Thursday 9 August 2018, 5:00 p.m.: Meeting with approximately 40 residents of Mitchell Park & Tonsley at Tonsley Railway Station, Lynton Avenue, Mitchell Park by Hon Stephan Knoll, Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning.
Minister Knoll had the following words to say to residents after explaining that 50:50 funding had been put on the table by Federal and State Governments:
We are still in a design phase for that project and there are a couple of technical issues that are being worked through, especially at the university end, still talking to them about what that terminus is going to look like across there.
We are in the middle of the right time to be dealing with the issue in relation to this station and any suggestion out there that somehow a boat has been missed is completely wrong. We’re still in that design phase and still finalising when the work is actually going to be completed and what it looks like.
As part of that we need to actually raise up this track, to raise up high enough to get over the road and that means that this station where it currently sits becomes extremely difficult to recreate on this same spot. I’m not a hundred percent sure how high it needs to go but it’s going to be raised up and quite clearly the existing station’s not going to be able to stay as it is. We’re going to need to upgrade it in some capacity. So once we accept that that’s something that needs to happen, there are a number of options on the table about how to fix it; and certainly I think the option that was shown before the election was just to get rid of the station; and essentially I think it’s about 600 metres that way [pointing towards FMC / Bedford Park] is where the new terminus would be across a pretty major road and the station this way [pointing towards Clovelly Park] is about, is that 500?
Residents make suggestions of 900 m to 1 km and one corrects him: “Exactly one kilometre away”
Stephan Knoll (SK): The existing Clovelly Station is one k from here but sorry, but the, the proposed Clovelly Station is 500 metres from here.
Resident 1: 500 m is the corner of Mitsubishi
SK: Okay, which is about actually where I thought it would be.
Resident 2: And you can confirm if that is the case?
SK: Well, that is, that is the design as it sits at the moment. So essentially the commitment we made before the election was taking a look at what’s the best solution for fixing this problem; that is, trying to make sure that the people of the local area have access to be able to get to the station within reasonable walking distance and for those for which travel ling further distances by foot is an issue. That’s something we definitely need to take into account.
So. two things are going to happen now in the course of the rest of the year. The first of those is a consultation piece with the community and the department’s working on what that’s going to look like at the moment but I dare say much like what you’ve seen today , the ability to get the community together to have their say, to provide that feedback to the department although I know a number of people I assumed that would be here have written and I’ve written letters back in relation to this; very vague bland letters at this stage but that’s because again no final decisions have been made.
There are a number of, of options on the table and . I don’t want to be specific here because I don’t want anyone to walk away thinking that we’ve presupposed any outcome but certainly the movement of the station is one option. Engineers will tell me that they can build anything so if we say, even if this was raised up, “Can you build a station on top?” The answer is that we can build anything, it just depends on how many tens of millions of dollars you want to spend and is that actually going to provide the best outcome, for instance, for the people that live here in terms of line of sight and amenity; is that the right option?
But there are other options that we’re exploring because at the same time that this is all happening, we’re actually looking at how we change the way that our public transport network works. At the moment, basically what happens is that any mode of transport that you get on, tram, train or bus, all of it drives you to Adelaide and that is not of itself that efficient. One of the ideas that we’re exploring at the moment is whether or not, instead of having 10 thousand buses come in and out of Adelaide every day, whether or not it would be better to actually better utilise train lines by getting buses to actually capture people from where they live and drop them off to where the station is and if that’s something that we can look at. In this context it might mean that it actually doesn’t matter where the station is, that it could be an opportunity for you to have a bus service that’s very close to where you live in this area and have it drop you off to the train station so if that train station is 200 m further away, that negates that need to have to physically travel that extra distance.
Resident 3 [interjection]: Except for those of us who can’t travel safely in buses. I’ve met a gentleman who has spinal issues and the buses jolt him so much he could find himself paralysed if it gets too much of a jolt so he will catch a train because he can carefully walk here and then have a smooth ride. I can’t go on buses because I can’t secure my (wheel)chair. I’ve nearly been tipped out on a bus because of their motion or the journey is just so long I can’t hold on because I’m not secure.
