As one of the small business owners in the Newcastle CBD, my future is irrevocably intertwined with its revitalisation. The last two years have seen ongoing stagnation following heavy rail closure, and combined with inaction by all parties on the Post Office, has sapped the resolve of inner city traders.
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For many years I have been an ardent supporter of the potential for light rail as a catalyst, based on cities lived in during my professional career witnessing first-hand the transformations. In years gone by I also advocated replacement of heavy rail by this mode, acknowledging that heavy rail closure would be a difficult but ultimately successful part of the process.
However now more than ever I fear that we are steaming along about to watch construction of the figurative white elephant, albeit conceding it may be the aptly described ‘gold-plated white elephant’ along Hunter Street.
Light rail in Newcastle will live or die based on the expansion of a small CBD spine into a ‘system’. Absolutely no concrete planning to understand extension options has occurred, despite a commitment of $10 million to determine options being one of the first “light rail announcables”. The Hunter Street relocation costs will almost certainly starve money potentially available to extend the system for a decade, especially if costs blow out. There is no second port sale to seed another tranche of funding.
One fallacy being bandied about is that reconsidering the rail corridor for light rail will further delay achieving light rail operation. Even if a further 6 months of replanning occurs, construction on the corridor will be much simpler and substantially cheaper.
The UrbanGrowth rezoning proposal is also not incompatible with light rail on the corridor. One must look no further than the Pyrmont Bay light rail station in Sydney, upon which apartments in residential zoning are built over the light rail station.
The proposal by Jeff McCloy to essentially “road test” the proposed solution by simulation is sound. In fact it is presently being executed on small scale almost every day, as test drilling and other construction occurs on Hunter Street. It is telling that only small sections of the street are being closed during non-peak times to allow testing, while the state light rail solution as proposed is the equivalent of closing a full lane in each direction permanently. Even now, the impact of short periods of partial closures should be causing alarm bells to ring.
The Newcastle Council position to allow “mixed running”, while addressing some aspects of immediate problems of road capacity and parking loss, is nonetheless flawed in the longer term. It is probably true with a 10 to 15 minute light rail frequency, coexistence with private vehicles in the same lane may just work. When the light rail system is expanded from Wickham, as is universally accepted as necessary for the system to survive long term, frequency of services in the CBD section will increase. As this increase occurs to service the outer area extensions, the system and travel times will become longer and increasingly unreliable with no safety valve available to reduce congestion.
Business in the Newcastle CBD cannot withstand more uncertainly. The trend of relocation away from the area will increase with more disruptive reconstruction of Hunter Street. I appeal to the government to be true to their word and actually listen.
