The previous Labor federal government in 2013 commissioned a feasibility study of a high-speed rail network connecting Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane – and building the line remains ALP policy.

“If other jurisdictions want to join us to further extend the network, we would of course be willing to consider that but we will not wait for that to start work on our fast-rail network,” her spokesperson said.

Berejiklian is open to working with others to extend the network, possibly to Melbourne.

Now high-speed rail is back. With an election looming in NSW, Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced that if the government is re-elected it will “start work” on a fast rail network. Four routes between Sydney and regional cities will be considered, including a connection to Canberra.

But nothing came of it, nor of a string of subsequent proposals.

If it had been completed as first planned in 1995, the VFT would now be whisking millions of people a year between central Sydney and downtown Melbourne in three hours.

It’s nearly 35 years since the Very Fast Train bulleted onto the national agenda.

So, given this complexity, how well is Australia doing in the overall planning and delivery of big transport projects? Are we building what we need? And where could we do better?

Any high-speed rail plan is likely to require long-term co-operation and co-ordination between federal, state and local governments. Bipartisan political support would also be necessary because the process of detailed planning, approvals and construction would span several terms of government

The decades of debate on the issue illustrate some of the challenges and pitfalls facing those responsible for big transport investments.

“What do we know that they don’t know?” asks one economist.

But advocates point out that while Australia has been debating high-speed rail many countries have been building it, especially in Europe and Asia.

“Pigs might fly,” was the assessment of one transport specialist.

If you ask experts whether the failure so far to build high-speed rail along the eastern seaboard is good, bad or even likely, you’ll get mixed views.

The annual international city rankings report by consultancy firm Mercer includes an assessment of 231 cities' infrastructure including transport, electricity, water and communications. This year's analysis placed Sydney eighth, Melbourne 34th and Brisbane 37th in the world.

But when the infrastructure in our biggest cities is systematically compared with international peers it rates fairly well.

Complaining about traffic gridlock and crammed public transport has become something of a national pastime. Industry groups, lobbyists and some politicians regularly claim Australia is suffering from an “infrastructure deficit”.

Our roads and rail are good quality by world standards, but there's room for improvement. Credit:Ryan Stuart

Even so, there’s plenty of room for improvement.

“That’s something we should be rightly proud of,” he says.

Adrian Dwyer, chief executive of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, which represents large infrastructure firms, says we have some of the most sophisticated and well-regulated infrastructure markets in the world.

One positive is that federal and state governments have established bodies to assess and prioritise big infrastructure projects.

“Commute distances and commute times are pretty much unchanged in a period of rapid population growth. The infrastructure is doing the job it’s supposed to do.”

“Our cities are actually working very well,” says Marion Terrill, who heads the transport and cities program at the policy think tank the Grattan Institute.

Many enormous road and rail schemes are announced when an election is looming long before a comprehensive business case and planning have been completed.

If Kelly were in politics today he might say the same thing about transport projects.

Bert Kelly, the renowned economic rationalist who represented the South Australian seat of Wakefield in the 1960s and 1970s, used to quip that every time an election was announced he could “feel a dam coming on”.

Melbourne University urban planning expert Dr Crystal Legacy says that pattern taints the development of a rigorous business case.

“It’s like a rationalisation of the project rather than doing rational decision-making,” she says.

One recent trend is for politicians to try and get the benefits of a big transport project announcement when they are really only announcing a feasibility study about the project.

The latest NSW fast-rail announcement is a case in point – as was the Andrews government's pre-election commitment to (what amounts to the preparation of a business case for) the suburban rail loop.

No wonder many voters are cynical.

How much did you say?!

Over the past 15 years, government spending on roads and rail has been very high by international standards and the highest in Australia since records were first collected in the mid-1980s.

In 2002, Australia spent the equivalent of 0.6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on road and rail projects but that reached 1.08 per cent of GDP last year, down a little from the recent peak of almost 1.2 per cent in 2012.

Over the decade to mid-2018, construction work on new transport projects for the public sector cost more than $180 billion.

Premature announcement is the biggest culprit.

The Grattan Institute recently analysed cost overruns on Australian transport infrastructure projects between 2001 and 2016. Governments had spent a hefty $28 billion more than they told taxpayers they would – that’s nearly a quarter of the total amount budgeted for projects.

“Premature announcement – when a politician promises to build a road or rail line at a particular cost, often in the lead-up to an election – is the biggest culprit,” the report concluded.

It also found that cost estimation guidance is inconsistent, omits valuable tools and can’t draw on previous projects because we don’t collect the data.

“Governments set aside large contingency funds for every project and on many projects this is ultimately spent on add-ons that are poor value for money,” the report said.

Sydney’s troubled eastern suburbs light rail shows that cost blowouts are not a thing of the past. The cost was initially put at $1.6 billion but that was revised up to $2.1 billion. And the final bill is set to go even higher – an Auditor-General’s report last month warned “additional costs to the project” are expected.

With so much infrastructure in the pipeline, the risk of cost blowouts is high.

Project as political trophy

As spending on big road, rail and other infrastructure projects have grown so, it seems, has the incentive to politicise that spending.

Signature projects are increasingly championed by one major party only to be ditched or substantially altered by their political opponents.

Soon after the Andrews Labor government came to power in Victoria, it spent more than $1 billion to shelve the controversial East-West Tunnel in Melbourne given the go-ahead by the Napthine Liberal government.

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A few years earlier, the O’Farrell government in NSW tore up Labor plans for an Epping-to-Parramatta rail link and tried to funnel $2 billion in federal funds allocated to that project to its preferred option, the Metro NorthWest.

