Train services need improving

At a Neighbourhood Forum 3 Meeting held 20th January at Thirroul, a call was made for every second fast train in morning and evening peak hours to stop at Austinmer and/or Bulli. This would be to resolve a chronic over-parking situation at Thirroul caused by the 2013 timetable. The meeting also called for more trains, including one from Central to Wollongong at about 3 pm on weekdays. 

During weekday off peak times, there is a Newcastle to Sydney train every half hour, whilst to and from Wollongong they tend to be every half hour.

Infrastructure NSW in a 2012 report gave a target time of one hour for Wollongong Sydney trains. This would require an average speed of 83 km per hour, which has been achieved for Mandurah Perth trains for over 7 years now.  Currently, Wollongong Sydney trains average only about 55 km per hour. They need speeding up.

An open letter to Premier Mike Baird

WTC was pleased, with 520 other organizations and people, to sign the following letter that appeared in the Newcastle Herald on 19 December 2014 from citizens of Newcastle, the Hunter and Beyond.

Since then, the Supreme Court of NSW has found that the NSW Government indeed requires an Act of Parliament to remove the 2.5 km of track between Wickham and Newcastle.

Your government is about to make a very big mistake!

The decision to cut Newcastle’s intercity rail services has been made without a viable public transport plan, without due process and consultation, and without due consideration of Indigenous culture, relevant evidence, expert opinion and reasonable alternatives, and has

been unduly influenced by vested interests.

Please don’t impose this ill-conceived and expensive mistake on our city.

Please consider the needs of the many thousands of people, including families, school children, TAFE and university students, people with disabilities, older people, shoppers, workers, tourists, surfers, fishers, beach-goers, and the many other rail users, who rely on this fast, reliable and seamless service to access the Newcastle CBD and our harbour Foreshore and beaches.

Please listen to the ordinary residents and community groups whose modest donations have funded this letter, and who are proud to openly declare their support for retaining our rail services through to Newcastle Station.

Please heed the recent call by Newcastle Council to stop the plans for cutting the rail line, and to work collaboratively in an open and transparent manner with the Newcastle community to find more effective ways of using the funding from the Port proceeds to improve our public transport services and revitalise our city.

Newcastle: the wrong way

In June 1984, the late Premier Wran officially opened rail electrification to Newcastle. This was followed by electrification to Wollongong in  February 1986.

The O'Farrell Government had firm plans to use the proceeds of the Newcastle long term port lease to truncate the Newcastle railway line at Wickham, and to replace it by light rail.

WTC suggests that the Baird Government would do a lot better to instead use the funds to improve the Broadmeadow to Wyong track. One simple strategy would be to revert to the alignment in place in the late 19 th century. As part of a policy to ease the ruling grade facing steam trains, a number of deviations were built.  Three of them from Morisset via Dora Creek to Fassifern involved nearly 3 km of additional length and many tight radius curves.

The 2012 State Infrastructure Strategy urged cutting back Sydney Newcastle train times to two hours.  In 1948, the fastest train took 2hrs 18 minutes, now the fastest takes 2hrs 36 minutes, with the average speed falling to 65 km/h. By way of contrast, Regional Fast Rail in Victoria has slashed times, with the fastest Melbourne to Bendigo train averaging 102 km/h, with even faster trains due on completion by 2015 of the Regional Rail Link project.

A second option for the Baird Government is to share the proceeds of the Newcastle and Port Kembla leases equally - instead of $340m + $100m: $220m for each of Newcastle and Wollongong.