Is it realistic to think that trains will ever get back on the tracks in the Byron Shire?
A majority of Byron Councillors certainly seem to think so.
Having already spent $330,000 on a study into the viability of this endeavour, five of the seven councilors who attended last week’s full council meeting voted to start the planning process for a service between Byron Bay and Mullumbimby.
‘The busiest major transport corridor in the country travels right through the middle of our Shire,’ independent councillor Basil Cameron said, in reference to the Pacific Highway.
‘You only have to look at Ewingsdale Rd to see that the wave of traffic from that corridor is already breaking over us.
‘Tinkering with local roads won’t fix that. We need an alternative to road travel. This is the motivation for building a rail link.’
In what Cr Cameron described as a move with ‘no direct budget implications’, councilors passed a motion incorporating the rail project into Council’s draft Integrated Transport Strategy.
Council will also prepare an economic and social business plan including the development of a governance framework to support the project.
It will also investigate Federal and State funding options, including ‘tourism, infrastructure, transport and climate change mitigation/adaption grants’.
The priority focus will be on funding vegetation removal within the rail corridor – something which a quick stroll down the rail line reveals is likely to be a sizeable task.
But not all councilors felt that pursuing the dream of reopening the rail line was a worthy endeavour.
‘This project has no budgetary implications? Please keep me on my chair,’ Labor councillor Paul Spooner said.
‘We need to look at the opportunity cost of pursuing this.
‘The area of land along the rail line could be used for affordable housing, market gardens, and of course a rail trail as our neighbouring councils have embraced.
‘If we continue down this path with no realistic prospect of funding the project we will be jumping into the rabbit hole.’
Mayor Simon Richardson replied that if someone had ‘asked Alice whether she was glad she jumped into the rabbit hole I imagine she would have said yes’.
‘Overwhelmingly the community want a reactivation of transport in that corridor,’ Cr Richardson said.
‘What we need to be very clear about is that we have a dysfunctional transport set up in this Shire.
‘We are the only place in the country that I know of where there’s a daily traffic queue on a major highway.
‘This is the one project that allows us to get a great social and environmental outcome from something that also benefits tourism.’
The motion was passed by five votes to two, with Cr Spooner and Cr Alan Hunter the two opponents.
Great stuff. Of course Paul Spooner and his Labor mates are going to blow a raspberry because it was a Labor Government who so facetiously shut down the rail service knowing full well it was supported across the region by locals who knew a rail service was a valuable transport option.
But while this intelligent idea is to be commended, there are dangerous people still lurking on the Regional Development Board. You know, the people who got turfed out or resigned from politics, but just can’t help themselves by continuing to fiddle about with local affairs with their cronies, networks and waning influence.
Every effort must be continued by local communities; particularly in the Richmond Valley area and the Tweed because the unenlightened have fallen for the rail trail hype and the threat to the corridor is real.
“We are the only place in the country that I know of where there’s a daily traffic queue on a major highway.”
I like Simon Richardson, but his verbal flourish with this reported statement is regrettable.
Highways all up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia (and in Perth) are subject to daily traffic. Mostly because infrastructure spending by the States has not matched up the population/immigration policies of the Feds (encouraged by big business).
The COVID19 post-survival recovery era is going to have a very different dynamic (fewer visitors and fewer migrants, & many here now will return home) the Council should be strapping itself in for a very different ride over the next 3 to 5 years of recovery.
At best, they might hope to get a train line funded as a public works project designed to reduce the region’s unemployment.
Highly unlikely given the empty cupboards of Sydney and Canberra.
Even if they were flush with money the economics of that would be very shakey with reduced visitation to the area.
Reduced visitation will lead to reduce business/employment in Byron and the entire surrounding area, and in time, reduced population.
Cr Spooner “‘The area of land along the rail line could be used for affordable housing, market gardens, and of course a rail trail as our neighbouring councils have embraced.”
Read ‘could be used for commercial, retail, pubs, tourist apartments, etc, in a multimillion property development bonanza’ from the Labour Party Councillor.
