Tweed Shire Council has announced a collaboration with volunteer organisation Cycling Without Age as part of celebrations to mark the first anniversary of the opening of the popular Northern Rivers Rail Trail.
More than 140,000 people have used the 24 km Tweed section of the Rail Trail since its opening on 1 March 2023 – establishing it as one of the most popular visitor attractions in the Northern Rivers region.
To mark the first anniversary, Tweed Council has announced its collaboration with Cycling Without Age, a not-for-profit charity that connects the elderly and people with a disability with the outdoors, by offering free rides on trishaw e-bikes, piloted by trained volunteer cyclists.
The collaboration will see the establishment of a permanent chapter of Cycling Without Age to operate on the Rail Trail out of Burringbar. Volunteers are now invited to join this initiative, to help bring the joy of Cycling Without Age to the community.
The announcement comes just weeks before the opening of the second stage of the NRRT – the 13.4 km section from Bentley to Casino which is managed and maintained by Richmond Valley Council. The Casino section is due to officially open on 23-24 March 2024.
Positive impact
Mayor of Tweed Shire Chris Cherry said residents and visitors had overwhelmingly embraced the Rail Trail since opening 12 months ago, creating a positive impact on tourism, community wellbeing and economic growth in the Tweed.
‘At the outset of this project, Council strongly believed the Rail Trail would prove to be a popular drawcard for the Tweed but its overwhelming popularity has well and truly exceeded our expectations,’ said Cr Cherry.
‘The Rail Trail provides an opportunity to reconnect with nature, breathe in fresh air and soak in the stunning beauty of the Tweed alongside the charming village life at our seven rest stops – we are so proud of what we have achieved.
‘It is important we continue to do what we can to ensure as many people as possible – no matter their age or ability – can access the Rail Trail and we are so pleased to announce our collaboration with Cycling Without Age today,’ she said.
‘It’s a wonderful addition to the Rail Trail experience – we can’t wait until the service is up and running in the next few months.’
Journey of reconnection
Cycling Without Age Community Captain Wayne Sticher said he was excited to see the Burringbar Chapter of the volunteer organisation one step closer to opening.
‘We’re excited to introduce Cycling Without Age to the Northern Rivers Rail Trail,’ Mr Sticher said.
‘What a thrill to begin a journey of reconnection with community and the environment for our seniors and people with reduced mobility. This initiative brings substantial value to the community, enriching the experiences of both participants and volunteers alike.’
The organisation is now calling for anyone interested in volunteering with the group to come forward, with training and equipment provided.
‘We’ve already had a great response with more than 20 volunteers signing up to help establish the Burringbar chapter on the Rail Trail but we would love to hear from more people interested in joining us,’ he said.
Corporate sponsorship to support the group to purchase trishaws is also being sought.
The group plans to operate from the Burringbar stop on the Rail Trail on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9am to 12.30pm, with operations to begin in coming months. Until then, training is already underway to ensure volunteer riders are ready to go at opening.
Find out more about Cycling Without Age Burringbar on their Facebook page.
Richmond Valley Council will officially open the second section of the NRRT later this month. The first stage of the Lismore section, from Eltham to Bentley, is expected to open by the end of this year.
When completed, the Rail Trail will eventually be 132 km in length, traversing from Casino through Byron, Lismore, and connecting with the Tweed. For more information, visit northernriversrailtrail.com.au.
Over 140,000 journeys on our Rail Trail, equates to over one and a quarter times a fully packed Melbourne Cricket Ground of happy users.
That’s truly remarkable and beyond optimists’ expectations.
And all age groups can enjoy the many previously hidden vistas along the easily traversed old rail gradients.
Richmond Valley Shire will, on the 23rd March, be opening its section of the Northern Rivers Rail Trail, from Casino to Bentley.
So much better than having the tracks deteriorating away and the countryside un accessed and appreciated because a minority lobby group would rather stand in the way than abandon their delusional demands.
140,000 people used the one daily train service which did not service local public transport needs, especially for seniors and those with reduced mobility, and may not be able to drive. Young people have been complaining about the difficulties of getting to education faciltites. Many could get the train to Lismore/Tweed them cycle to UNI.
All public education and health facilties should be built close to the train line and be easily accessed by ALL..
Most who used the train paid full price. Many more will use a commuter service on the line connected to Coolangatta airport and on to Brisbane. Not many people have been using the trail in the rain and heat. Airconditioned trains run regardless of heat, rain, hail or shine.
As the above photo shows there’s plenty of room on the rail corridor for trains AND trail. The rail trail is NOT reducing traffic-it’s creating more-mostly monster gas guzzlers. It will be a much better outcome for all-economically, socially and environmentally- when people-with or without bicycles- are able to travel to the area by train
No need to destroy a billion dollar train line in one of the fastest growing regions in the country with 5.2 million visitors to the area creating traffic chaos in our once idyllic towns. As we’ve seen with the debacle of the Glebe Interchange in Sydney, building more roads will cost us all billions to create more traffic chaos and more carbon emissions.