SK: What we’re looking at is extremely short journeys.
Resident 3: Even in a taxi cab with a short journey, I’m bolted to the floor in regular vehicular traffic.
Resident 2: Get a self-drive car. They have one at Mitsubishi.
Resident 3: I’ve been on it and again it was treacherous. I had to hold on because it stops suddenly.
SK: Anyway this feedback is exactly what we want to hear. I mean, this is about trying to find a solution to it.
Resident 4: And even the people that don’t want to go to the city. It’s their short journey. That’s what we’re after – our short journey that works for us. We don’t need to go to the city all the time. Not everyone’s going to Adelaide.
SK: Sure, but my point is obviously the people that are getting on this train are heading somewhere along this train line.
Resident 4: But not to use two forms of public transport to get to where we need to on our short journey.
Resident 3: Especially if you’ve got a disability. Transfers.
SK: I, I understand but I’m saying we need to look at all of those options to see what is the best available. Can I tell you in relation to public transport there’s always going to be trade-offs . It’s going to work better for some people and not for others. The thing we have in mind is try to make the system work for the most amount of people in the most amount of situations and while we’re taking quite a long term view of this, the changes that we’re looking to make in the public transport space is a piece of work and a conversation we’re going to have over the next 12 months. It isn’t going to happen quickly but we want everyone’s opinion on board. At the end of the day, I think no matter what solution we provide in this case there are going to be some people that aren’t happy.
Resident 5: Stephan, the other issue we have is I live one house off Bradley Grove. Now, I used to take the bus to work –the W90. 90 per cent of them are crap buses. They don’t allow for wheelchair access at all whatsoever or impaired people that can actually get up the steps in there and I love my public transport, believe me.
SK: So in relation to DDA compliance buses, we’re somewhere now about 91-92 per cent of buses. That’s taken quite a bit of time and it’s still… I think we’re a couple of years away from a hundred per cent of them being DDA compliant so that happens as we turn them over so it’s really those last few old ones that have been around for twenty years as we knock them off and put the news ones on but that’ll happen, so, over the next couple of years that’ll be solved but we may not be talking about the existing …it may not be an existing bus. It may be something smaller, maybe something more accessible.
Resident 5: Yeah but that’s taking a longer time for people where people are taking the train as well.
Resident 6: When they was gonna close this, they were gonna put a fence over and we couldn’t even get to Bradley (Grove/existing bus route).. we live over there [pointing to Birch Cr], we’ve been stopped, we can’t even get to the bus. We’ve got to take major buses on Sturt and South Rd which don’t even…
SK: [interjecting] sure, but what we’re, what we might be talking about is not catching an existing bus service. This may be something that actually services your local area. That actually, potentially comes to pick you up from …
Resident 7: At the moment they can’t in Tonsley.
[Resident 7 could be alluding to the difficulty in accessing transport due to the Darlington North-South corridor roadworks and/or the fact that Tonsley residents have been having many problems related to the name change of the suburb from Clovelly Park to Tonsley in which the geographical name has not been updated in GPS addressing systems which means their streets do not show up; e.g. emergency services, taxis and fast food deliveries cannot find their addresses.]
Member for Elder, Carolyn Power (nee Habib): threw open the meeting for residents to raise their concerns.
Resident 8: [about the Flinders Link idea in general]: it’s good that there’s actually one transport that goes right up to the health precinct because there’s no bus goes from here to Flinders at the moment. You’d have to go to Marion then come back.
Resident 9: Wouldn’t it be overall cheaper to add stations rather than taking them away or moving them?
SK: That’s a very very good question and the real difficulty with the train station, it’s a little bit of a ‘Yes, Minister’ comment. Trains run most efficiently when there are fewer stations so the people that get on the train earlier want a quicker journey. The less stops that it stops on, the better it goes so there’s a real balance with having enough stations to help people get on and off but not too many stations that the journey is so slow that the people at the far end of the track don’t want to use it; and it is quite a balance but that could be again where we get to that if there’s a solution for instance that allows for encouraging more people to use the service. If, for instance, you had less stations but you got driven to the station, you’d actually provide a quicker service for everybody that’s on it but that’s , again, that’s only one option that’s being looked at.