Bloomin’ fantastic ? Definitely something to look forward to
Three things I would like to say to the Toot toot — Puff puffers;-
1)The trains don’t start from where i am and most people are nor do they finish where I and most people want to go. i have to drive to the station and park and maybe pay. Wait forever for a train. Then at the other end i have to walk or taxi to where I want to go.Then I do it all again on the way home. I want to drive from where i am to where I want to go.I don’t want to lug my gear and shopping on and off a train It will save hours if I drive. How will Basil Cameron get from Federal to say Suffolk Park and return.? Could take all day.
2) Go behind the Post Office in Mullum one week day and see how 4-5 people catch the bus to Byron during the day. The school kids make good numbers for half an hour twice per day, Same if you go to Byron railway bus stop and check how few people catch the bus to Lismore/Bangalow. Anywhere between 0 and 10 passengers. Hardly anybody wants to go where the train goes. It doesn’t take them from their home and doesn’t deliver them to their destination. They don’t want the bus-why would they want a train as the bus stops more places than a train
3) I am a qualified Quantity Surveyor and I am supposed to be able to count, unlike Basil and the clan. The track has rotten sleepers and bridges. The repair cost is astronomical. It is likely to be multiples of the potential meagre income. I would guesstimate 500,000 to 1 in the first year
So please could all the Toot tooter and Puff puffers please give up this insanity. Secure the corridor for the public and give a cycle track like every other council in the world seems to be able to do with it’s old railway tracks except Byron Shire Council
Great news and I fully support the BSC in this endeavour. Mayor and Councillors do not be swayed by the naysayers.
When will the powers to be realise this rail link is a dead duck!!! The line does not follow any linking route that would encourage enough people for any time in the future to want to use it! Car is king regardless or not whether you think it should be, and will remain so for generations!
It’s disappointing that the majority of our councillors waste time on ideas such as the train when it will never be a viable and spend more of their time on factual projects in the shire. Residents want action on roads, and facilities.
Paul Biddy’s title is apt – Cameron’s train dreams have about them Alice’s Wonderland.
The staff report by Andrew Pearce, Traffic Engineer, Infrastructure Services to council provides a more realistic assessment. It advises: “Background research (undertaken for the Integrated Transport Management Strategy) suggests the Hi-Rail system when viewed in light of the whole transport network and in view of Byron Shires transport problems may not be the most strategically cost effective project for Council to prioritise, given the range of alternate transport options available for consideration at a significantly lower cost.
However, staff see the merits in beginning conversations with potential operators / community groups and organizations… Such an approach may help Council collaborate with entrepreneurial groups, start ups and not for profit organisations to identify efficient cost sharing ways to activate and trial transport options…
Such an approach reflects that undertaken with the Solar Train and could be proactively adopted again by Council. Rather than stipulating Mullumbimby to Byron Bay it could be left to the community groups to identify a realistic economic and social business plan that activates either Mullumbimby to Byron Bay, Bangalow to Byron Bay or even Mullumbimby to Bangalow… If and when this collaborative approach identifies a cost effective model this business case will help form robust evidence for State and Federal groups when seeking funding options.”
The Solar Train, unlike public transport but like other non essential recreation activities, has been suspended. We hope of course that will not be for long – it is a great little trip – but it is a tourist train that a small number of locals use, and if you read between the lines of Pearce’s assessment that is what any train on the Byron line is likely to be. While pursuing a tourist train might be an ok thing to do, unfortunately Byron Council has ignored what is happening elsewhere in the region where councils are actively pursuing a much more realistic re-purposing of the corridor, the Northern Rivers Rail Trail. While Council’s Byron Line study did propose a cycle and walking path, it did not outline the engineering issues of doing it beside the line, nor did it consider in its benefits the potential likely number of visitors (even though estimates were already available for stages one and two of the rail trail). That would appear to reflect the wish of Byron Council to dress its Byron Line as public transport.
The rail trail has been driven by just the sort of active community group suggested to council, and its assessment of stage two of the rail trail was largely crowd funded. Stage one, and part of stage two, now have government funding. It is a shame for our region Byron Shire has not taken a more a more realistic approach to re-purposing the corridor and considered the benefits of completing the Northern Rivers rail trail could bring.
if the council wants a railway, don’t worry about the track gauge or the NSW Government, ask the Queensland Government to extend the heavy rail at Southport to Lismore, and maybe Casino, this should also include Ballina, then the residents will have a direct connection to Brisbane and also the airport.
