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Comparing the world’s high-speed rail networks
High-speed rail offers more efficient travel and impressive top speeds. Here’s how different networks across the world compare, and where a high-speed route could be built in Australia.
It’s had a fractious planning history in Australia, but high-speed rail (HSR) has been implemented in countries across the world to drastically shorten travel times and offer top speeds of more than 300 km/h.
This country is yet to implement a HSR network, which could cut travel time between Sydney and Canberra by two-thirds; it’s currently a three-hour car journey, but travelling by HSR would take just one hour.
So how close has Australia come to constructing HSR, which countries boast the most extensive HSR networks, and how do the specs of different routes match up?
Designing a car that can change its colour
The idea of a colour-changing car sounds like something out of a James Bond movie – but it’s the work of Australian-born engineer Dr Stella Clarke.
Dr Stella Clarke grew up in the Sydney beachside suburb of Maroubra but has lived in Germany almost for 20 years. There, she works for German luxury car maker BMW.
She began her degree in mechanical engineering at the University of New South Wales and went on to study at Pennsylvania State University before relocating to Europe. In 2007, she gained her PhD and joined BMW AG as a Haptics Expert and Vehicle Production Engineer at the company’s Munich headquarters.
How does Australia build its clean energy workforce?
Australia’s decarbonised future is fast approaching – and with the shift to renewable energy comes a requirement for a new engineering workforce.
Australia is in the middle of a global race for the capital, resources, materials, equipment and workforce needed to build a new energy system. Being reliant on skilled migrant engineers to fill the skills gap might have worked in the past, but it won’t be enough to help Australia meet ambitious decarbonisation targets.
“More than half of Australia’s electrical engineering workforce is born overseas and we currently have one of the lowest rates of engineers in our graduating cohort of any OECD nation,” Kane Thornton, CEO of the Clean Energy Council (CEC), told create.
“It is imperative that we increase our domestic engineering capacity because of increased global competition for the future clean energy workforce.”