I was going to say how i hoped this would put a bit of money back into the system but it says on cycling without age website that passengers must not be charged for rides so tweed shire ratepayers are stuck with the damn upkeep costs of this trail!!!
Yes they will be paying for the upkeep Chris. Don’t forget building this trail cost US ALL $600,000 per kilometer for no return on investment, when repairing the line in Byron for trains-which people pay to use-cost $660,000 per kilometre. The talk of businesses making a fortune from cyclists has not eventuated. Not much profit-or jobs- from a few drinks, ice creams and lunches. We’re told that a lot of locals prefer not to have lunch next to sweaty cyclists after they’ve ridden the trail.
This trail is just a very expensive smokescreen to allow successive state governments to destroy billions of $ of public transport infrastructure rather than provide the commuter train services, and the connection to the Qld rail system, we were promised.
This is our money they’re spending on ‘cycling tourism” while ignoring the people signing petitions and attending rallies calling for a sustainable public transport system to reduce emissions and get the gas guzzlers out of our towns. THEY MUST BE HELD TO ACCOUNT!
Anyone who (unlike Louise) has visited the trail can see it is immensely popular and everyone on it is more than happy to have had our money spent on it. Local businesses are selling a lot more than ‘a few drinks, ice creams and lunches’ and are definitely benefiting from the trail. Louise’s denials and her lame claim of what has been ‘told’ are nothing but baseless rail advocate propaganda like pretty much everything they have ever claimed.
Professional transport consultants have repeatedly found that there is no evidence returning rail services would be sustainable or lead to a reduction in emissions. It could only ever be useful to a tiny fraction of the population that lived near and needed to travel to places close to the railway at times when services were available. Trains carrying small numbers of passengers are among the least efficient of all forms of transport.
Nobody is going to pay the millions upon millions required to resurrect the old railway and lose millions more every year operating services. Even the eternal optimist dreamers at Northern Rivers Rail LTD are saying that it would cost $132 million to restore the railway between Lismore and Yelgun. (The real figure would be several times this of course.) There is no railway to Tweed and there isn’t going to be one in the foreseeable future. Any new railway, should it ever be built, would not follow the old corridor but be built on an alignment that supported trains at 200 kph, not the 60 kph limit that was on much of the old line due to a multitude of tight curves.
Interest in the return of rail is the obsession a tiny number of noisy people with an incredibly inflated sense of entitlement to demand billions of dollars in public funds be spent indulging them in luxury public transport. Their rallies are lucky to attract ten people, all of them just the same core group.
It would be easy to substantiate if businesses are doing well from cyclists and employing more people-the thousands in the community who have been fighting for, and been promised, the return of regular commuter rail services-all well documented-but are now footing the bill for expensive, free ‘cycling tourism’- have a right to know what return they’re getting on their forced investment. It’s irrelevant where the money comes from for the bike track-local, state, or federal, it’s all taxpayers’ or ratepayers’ money
People need to stop being dishonest. Suburban commuter trains-as promised- DO NOT travel at 200ks and hour, nor do they need to. Only ONE dodgy studly-since well and truly discredited- claimed it would cost as much to restore the line as it cost to build the Alice Springs to Darwin rail line. Others, including the 2004 Legislative Council Report said trains could, and should, be returned to the line. Most estimates for repairs match the cost of repairing the line in Byron for trains.
The line curves to get to most major population centres where people want to go, but which the highway by-passes. The old slow XPT still did the trip from Lismore to Mullum faster than can be driven with no difficulties parking on arrival.
THe bottom line is intelligent people lnow that train services are much more economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable than spending billions on more roads to fill our towns with more bloody great gas guzzlers, while increasing emissions and climate disasters.
Since 2005 emissions from transport have gone up 22%. Not that that will be of any concern to those who insist on rediculous amounts of public money be spent on their free ‘cycling tourism’ instead of accessible public transport for the benefit of all-including those with disabilites and mobility difficulties unable to drive or use buses, AND cyclists.
The increase in business is indeed easy to substantiate. There are multiple businesses operating at and around the Muwillumbah station that didn’t even exist prior to the trail. The station leases are believed to amount to a six figure income for the trail so they are clearly making substantial income.
There are two bike shops in Mooball. The Moomoo cafe and the Mooball Hotel almost perpetually have cyclists enjoying food and drinks day and night, amounting to thousands of dollars in increased turnover. Hosanna Farmstay at Stokers Siding is a hive of activity with hundreds of trail users coming in.
Even the Palliative Care Op Shop in Murwillumbah has reported an increase in custom. There are cyclists evident throughout Murwillumbah. I pass several cyclists every day including this morning a group of about ten riding out towards Bray Park.
Take a look at this NBN News story where two Burringbar businesses tell how their turnover has greatly increased with the trail. Yes indeed, people do need to stop being dishonest.
https://www.nbnnews.com.au/2024/03/04/tweed-rail-trail-proves-highly-successful/
The old railway line does not connect major population centres. It doesn’t go anywhere near Ballina or Tweed Heads. It doesn’t provide an alternative to the busiest roads in the region, the Bruxner Highway between Lismore and Ballina, and the Pacific Motorway. It connects a few small towns that have nothing like the populations required to justify the incredible expense of providing a mass transit system.