Hi Basil
If your mum won’t buy you a train set I will personally buy you one so you can play trains in your living room rather than wasting all our money. Maybe we can even organise for you to sit up front with the engineer on the Elements train, if you’re lucky you might even get to toot the horn
Totally
Out
Of
Touch
As an ex resident of country NE Victoria, I have had a long-time love affair with trains. When work took me to frequent meetings in Melbourne I could sit back and read a book and be at my destination an hour earlier than if I had driven through stressful peak-hour traffic. Capital city leisure attractions were available with the same convenience. When I now visit friends and family back there, a ten minute bus trip from Melbourne airport gives me several timetabled Vline services to get me back to the sticks. How I would love to have a similar service around Byron Shire, from Byron Bay to Coolangatta airport, and even better to Brisbane.
Public transport is also so much more sensible than sole occupant car rides. For all these reasons I used to be very supportive of TOOT. Following the debate, helpfully provided by The Echo, has made me think again however.
The train service I used, which followed the route of the old Hume Highway, connected what are still the major population centres of Albury/Wodonga, Wangaratta, Benalla, Seymour and, closer to Melbourne, areas that are now regular work commutes. It’s why it still exists. Conversely population explosion on the Eastern seaboard has followed the coast not inland. It now seems to me rather selfish to demand an exorbitantly expensive, frequently running train service to Brisbane – for the tennis centre or theatre visits – at the expense of a system that caters for the bulk of people to travel to and from the places they need to go.
How long has it been since this inland track was viable for more than a couple of XPT arrival and departure times to Byron anyway. If you’d ever taken the torturous trip long distance from Sydney or further south you’d know why. Can this really be regarded as public transport?
The vintage electric train service obviously provides a bit of an expensive trendy hoot and is great for getting the patrons of Elements into Byron Bay central without the need to brave Ewingsdale Road by car or to rub shoulders with the riff raff on a common bus. I doubt there is great enthusiasm though, on the part of that entity, to increase the losses by expanding any further (perhaps to the old station?) into tracks that will be much more costly to restore. Its novelty presence however has excited some locals, because it’s electric, into a dream of a replicated service all over the shire and beyond.
How will the new service being proposed in Basil’s NOM coordinate with this reasonably frequently running service and how happy are they about the proposal given their arrangements with the NSW government to use this section of track?
An additional comment on the assertion that: ‘ Overwhelmingly the community want a reactivation of transport in that corridor‘.
How has this conclusion been ascertained and is ‘want’ the same as sensible? Anyway since when has this Council shown much interest in what the community wants?
Remember Queensland shut down a railway from Brisbane to the Gold Coast and Tweed Heads in the 60s. Then spent hundreds of millions rebuilding it in the 90s, with more to come. Those who refuse to learn from history, are condemned to repeat it.
Milton’s response brings up the conspiracy theories around the rail trail, always spoken in hushed tones. The reality is the greatest threat to the corridor is leaving it unused. A motion was put at the 2017 State conference of NSW Farmers that the land along the disused New England rail corridor be handed over to adjacent farmers and NSW Farmers’ Sydney office told me shortly after they were working on that. The motion was however opposed by the Guyra branch, Armidale Regional Council is working towards developing the New England Rail Trail and nothing more has come of NSW Farmers attempt to get the land for its members.
And what is this rail trail hype – studies based on data that show the numbers of visitors and spending rail trails have brought to other regions? Someone did try to show the Kingaroy Kilkivan Rail Trail was not getting the projected use; they masked over the council counters to reduce the apparent number of users. You would have to be pretty desperate to show rail trail numbers are exaggerated, and well aware to that the trail was getting use, to break the law by vandalising council counters.
Whether for rail or trail, re-purposing the corridor for recreation and tourism for locals and visitors – with the side benefit of transport – is a valid way to protect it from being gifted or sold off. The funding of the rail trail in the Tweed and Richmond Valley shires shows a rail trail provides a more realistic opportunity to do that than a tourist rail, one that we know governments will fund. Developing a business case and design for a rail trail would also provide the opportunity to examine in detail the engineering issues around a trail beside rail option, and determine if indeed it is economically and technically feasible (I note ARCADIS already found it was not between Mullum and Billinudgel).
