Given the constant complaints from residents in The Echo about traffic, road conditions, roadworks and lack of parking in Byron Shire, it’s time residents and Council demanded the state government reinstate commuter train services on the multi-billion-dollar train line and for the rail connection to the Qld system at Coolangatta, as promised, be built.
The huge environmental, social and economic cost of forcing millions of tourists to arrive in Byron by road is no longer acceptable. Research shows the majority of this traffic comes over the border from Qld and the airports.
The cost of upgrading and maintaining roads far outweighs the cost of running trains.
For example: the restoration of the train line in Byron to run a train costs $660,000 per kilometre.
The one-kilometre Byron Bypass cost $24m. The upgrade of a very small section of Mullumbimby Road is costing $5m, as well as the cost and inconvenience for residents caused by the road closure for several months.
With over two million visitors to Byron per year, which is over 55 times the permanent population, it’s unfair and unsustainable to expect 16,000 ratepayers to bear the cost of roadworks, and other infrastructure, for two million tourists.
Then be expected to pay for parking in our towns or at the beach! It’s not 36,000 Byron residents causing parking problems and traffic chaos.
Despite the outrage against the 2004 rail closure, and 30,000 names on petitions for rail services sent to the NSW parliament, state politicians continue to ignore the need for rail services to provide public transport for locals and millions of visitors, and reconnect our communities once again.
They prefer to spend as much public money destroying the rail line for a bike track, $600,000 per kilometre, as it would cost to get trains running. The bike track could be built beside the line.
The bike track is not public transport – it’s not reducing traffic, it’s creating more. People are being injured and reporting feeling unsafe due to the bad behaviour of those using electric bikes.
Publicly-subsidised local bus services are usually empty as they are not accessible for anyone with mobility problems, prams or bicycles. They take twice as long to travel between towns as the train did. Much longer when traffic into Byron is at crawling pace. Four train carriages carry as many people as eight buses.
Enough is enough. When there’s a train station in the centre, or close to the centre of our towns, it’s time to stop wasting our money creating more traffic and parking chaos in our once-idyllic towns and get the trains running so visitors can leave their gas guzzlers at home and arrive in a more sustainable, cost-effective way.
Then our towns will be more pleasant places for locals and visitors once again.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
