Canberra to Sydney rail link to get $100m upgrade to improve train speeds
The federal government is putting $50 million towards priority upgrades to the Canberra-Sydney rail link, with the ACT and NSW governments each contributing $25 million.
The upgrades are expected to improve the travel time between the two cities, which currently takes more than four hours.
Upgrade works are expected to commence this year and be ongoing for up to five years.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-11/canberra-sydney-rail-link-100-million-upgrade/106664548Open linkView original on aussie.zone
5 replies
Under 4 hours. It's 3 hours by car. It's criminal that a rail upgrade now can't manage to beat cars
Some work there seems well overdue, the train takes a lot longer than the bus trip let alone compared to driving yourself. Plenty of talk about high speed rail lines in the far future but even just ok speed rail would attract more people. Be nice if they had a more convenient rail terminus than Kingston too but I can't see that changing anytime soon given how expensive it would be to extend the line closer to the city.
It was a pain running my suitcase a few dozen blocks from the bus stop when the last train out to Sydney's almost gone.
And add cheap, easy to buy tickets, integrate with opal or myway or something simple. And add a station in a more accessible Canberra location. And do more than 2 trips a day....
Pipe dream.
2 all stop trips a day. A lot of the trip time is spent at stations. More trips and express like services? Booking a seat is an issue as most seats seem to be booked by people closer to Sydney so more services are needed.