ARC Rescission Motion Re Rail Trail - Monday Extra-Ordinary Meeting of Armidale Regional Council.

You may remember that on 24th April 2024 Armidale Regional Council discussed a plan to use $5.4 M Bushfire grant to build a 9.3Km rail trail between Armidale Station to Dumaresq (the most expensive in Australia) but a majority of councillors moved a motion to seek further information about the cost of this project to the Council. This was because there has not been much transparency in the way the work on this project had been carried out including various applications to funding bodies, discussions with the dept of regional NW and TFNSW until then, and the information presented did not provide full details. Now the Mayor has listed a rescission motion to overturn the amendment. Cr. Dorothy Robinson has also listed a motion essentially asking the council to approve the timeline presented by Public Works for the rail trail project between Armidale and Ben Lomond (being a Councillor elected on the Greens ticket I can't understand why she is against restoration of train line allowing a shift of freight from trucks to rail?). She voted for the amendment on 24th. Rail Trail supporters are pulling every trick in the book to convince the Councillors on one hand and to mislead the community. For example, Maria Hitchcock, in her latest email from NEV 2030 Rail Trail Update says, "The Rail Romantics are pulling out every argument they can think of to stymie the project despite being officially informed by Barnaby Joyce and the Minister for Regional Transport and Roads, Hon. Jenny Aitchison that trains will never return to the Great Northern Line". How can Barnaby say this when he is not in the Government? Minister Jenny Aitchison did not say that "trains will never retirn". I challenge Maria to produce the letter from the minister.
Anyway, Maria's campaign is a side show. What the Councillors have to focus on is whether they should take a decision next Monday to rob Paul to help Peter? If the motions before the council to give the OK for the doomed rail trail are approved, it will not only allow the Council to remove the rail line. It will be the nail in the coffin for other projects planned by the community group (NERI) and businessman David Peters (Owner of a $40M Organic Food Manufacturing business willing to relocate to Llangothlin). Councillors have to carefully consider the impost on rate payers arising from the operation of rail trail -not the noises made by rail trail lobby group.
There is to be a 5% of the total 21M Governance cost ($1M over 30 yrs.). Another $1.8M to be spent as a co-Payment for a grant applied by ARC. Maintenance cost will be $6M over the 30-year lease period. Undertaking to maintain the rail line from Transport for NSW is a huge responsibility that comes with insurance, unknown costs (some believe the Dumaresq station site is contaminated with cadmium, a heavy metal which builds up in the body over time causing cancer. In the past, super Phosphate was delivered to farmers through this station). Councillors are rightly entitled to comprehensive information rather than rushing into a decision to shift costs from NSW government to the Council for a 30-year period.
Even the estimated visitor numbers are exaggerated. According to Halliburton report, to realise the visitor numbers the Council have to spend more money for marketing and promotion (how much will it be?). even then, it will take 5 years after completion of the project to realise the estimated numbers? Thus, the Rail Trail project has no immediate or short-term benefit for the LG area as claimed by rail trail lobby. It will be a trail to nowhere.
Finally, even if the rescission motion is approved on Monday, the current council will not be able to start the preliminary work for the rail trail construction. This is because according to council paper, once the minister prepares a regulation, it will be in the parliament for 20 weeks (5 months). For example, even if the Minister prepares and submits the regulation in July (Council has much work to do before this happens), by the time approval is given by Parliament it will be November. This means any work to start the design and construction of rail trail have to be undertaken by a new Council.
Thus, there is every reason to take time to study the potential costs of this proposal to the rate payers by the councillors because rate payers are already hurting from the 50% rate rise approved last year.   ARC should follow the Tenterfield model where angry bull trial that received over $4M grant from the government is to be built East-West rather than North -South.
This will allow the use of rail in the future to attract cyclists to the Town and the trail.
The best option for the Council to avoid further community division is to design and build a rail trail off formation (within the rail corridor without removing the rail tracks). It should ask Public Works for an estimate of costs. The $5.4 M will surely be enough to do so as under the current estimates the cost for 1 km for the rail trail is over $550,000!