Below is an unpublished letter to the Sydney Morning Herald on the Newcastle CBD rail issue:
While cities across the world are spending billions to reinstate rail lines into their CBDs ,Newcastle, or more precisely, the Hunter Development Corporation,( a state owned real estate business ), Premier Rees, and local property speculators want to get rid of the rail line into the city’s heart. What will we be getting? In the past the local big end of town have called for (uneconomic)light rail to replace heavy rail. Even that’s off the agenda now. It’s to be a “green corridor”, a narrow pedestrian and cycle path between the back ends of buildings. Even the local cycleways movement says it’s unwanted and unnecessary. The property/business lobby call the line a “barrier”.The answer, promoted by local community organisation “Save Our Rail” is a narrowed 2 line rail corridor , with visually improved new infrastructure, decent landscaping, new digitalised signalling to shorten delays at crossings, and more at-grade pedestrian crossings for better access to the harbour. It’s simple, logical and relatively inexpensive but it doesn’t accord with the real agenda of the Government and property lobby. This unwanted white elephant “green corridor” will inevitably become a future "greenfield" site for another row of high-rise: a genuine barrier between city and harbour.