The railway curves following the river valleys and skirting around hills because trains cannot climb hills and the railway was built at a time when major earth works were prohibitively expensive. At the time, trains were the only means of transport that exceeded the speed of a galloping horse, so tight curves with design speeds of 60 kph were considered fast. The ‘slow old XPT’ was not slow in itself. No matter how powerful, trains must still negotiate curves at the design speed. Putting a new train on the old railway would not make for faster services which is one of the many reasons the government would not reinstate the old track and why the price tag for the reconstruction was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Indeed ‘suburban commuter trains’ don’t run at 200 kph but a railway connecting distantly separated towns is not providing suburban commuter services. Suburban trains in metropolitan areas easily compete with city traffic but not with high speed roads between cities.
Even a very good rail service would not make much difference to road traffic, so the money still needs to be spent making the roads safe for everyone. This fact is evident on the Gold Coast Highway which carries huge amounts of traffic despite running parallel to a railway where trains can travel at 140 kph.
No government is going to squander a fortune providing rail services for a tiny minority who happen to live near and need to travel to places near a railway that was designed for the needs of the nineteenth century. It would be political suicide to shift money from the roads that almost everyone wants upgraded to repairing a derelict railway that would serve the very few. Trains that don’t connect where large numbers of people live to where they need to travel do not provide economical or environmentally superior alternatives to road transport.
There isn’t a promise to reinstate trains. A decade has passed since the future of the line was discussed in parliament and the decision finalised. There is now a promise to complete the rail trail. All the councils involved are onboard with that plan and construction is continuing with forty percent of the trail expected to have been completed by the end of this year.
Rail enthusiasts need to accept that the railway has well and truly gone and won’t be coming back.
The trail has been built to a very high standard to maximise the accessibility for everyone and minimise the maintenance costs. It is a credit to the designers and builders that it can be accessible to this equipment that provides so much happiness to people with limited capacities. Only the most miserable of critics would lament that they are able to freely enjoy it.
The State government has provided $200,000 per year over three years to pay for operation and maintenance of the trail until the project has its own maintenance funding arrangements in place. The Murwillumbah Station has been leased to four separate entities for a total income believed to be well into six figures. Murwillumbah Cycles paid rent on the largest part of the station for two years before the trail was opened. Businesses operating on the trail are also contributing through the purchases of licenses.
The Tweed Valley Rail Trail is among the most popular public amenities in the shire and costs far less maintain than many other facilities. Tweed ratepayers contribute $3 million annually to operate the swimming pools (in addition to the entry fees charged). I’ve been a Tweed ratepayer for more than forty years and not even once used the pool but I’m not complaining.
We pay a million annually for the Margaret Ollie Art Gallery and another million for the museums. It’s another few million for sporting fields and nine million for parks and gardens. Would you like payment facilities to be installed at the entry of the parks and gardens so children can’t freeload on your rates?
The photo with the purported ‘plenty of room on the rail corridor’ is a small section near Murwillumbah station. There are a few places like this but there are also large sections where the entire width of the corridor is consumed with cuttings or embankments and it would be literally impossible to make extra room for a trail. This is obvious to anyone who has used the trail. Louise really should stop commenting on something she has never even seen.
Moreover, a trail built anywhere other than on the formation would never meet the accessibility goals, vastly limiting the range of people who could use the trail, especially children and people with disabilities. And it absolutely could not have been done, even if the budget were several times what was available and maintenance cost would have become sky high.
I drive past the Murwillumbah station every day. The carpark is filled mostly with ordinary sedans, not ‘mostly monster gas guzzlers’ as claimed by Louise who has never even seen the trail. Many people ride their bike or walk to the trail.
We’ve already wasted years on this . Mullum to Crabbes Creek , Mullum to Byron NOW! Or at least before I die of old age.
Just need to build lots of high rise all along the line so people have easy access to the trail and lots of housing for everyone twenty story highrise would be perfect fit for the rail trail
Facts! Are not things the trainiacs seem little concerned about.
Byron Shire Council and Councillors please, post something, a little update in the local press about how you lot are getting down to business creating the Byon Shire Rail Trail.
Facts! Are things the trainiacs seem little concerned about. (Curse autocorrect!)
We have every regard for the facts! the facts being that these trails are nothing but a very elaborate land grab!!.
Land grab? What rubbish! Rail advocates continue to drag out the same old myths that no intelligent person believes any more. It is this kind of lie that has destroyed any lingering vestiges of their credibility.
The latest sections of the trail do not involve a change of ownership and are leased as a trail for thirty years, remaining perpetually as a publicly owned asset. The ownership of Richmond Valley and Tweed sections has been passed to the respective local governments with specific conditions that they cannot dispose of it other than to another public entity.
Either way, the Minister for Transport can resume any part of the corridor at any time for any transport related purpose with the stroke of a pen.
Grabbed from public ownership to go to … public ownership!