b'SARAH CLOSE FROM PWC EXPLAINS THE IMPORTANCEOF TRANSPORT SHAPING REGIONAL CENTRESSarah Close is a Partner in PwCs Infrastructure Strategy Team, and shehas spent 15 years specialising in feasibility studies and the economic analysis of major city shaping infrastructure across Australia. She has been recently been advising on the business cases for a range of Faster Rail options in Australia. Sarah presented her approach to the assessment of integrated transport, land use and employment outcomes. Sarah outlined previous studies into fast rail across Australia over the last 50 years. She then outlined the Federal Governments current approach to boosting regional centres while taking pressure off Australias largest cities. In 2019 the Faster Rail Agency was set up by the Commonwealth Government to implement a 20 year plan working with state and territory governments and private sector proponents. In 2019 The NSW Government issued the 2019 NSW Fast Rail Network Strategy that identified four corridors for detailed investigation. These are the Northern Corridor to Newcastle and on to Port Macquarie, the Southern Coastal Strategy to Wollongong and Nowra, the Southern Inland Corridor to Goulburn and Canberra and the Western Corridor to Lithgow, Bathurst and Orange/Parkes. Sarah demonstrated that PwCs Citizen Pulse had shown a desire by many people to move to regional areas. She presented the case study of Lille in France where a fast train connection lifted investment and thenumber of jobs in the city.8'