Was The Snowy Hydro Scheme A Success? | Utopia 

Gonna be great. So many canberrans will be like that's my work 🤦‍♂️

Can't wait. One of the best series ever created. Anyone working in any public service can relate!!

Legitimately the best news I've heard in at least a month. Dead keen.

Did you do a feasibility study to confirm audience numbers?

Any chance of getting a UK broadcaster for the new series?

Mmm launching Tassie into orbit. Now that's an idea. Considering how many greens that would deal with it could be cost effective.

Launch Tasmania? I like where you're going there ...

@@timothypezet No one would miss it, plus probably get more chances to see an ecplise

As a greenie Tasmanian who is also a science nerd, I love the idea of being launched into space!

Can someone make an announcement?

The 1% figure in the video is correct. The Snowy Hydro company has added gas & diesel generation to the hydro , so the company's total contribution to the grid is 1.8%.

That's what the naysayers never talk about. Bypass Canberra, ignore Melbourne, two state run corporations and it suddenly makes sense. Gympie->Gold Coast corporation responsible for servicing QLD. Wooloongong->Coffs corporation servicing NSW. Then stage 3 is linking the QLD and NSW high speed rail networks so people can get high speed rail between Australia's largest and third largest cities. The Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail cost China about US$32Bn and makes US$2Bn of profit a year. It has already paid itself off, before considering the enourmous productivity gains from the rail itself. Australia doesn't even need it to be profitable - if it broke even (including the depreciation of the line and trains) it would be worth it.

Given the dogs breakfast that tunneling under the has been it would take two decades to tunnel under Mt Lindsey and for what? The sake of truck drivers logbooks while inland rail is "supposed" to take over freight along there?

I think you are right, and if there was no alternative to a fast train for linking the major cities of Australia it would be an obvious thing to do no matter the cost. I don't think Tony would have raised the profit argument in the case of the train, since economic efficiency is, I suppose, far more important for energy generation than for transportation. However train tracks, and especially high speed train tracks raise much more difficult challenges than roads or even regular trains : the restrictions on turning radius and slope are way more constraining, the cost to build and to maintain is also high, and very long distances bring challenges on their own (how to provide power on the entire length of the line, how to do inspection and maintenance,...) In France we have a similar situation, where my town, Toulouse, does not have as of yet a direct high speed train connexion to Paris even though smaller and farther cities have been connected, and even though the distance is far smaller than would be in Australia, mostly because the Massif Central is in the way. There is a high speed motorway, a regular train track, but building a TGV line is much more of a challenge across mountains... I still think a regular train would be a great choice if we were to talk about environment or long term sustainability, but for speed alone across this kind of distance I fear airports and planes are a far more realistic spending for the taxpayer. As long as we have fuel to put in, that is...

I'm not sure if we watched the same skit, but doing an unfeasible project bit by bit doesn't make it feasible, it actually makes it even less feasible.

​@@PushANDFall to be fair, lots of major infrastructure projects were labelled as "unfeasible" before they were completed. But agreed, if we one day do HSR (our population is only going to increase), it should be done in a blitz and hopefully we will have some cool robots to make it cheaper. Construction costs really need to come down, its the only area where productivity seems to not go up

The rail corridor between the Gold Coast and Brisbane was duplicated (at huge cost) in the last 10 years and it's narrow gauge. From memory the run 120-140kph already. To go faster means tearing the whole thing up and starting again. That's going to be crazy expensive.

@@goodshipkaraboudjan I mean build an additional high speed only line.

@@sarcasmo57 Between Brisbane and the GC in addition to the two existing lines? It can't link to NSW or the rest of the Queensland network. The closest link from the GC is Beaudesert to standard gauge. That's going to be a trillion dollar useless white elephant mate. Not to mention the waste of time required to rip up the now redundant duplication (or at least half) due to the Commonwealth legislation stating if it's there it has to be maintained fit for traffic (which it won't see). That will cause closures and speed restrictions on the live tracks for a few years at least.