[Justin L]

Interesting. But don't CityLink have some sort of exclusivity for transport to Tullamarine with their freeways which is one of the reasons an airport rail link was knocked back?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...-23349,00.html

Monorail proposal to link airports
Rick Wallace, Victorian political reporter | July 18, 2008

AT the risk of turning Melbourne's transport woes into a song and dance routine, a European consortium has proposed building a monorail that will run between Geelong and Frankston as an alternative to an $8.5billion, west-east rail tunnel being considered by the state Government.

Transrapid, a joint-venture between German industrial giants Siemens and ThyssenKrupp, has advocated the revolutionary idea in a submission to the Victorian Government's review in the wake of Rod Eddington's study on Melbourne's transport needs.

While the plan is certain to be mocked for its echoes of a famous The Simpsons plot line, Transrapid general manager Peter Hatcher is serious about the idea.

He said for half the price of the planned rail tunnel -- which is intended to run between the inner suburbs of Footscray and Caulfield -- Transrapid could build a high-speed monorail more than 100km long.

Transrapid claims the monorail would link Melbourne's two airports and travel at speeds of up to 250km/h suspended above the track using magnetic levitation technology, cutting the travelling time from the CBD to Frankston to just 12 minutes.

"The system's high acceleration rates allow significant reductions in travel time over even short distances, and relatively high operating speeds in the order of 250km/h can be achieved in built-up areas with virtually no noise emission," the submission says.

The only commercial Transrapid train operates in Shanghai, where it links the city with Pudong Airport at speeds of about 430km/h.

However, the system has a chequered history in Germany, where in 2006 a Transrapid train operating on a demonstration track crashed into a maintenance car, killing 23 people.