A Griffith University academic has cautioned regional centres to lower their expectations around high-speed rail, as Shadow Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Anthony Albanese continues to push for high-speed rail to be placed back on the political agenda.

Mr Albanese last month reintroduced a private member's bill to Parliament to establish a High-Speed Rail Planning Authority, which would potentially start acquiring the land for Australia's future rail network.

Associate professor Matthew Burke agreed that acquiring the land corridors was important, but warned that building the network was at least 30 years off, and even further into the future for regional centres.

"I'm not saying never, but it definitely won't be happening in the short term," Dr Burke said.

In August 2014, climate change think tank Beyond Zero Emissions presented a report that demonstrated the commercial viability of building a high-speed rail network along Australia's east coast.

The proposed network would connect Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne across a dedicated 1748km route.

It would include stops at the Gold Coast, Casino, Grafton, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Taree, Newcastle, the Central Coast, the Southern Highlands, Wagga Wagga, Albury-Wodonga, and Shepparton.

While Mr Albanese said that high-speed rail would be a "game-changer" for Australia's regional centres, Dr Burke believed there would not be the population to support it for several decades.

"The east coast settlement pattern is not conducive at this time," he said.

"If we look around the world, high-speed rail is only profitable on one line and that's the line from Osaka, which has the population of Australia, to Tokyo, which has the population one and half times greater than Australia.

"Those cities make sense, because they're dense and they're also well served by other rail lines that feed passengers into the inner city, which makes that overall system work well.

"Everywhere else, high-speed rail is subsidised."

Dr Burke predicted it would not be until 2050 that major cities would have populations large enough to make a high-speed rail network profitable, and even then the north coast of NSW would be the last region to be linked.

"You'd build it from Sydney to Melbourne, you then add the link to Newcastle and probably stop there. Then get on with the Brisbane to Gold Coast link and only at the very end would you link up the Gold Coast with Newcastle," he said.

"I hate to say this Coffs residents, but you'll be waiting for the train for a long time, if and when we do start building this."