The business cases for stage two of the Northern Rivers Rail Trail and stage one of the New England Rail Trail were crowd funded. It will be interesting to see if the case for a rail service in Byron Shire can get the same level of support from the community.
Yeh time to reopen the line… It never should have been closed to begin with anyway.. Murwillumbah and Byron are definitely big enough to justify it..
Ask Newcastle City how cutting the rail went for them, business is leaving in droves. Get a rail line, it will pay big time later oh and get rid of the short sighted on your council there fate is already set.
While cars are king, global warming concerns are going to require changes. I see a mandatory elimination or reduction to one vehicle per household, requiring more public transport. Too many government leaders have oil, pavement, and auto companies supporting them. Eventually the will of the people will prevail.
It should be purelydesignedfortourism with steam nostalgia.People love retro rail , pay it off over 10years. See Gympie to Imbil QLD.
Build it and they will come . Kev Gold Coast .
Paul Gilchrist raised the closing of the original Gold Coast line by the Queensland government in the 1960s. He overlooks the fact that the new line was built on a completely different path with an alignment that supports modern railway speeds up to 160 kph and moves many thousands of people each day.
Like the Casino-Murwillumbah line the original Gold Coast line was a tortuous steam age alignment with many sections limited to 60 kph even when the line was in good condition. Queensland did the right thing closing the old line. It is a great pity it wasn’t retained for pedestrians and cyclists as it would have been a fantastic asset today,
The Arcadis report is suggesting services in Hi-rail buses running on an expensive yet minimally patched up line within Byron Shire at 60 kph. People are not going to get out of their cars to wait for a slow expensive bus to complete the last few kilometres into Byron.
Moreover, how can anyone think that connecting Byron to Mullumbimby (a town with a population of about 4000) is going to make the slightest difference to traffic on Ewingsdale Road?
Like many rail enthusiasts, Rudy Pipich urgently needs a reality check.The “will of the people” certainly doesn’t involve limiting households to a single car. Any party that went to an election with such a policy would not be forming government.
Former Labor MLC Eddie Obeid is out of gaol (at the moment-more charges pending) and he’s a genius at co-opting publicly owned assets for massive private gain, so it would be a doddle for him to utilise the rail corridor land for ‘commercial, retail, pubs, apartments etc in a multi million property bonanza’. He could even do it from gaol if necessary.
Rudy Pipich The people have expressed their will buy buying their own car. That is particularly so in Byron Shire whose relative young population has very high rates of car ownership and use, and low rates of public transport use, even compared with other LGAs in the region. It cannot be suggested this is because of the lack of a train. There are already bus services between the centres along the corridor. It is commendable that Mr Pipich is concerned about emissions, but with EV buses in use now in Australia that can run 450km on a charge of renewable poser you do not need a train to make zero emission travel available to everyone
The one transport blessing is that Byron Shire has high rates of cycling – reflecting ts demographics even higher than the relatively high rates in Ballina – and compared with other areas in Australia Byron and Ballina have much larger numbers of high school kids who ride to school.
Went to visit Byron Bay on our way back from Queensland last December, WORST DECISION we made, stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for hours getting from the highway only to arrive in narrow streets, non caravan friendly out of date village, full of rude people and rip off parking meters with no free parking to be found, will never return and advise others not worth the effort to visit, by car, rail, pushbike or any other means. It does not matter if rail trail or rail line wins the place is a waste of time.
Building a rail trail is a bad idea.Not that many people will use it.What about hot weather days, you won’t see people going for a ride in the hot summers. A rail trail might work maybe in Byron due to tourists and locals but I think if the Solar train ever gets to Mullumbimby it would be more worthwhile so people might go to byron for the beach or shops or work and save having to park in Byron which is often nightmare ! So not I don’t think they should be turned into a rail trail. The council can’t sell off the land as it requires an act of parliament to close a line. The line won’t return to normal services but at least if the Byron Bay solar train can one day get to Mullumbimby it is a start.