The Member for Elder then closed the formal part of the meeting and there were opportunities for residents to informally discuss their concerns with her and her staff.
A noteable absence from the meeting was our local government representative for Warriparinga Ward at the City of Marion, Cr Raelene Telfer who forwarded her apologies 4 days after the meeting.
I personally presented the Minister with copies of the original petition together with a stack of extra signatures that had been contributed since April. (The current tally of online and paper signatures combined is 2135.) People at the meeting who had not yet signed the petition added their signatures. I will forward their signatures to the Minister also.
On Thursday evening, I was contacted by ABC Radio News who was planning to contact the Member for Elder for comment as well. Tonsley Railway Station was featured in the radio news bulletins on Friday 10 August 2018 at 6:30 a.m. and 7:45 a.m. on ABC Adelaide 891 AM.
More discussion about the meeting and transcripts of the news bulletins can be found on Facebook in the “Save Tonsley Friends” group which is moderated by Tonsley residents:
NEXT STEPS:
Provide as much FEEDBACK as possible to as many REPRESENTATIVES as possible at Federal, State and local levels, participate in the Save Tonsley Station online forum on Facebook, leave comments and opinions here or email savetonsleystation@gmail.com ;
ADELAIDE METRO advises to use the ‘RATE MY RIDE’ feedback service to express the importance of the Tonsley rail line and Tonsley Railway Station because they record all the feedback and keep statistics;
SIGN this petition if you haven’t already and JOIN the Tonsley Station Friends Facebook page
KEEP IN TOUCH with the Minister’s Office and the Department of Transport regarding the promised follow-up meeting where more detail can be discussed.
SPREAD THE WORD: write letters to the editor and other news media, and share this petition and the Tonsley Station Friends Facebook group in your social networks
CONTACTS
Ms Nicolle Flint, Federal Member for Boothby: 08 8374 0511 Level 1, 724 Marion Road, Marion SA 5043 Email: nicolle.flint.mp@aph.gov.au; Web: nicolleflint.com ; Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NicolleFlintLiberal/
Ms Carolyn Power (née Habib), State Member for Elder: Unit 2/212 Belair Road, HAWTHORN SA 5062 PO Box 316, Belair Road, HAWTHORN SA 5062; phone: 08 8374 1939; email: elder@parliament.sa.gov.au; Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Carolyn4Elder/
Hon Stephan Knoll MP, Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning: level 12, 136 North Terrace, ADELAIDE SA 5000; phone: 08 7109 8430; email: ministerknoll@sa.gov.au
Adelaide Metro Rate my Ride option available from home page: https://www.adelaidemetro.com.au/; infoline: 1300 311 108.
Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, Flinders Link Community Engagement: 1300 928 345; email dpti.flinderslink@sa.gov.au; web: www.infrastructure.sa.gov.au/major_projects/flinders_link
City of Marion Warriparinga Ward Councillors: PO Box 21, Oaklands Park SA 5046, http://www.marion.sa.gov.au
Cr Raelene Telfer, email: raelene.telfer@marion.sa.gov.au; phone: 08 7420 6508; mobile: 0466 530 670.
Cr Luke Hutchinson, email: luke.hutchinson@marion.sa.gov.au; phone: 08 7420 6482; mobile: 0401 776 529.
“Save Tonsley Station” Petition (Main Page), Change.org (search for “Save Tonsley Station”): https://www.change.org/p/sa-minister-for-transport-save-tonsley-station-save-our-access-to-public-transport; email: savetonsleystation@gmail.com
“Tonsley Station Friends” Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/438999896555463/
ABC Radio Adelaide: 08 8343 4000; contact form: http://www.abc.net.au/radio/adelaide/contact-us/
FiveAA On Air: 08 8223 0000; SMS: 0448 08 1395; reception: 08 8419 1395; email onair@fiveaa.com.au;