Date: 22nd May 2013 09:30 am

Speaker: Professor David Hensher, Director and Dr Rico Merkert, Senior Lecturer (ITLS-Sydney), Peter Koning (Chairman of the CILTA NSW Section), Peter Humphreys (Vice President of Global Transit, AECOM), Gen Okajima (General Manager, Central Japan Railway Company, Sydney Office) and The Hon John Alexander MP (Federal Member for Bennelong),

Topic: High speed rail for Australia - Is it value for money?

A high speed rail link connecting the large centres of Australia's east coast is an exciting but costly undertaking. With Sydney-Melbourne being the fifth busiest air route in the world and Sydney-Brisbane not far behind there would appear to be sufficient demand and a high speed rail link would be competitive in providing a journey time of under three hours between Sydney CBD and Melbourne CBD. However, as Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese has commented recently, a high speed rail link would necessitate significant tunnelling (particularly around Sydney) and would be very costly.  This view is supported by a number of high level studies. In response to the most recent study, Mr Albanese said that HSR in Australia would be an exciting but ''monumental endeavour'' and that, given the large capital cost and impacts to communities involved, a national debate is urgently required. He continued by saying "Let the debate begin." Well, this is what this forum is all about. The crucial questions addressed in this special event, as part of the ITLS Leadership and Policy Seminar Series, are where the large upfront investment for a high speed link would come from and whether the proposed HSR link is indeed value for money.

Program

9.30am Introduction Professor David Hensher, Director and Dr Rico Merkert, Senior Lecturer, ITLS-Sydney

9.40am The real impact of high speed rail - evidence from a European perspective Peter Koning, Chairman of the CILTA NSW Section and Peter Humphreys, Vice President of Global Transit, AECOM

10.10am Building the backbone of the nation - the Japanese HSR experience Gen Okajima, General Manager, Central Japan Railway Company, Sydney Office

11am Investment in growth The Hon John Alexander MP, OAM, Federal MP for Bennelong

11.30am Assessing the employment agglomeration and social accessibility impacts of HSR in the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne corridor Professor David Hensher, Director, ITLS-Sydney

12pm Round table panel discussion

12.30pm Lunch

Places are limited for this special event so please book early to avoid disappointment. This is a catered event so please include any special dietary requirements with your RSVP to: business.itlsinfo@sydney.edu.au

Date: 18th Jun 2013 11:00 am

Speaker: Professor Michiel Bliemer, Chair in Transport and Logistics Network Modelling, ITLS-Sydney

Topic: Road pricing reform: A simple, fair, publicly acceptable, and revenue-neutral distance based discounting strategy

Bio: After studying economics at Brown University Graduate School (USA) and receiving his MSc degree in Econometrics and Operations Research (with honours) from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) in 1996, Michiel began his PhD in transport planning and traffic engineering at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) on the topic of dynamic traffic assignment. In 2001, he successfully obtained his PhD degree, and become Assistant Professor in Transport Economics at Delft. At the same time, he held a part-time position at the Dutch Institute for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and developed the INDY dynamic traffic assignment software. In 2004, Michiel was promoted to Associate Professor in Transport Modelling and has since supervised several PhD candidates in the fields of road pricing, dynamic network modelling, evacuation planning, network reliability and robustness, and firm location choice. In addition, he has been responsible for teaching the transport modelling course and courses in discrete choice methods, dynamic traffic management, and transport economics. As of 2008, he accepted a part-time position as Innovation Manager at Goudappel Coffeng, the largest transport and traffic consultancy in the Netherlands. At the company, he has been responsible for several model innovations in the OmniTRANS software, such as the StreamLine dynamic traffic network model, the STAQ static traffic assignment with queuing model, and discrete choice models to be applied on large transport networks.

Michiel's ties with ITLS have always been strong; since 2003 Michiel has been a visiting professor, working at ITLS between one and five months each year. His research in Sydney has focused on experimental designs for stated choice surveys, which in cooperation with colleagues has led to the Ngene software for generating experimental designs. In early 2012, Michiel joined ITLS full-time as Chair in Transport and Logistics Network Modelling, where he is active in teaching courses and conducting research in the transport and logistics modelling domain, with a strong focus on realistically modelling behaviour of travellers and agents. Michiel actively works together with consultants and industry partners to bring new scientific methods and models to practice and to support policy makers in making better infrastructure and traffic management decisions.

In the past ten years, Michiel has published over 200 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, books, and conference proceedings, and is an active member of the network modelling and survey methods committees at the Transportation Research Board (USA), the innovative methods committee at ETC (Europe), and the scientific board of the DTA conference. Furthermore, he is a member of the International Association of Travel Behaviour Research (IATBR), the Dutch TRAIL Research School, and is an associate editor of the Journal of Choice Modelling.

Date: 13th Aug 2013 11:00 am

Speaker: David Asteraki, Director Infrastructure KPMG

Topic: Financing Australian PPP Projects in the Global Financial Crisis