster rail prospectus released in September, train speeds of “up to 100-160km/h are potentially achievable” if existing lines can be upgraded.

“While the benefits of highspeed rail are easy to visualise, what is not always well understood is that our existing regional rail services run at well below the speeds and frequencies that conventional rail can achieve,” the report says.

Public Transport Users Association Geelong convener Paul Westcott said the project seemed “optimistic”.

“There are a lot of questions that need to be answered before this can go ahead. It seems impossible to fit in highspeed tracks in built-up metropolitan areas,” he said.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics says Melbourne’s population is projected to rise to at least 7.6 million in 2061 and Geelong’s to reach more than 320,000 in 2036.