A few points for your readers to ponder on the bus, train and rail trail issue.
The train line will need to be a twin track system to allow trains to run in both directions regularly and to provide a viable transport thru our region. This will require widening and raising the roof of the historic tunnels wrecking their heritage factor forever; a rail trail will allow locals and tourists to see this engineering feat from the 1880s.
The radius curves of the old corridor will fix us with a VST (Very Slow Train) forever, the same as has happened in north Qld on the Brisbane to Cairns system.
The old corridor is not the growth corridor for population: it has moved to the coastal stretch from Kingscliff to Pottsville, Brunswick Heads to Ballina and Alstonville to Goonellabah. Do we spend billions of dollars on a train that doesn’t supply public transport to this growth corridor?
If the old train corridor is returned to trains then housing suburbs will sprout along it: it will look like the sea of houses along the Robina to Brisbane train line.
Buses will still be required to deliver you to the train stations if you live more than 800 metres away (double handling and time consuming). Little villages of Billinudgel, Stokers Siding, Mooball etc will be again be shaken by trains every 30 minutes and through the early hours of the morning (trains will also cater for the late night revellers).
Why not use our energy to start with a regular bus service that will pick you up closer to your home and drop you closer to your destination?
The drinkers would benefit from the old train corridor as every town has a pub within 100 metres! We could be become Drinkers Paradise in competition with Surfers Paradise!
Take these points, ponder and ask do we really want a 1880s-designed train corridor or a train system to take us into the next century? Grab buses also as they have approx the same end-of-life carbon output as trains.
Geoff Bensley, Byron Bay
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