Dear all,
Once again, thank you for signing the petition and also for sharing with others. With your support, we are close to 3500 signatures. Not a bad outcome in a couple of weeks.
It is time that we all write to the Minister for Regional NSW, Hon.Tara Moriarty and how bad is the situation going to be if she approves the request by Armidale and Glen Innes Councils to remove our rail line north of Armidale and Build a bike rail in the rail corridor?
Some of the concerns that you may point out include:
- re-purposing of the bushfire grants originally allocated by the government to councils in order to build much shorter rail trail sections. It is not value for money.
2. We don't know how many visitors will come and how much income to be generated by the shorter versions of the rail trails e.g. 9kms in ARC plan and 22kms in GISC plan? The business cases were prepared by the councils for longer versions of rail trail .
3. Councils have failed to secure extra funding needed to complete the full length of rail trail. No guarantee that they will be success full in securing additional funds even if the shorter sections are built.
4. Maintenance costs will be an additional burden on the rate payers.
5. Already there are many bike trails in both LG areas. They don' show thousands of cyclists coming to the region.
6. Adverse impact of approving shorter sections of the rail trail on other proposals to use the rail corridor for trains. e.g. NERI to run heritage trains, David Peters,Organic industry owner to operate freight trains.
7 Lack of sufficient community consultation by councils especially with land owners along the line. Land owners have significant concerns in terms of bio security and other risks from a rail trail
8. We need better public transport in areas north of Armidale including a restored train service. Our submissions to the council to this effect have been ignored.
Contact address and the number of the minister is given below.
Ministerial Office
The Hon. Tara Moriarty, MLC
52 Martin Place
SYDNEY NSW 2000
P 02 7225 6120
You can use the following link to send a message via the online form as well:
https://www.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government/ministers/minister-for-agriculture-regional-nsw-western-nsw