Public transport in the Northern Rivers currently consists of a few buses that run infrequently and have very few passengers.
Friends of mine have had to move from the area when they can no longer drive a car.
This is surely unacceptable in this day and age. The lack of public transport has the greatest impact on students and the aged.
In order to rectify the situation, the following actions would improve the situation.
In Mullumbimby, a free mini-bus service should be established which would be a service for residents living within five kilometres of the town centre.
These should be provided with wheelchair access.
This would result in less demand for parking in the town centre.
In addition, the suspended railway between Mullumbimby and Byron Bay should be reopened and, if the patronage of this service was strong enough, the service should be extended to Lismore.
The latter extension would benefit those attending university and living in Mullumbimby and Byron Bay.
A survey of residents and shopowners indicated strong support for reopening the railway.
In addition, the railway would defer the need to duplicate Ewingsdale Road, which is becoming congested for longer periods of time and requires duplication now.
This would be extremely costly to do because the road has to be built on a swamp.
A private company is prepared to operate the service should this be necessary.
To maximise the success of this service, consideration should be given to subsidising the fares.
Constructing new railways in the region is too costly because of the hilly terrain and the dispersed nature of the towns and villages.
Therefore the bulk of the public transport would have to be provided by buses.
Mini-buses would be adequate for most services now.
These would need to be frequent enough and be scheduled in such a way that they minimised the journey time between towns and met the time demands of the users.
Chris Abraham, Mullumbimby
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