The funding application process for the Northern Rivers Rail Trail (NRRT) within our Byron Shire has seen significant hold-ups, owing to a lack of simplicity in what the funding is requested for.
Does Byron Shire Council (BSC) want its NRRT between Mullum and Byron to be on formation, or beside it?
‘On formation’, it would be on the existing 131-year-old rail line.
‘Off formation’ is an entirely additional design, construction and environmental complication, and a wildly expensive request that unnecessarily thwarts any chance of an expedited and successful outcome.
The vast majority of people in Byron Shire have recognised this needless complication, and its resultant obstruction in obtaining their NRRT within their lifetimes.
To progress past this obstruction must require our largely ‘progressive’ Council to gain urgent clarification within itself, and then in turn, with the state and federal funding departments.
We, the people of Byron Shire, wish BSC to urgently address this last vestige of obstruction towards gaining the greatest people-powered transformational infrastructure of our time.
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. 
