We’ve done it before, so why can’t we build heaps more rail lines?

Cannon says the final cost of the great railway building spree crippled State budgets for decades. “Even today”, he says – meaning circa 1966 when the book was published – “the incubus of the railway boom of the 1880s lies heavily on the taxpayer”.

His account highlights one reason why it would be much harder to replicate Melbourne’s suburban rail system today; it was built during a spectacular period in the city’s history, with a coincidence of highly speculative investment mania and political corruption.

Even on the most cynical view, those conditions don’t hold today. Motorway investors have learned from the Brisbane and Sydney fiascos and are now much more careful; one of their strategies is to shift more of the risk on to government.

Apart from the perennial problem of politicians prioritising political convenience over economic sense, a key risk now is the feebleness of governments in negotiations with the private sector over selection and funding of projects.

Fortunately investors are wiser and prudential controls are stronger, but setting up massive transport infrastructure spending programs is much harder now. One of the key problems is construction costs are much, much higher than they were even a few decades ago (e.g. see Infrastructure: what to do about the “Cleopatra Problem”?); governments also have many more  priorities compared to the late nineteenth century.