Virgin Australia resumes Sydney-Canberra flights

Definitely seems odd when you put it that way! But if there were enough passengers for a Boeing 737 on such a short route, Qantas would be all over it. Virgin used to fly E190s and I always thought they were a good fit for the route. And in terms of the actual market, apart from some spikes when politicians, lobbyists etc fly in and out around the 'Parliamentary calendar' there's not a lot of movement on a daily basis. And if they ever got serious about fast rail between Sydney and Canberra that would almost be the death of this route for airlines.

Fully fully agree. Totally get the market size and assigning the right size aircraft to cater for that. Just seems a bit funny. I think there is an argument for appearance here though. e.g. people are more likely to catch light rail than a bus, equally a jet over a turbo prop (particularly a noisy old one). 

I know this is getting quite off topic, but with the fast vs high speed train argument, a new high speed train is much more likely to attract riders than a simple upgrade to existing infrastructure that provides only minimal improvements. Not sure that I entirely agree with the lack of economics as suggested by Tommygun below. Something like high speed rail (or god forbid some type of innovative technology) would build the entire corridor. It would remove the need to live in overpriced real estate markets etc just as one benefit. A lot of long term benefits that will only cost significantly more once they are eventually implemented in 20, 30, 50, years time. 

Going even more off track from the topic (pun intended) is whether we are going to be good/mature enough to run a high speed train (HST) system. 

I am often surprised how little interruption (we know of) high speed train system were in Europe in terms of accident or potential risks/deaths to trespassers not just people but also animals.

Or maybe it is not mentioned that much in the local (European) press?

The other issue of HST is the frequency and patronage which meant it need to stop in certain big cities like Liverpool or Campbelltown towards Sydney or Goulburn (for people who don’t want to pay Canberra property prices) to pick up some volume without increasing the travel time too much

At the end, I better mention something about this new article, Looks like colour matching of Link’s uniform and interior of their Saab equipment is similar to REx and it may confuse their pax who may not think they are flying with Virgin at all. Unless the pax are using Sydney as a transit for other destinations (hence able to stay in the VA ecosystem and points etc), there may not be any reason to fly VA unless for price point alone.

Again REx need to hurry up if they intend to set in place any loyalty program other than the paid business club

I think it is less about not enough travellers (A lot of of people catch Murray's/greyhound buses to and from Sydney everyday, alongside those that fly/train at the moment), and more about the horrendous alignments and state of the rail link.

You can't even get to a 'fast rail' solution of say 2 hours each way (which would capture a significant chunk of the market) without huge investment sadly. In particular the alignment between Goulburn and Canberra is utterly horrendous.

The only way we will ever see proper high speed rail in this country is if we have a government with genuine vision, that can see the value of a project well beyond the pure economics of it - i.e. a nation building project. We used to see it regularly, but never anymore. The NBN circus - which while maybe not the best delivery model, was a good idea to begin with and had some characteristics of a nation building project, shows exactly why no government will go anywhere near it.

Such a shame - in a time of cheap $, from a financial perspective there is no better time to build it. And in Australia, given population numbers, I think it could in theory be designed as both a high speed passenger line, and a high speed freight line (especially at night). There is all the ingredients for a project in there, but it is always going to be hard to make it stack up economically. 

This is not a criticism of your comment - your entitled to your view.

But your comment exactly illustrates why generally it is so hard now to do any really big government megaprojects in Australia. The obsession with 'what do I get out of it' scuttles almost anything that is a big picture project - a default position of a project being unworthy because one doesn't see immediate direct results from it.

Again, not a criticism of your view, but more the lens everything seems to be viewed through these days. It used to be different. 

To be fair Darwin - Alice was never built primarily as a passenger line, so fares on that aren't a good comparator as it is only a luxury train provider operating. No idea about how freight costs and usage of the line is these days (the real reason to extend it). But the cost of building it was well over budget (no suprise to be honest given the terrain it was built through), and it like the NBN highlights the perils of big projects.

I'm not saying HSR will ever happen (it won't - needed to happen in the 90s if it was ever going to happen), much for the reasons you suggest. But there are pockets where in theory HSR could work, that in time could be expanded upon, and I do think a proper high speed mixed line could somewhat improve the business case. Unlikely to make it stack up sure, but we are headed for a very different world if net zero is going to be a reality. 

All I think is we are pissing up gazillions up the wall year after year on utter nonsense from government (just how much of jobkeeper - a worthy scheme, but dreadfully designed) ultimately ended up as a transfer directly from taxpayer to shareholder/major companies that ultimately didn't need it. That figure is likely to be in the tens of billions. Not for one minute saying it wasn't a scheme needed - but it cost a shedload more than it should of, yet most people don't blink an eye.

Would prefer to see more money being put into genuine big projects.

Anyway, that's way too much off topic, but good to have a decent conversation about these things :)