This trend continued last month when NSW Labor announced it would junk Berejiklian government plans to revamp two Sydney stadiums. The opposition would not rebuild either the Sydney Football Stadium at Moore Park or proceed with an $800 million upgrade to ANZ Stadium at Sydney Olympic Park if it wins government at the March election.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announces work on a fast rail network. Credit:AAP

Spending in the wrong places

Ideally, infrastructure investment should be driven by patterns of population growth and target projects that deliver the biggest economic gains.

But transport infrastructure spending has long been skewed by electoral political considerations – certain electorally sensitive regions have received a disproportionate share, especially regional NSW and Queensland.

Regional NSW, where the National Party holds a large number of seats, received a disproportionate slice of pie.

This trend has been especially stark in the allocation of federal money to transport projects.

A recent report by the Grattan Institute found the federal government spent 46 per cent more per person on transport infrastructure in Queensland than in Victoria in the decade to 2015.

Regional NSW, where the National Party holds a large number of seats, also received a disproportionate slice of the federal road and rail funding pie in that period.

Melbourne Airport: there has been talk of a rail link for years. Credit:Craig Abraham

Bits and pieces

Debate about transport projects is normally focused on individual projects such as Sydney’s WestConnex or Melbourne’s airport rail link.

But Dr Legacy says it is often unclear how these new additions integrate with existing infrastructure and other new projects. “We take a very fragmented approach to transport infrastructure planning,” she says.

“There’s a lot of getting on with project building at the moment but that sometimes comes at the cost of doing good planning where you clearly articulate what the problem is and different ways of solving that problem.”

No one can be certain of what the future holds – that’s what makes astute investments in expensive transport projects tricky. But here are some ways to improve things.

Justify first, announce later

Good project decision-making requires “careful consideration of the problem, a thoughtful understanding of the options, and a detailed evidence-base to demonstrate the benefits of the solution,” says Infrastructure Partnerships Australia’s Dwyer.

The economic justification for many big projects is still vague and their business cases shielded from independent evaluation.

“Deliver business cases before projects are announced, not after,” says Dr Legacy.

One option would be to require publicly funded transport projects with an estimated cost of $1 billion or more to have the support of Parliament, not just the party in power or seeking office.

The cost-benefit analysis of a project could also be improved and made more transparent.

For example, the official discount rate – a core element in the way the long-term costs and benefits of infrastructure proposals are assessed – should be lowered.

The discount rate is a calculation tool used in cost-benefit analysis to put the present and future costs and benefits of a project on a comparable footing.

The discount rate used by most Australian governments including NSW has been stuck at 7 per cent since at least 1989, even though the cost of borrowing has fallen dramatically since then.

A lower discount rate would improve the relative attractiveness of some public transport rail projects because of the long-term nature of the investment.

With 5 million residents each, Melbourne and Sydney need to move more people by train. Credit:Ryan Stuart

Pick up the pace on public transport

Speaking of public transport, the populations of Sydney and Melbourne have climbed to about five million and many of each city's key industry sectors are globally integrated. But both are highly dependent on cars compared with many other cities of their scale and economic sophistication. Both also have population densities that are relatively low.

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Regional economics expert Terry Rawnsley says Melbourne and Sydney have reached a population threshold where they need more mass transport. They can no longer rely so heavily on cars to move people around.

“It’s not like Melbourne and Sydney are going to morph into having the transport mode share of London or New York, they’re still going to be heavily car-based because they are so dispersed,” he said. “But we’ve got to try and get more and more new trips onto rail.”

There are big public transport projects in the pipeline but Rawnsley says authorities need to “pick up the pace” of implementation and plan to deliver even more. That won’t be easy.

“Because our cities have such a large geographic footprint, trying to retrofit metro systems and heavy rail networks is very challenging,” he says.

Sydney and Melbourne residents are more reliant on cars than residents in comparable cities. Credit:Peter Braig

Small is often better

Politicians find it hard to resist big, impressive-sounding infrastructure announcements.

But it is typically much easier to find a very favourable cost-benefit ratio in a group of small to medium-sized projects.

One reason is that adding major projects in mature cities such as Sydney and Melbourne is almost always complicated, disruptive and expensive, likely involving costly land acquisitions and tunnelling.

Relatively modest projects targeting transport “pinch points” can often deliver much bigger bang for buck in terms of economic benefits and convenience for commuters.

Reviewing finished rail and road projects can yield valuable lessons. Credit:

Don't go down the same track

You might expect that once a big infrastructure project is finished, the government responsible would conduct a thorough evaluation.

In fact, that rarely happens.

A recent Grattan Institute report found that only two post-completion project reviews had been published in NSW during the past four years. Victoria was only a little better with seven reviews.

In the case of some big projects run by the private sector, market forces deliver the harshest of judgments – the bankruptcy of the operating company.

In the public sector, projects should be systematically reviewed. That would help planners avoid making the same mistakes as in the past such as overly optimistic traffic projections.

One option would be to require a post-completion review of all large transport projects be submitted to the federal government.

Building a new freeway may not always help. Credit:File

Building is not always the answer

If the goal is “congestion busting” – as some political leaders like to say – there’s a swag of reforms that would help that don’t involve concrete or tarmac.

One option is time-of-day congestion pricing, where motorists are charged for using roads at peak times. That would ensure existing infrastructure is used more efficiently, reducing the need to build more.

There is a structural preference to look for infrastructure solutions rather than a full suite of options.

A range of housing-related reforms, including stamp-duty changes and improved planning, would reduce the cost of moving house and make it easier for people to live closer to their work. That would, in turn, ease pressure on transport networks.

Unfortunately, announcing a new infrastructure project typically comes at a lower political cost than sensible reforms.

That political reality means there is a "structural preference" to look for infrastructure solutions to city transport problems rather than considering a full suite of policy options.

Big new projects might sound appealing but they’re often not the best way to make our cities function better.