Playing silly burghers in Newcastle
With the issues of rising fuel prices, urban road congestion and climate change it seems almost inconceivable that any large conurbation in the world would consider removing its metropolitan rail services from its city centre to the city fringe. Yet amazingly some of the whacky community leaders in Newcastle are once more getting on the bandwagon to remove commuter rail services from the city centre to suburban Wickham.
It seems property developer GPT Group has a grandiose $650 million retail development planned for the Newcastle CBD and that pesky rail line is in the way sitting on prime real estate once again.
According to the Newcastle Herald, the GPT Group says its risk analysis of the proposed retail, entertainment and residential precinct around the Hunter Street Mall, Newcomen, Perkins and King streets, showed that a heavy rail line through the central business district was a “significant barrier” to its success.
The Herald reports retail project director Philip Heaney as saying the State Government needed to indicate its in-principle support for cutting the rail line and improving connections between Hunter Street and the waterfront.
GPT estimates it would cost the state and federal governments about $160 million.
The company would also like a time frame for the work and a co-ordinating body to oversee it. In a stunning show of respect for the democratic process the Herald reports the company as saying that if a commitment is not made by the time GPT’s board meets in February, the company is unlikely to proceed with its project.
GPT would be well aware that only two years ago a comprehensive report was released by the State Government detailing exactly why the heavy rail corridor would not be removed from the CBD. Also conveniently missing from any of reporting on the proposal is comment on GPT Groups share price.
Around March 2007 GPT shares were worth around $5.50, but a year later had dipped to $3.00. With the recent global economic woes they have lost a further 65% and at the time of writing were hovering around the $1.00 mark. If they fall any lower I’d be willing to bet that pesky rail line has got something to do with it.
One local rail supporter commented, “Funny – I’ve never seen any huge traffic jams due to trains on the Newcastle-Hamilton section of the line.
Certainly no worse than what already builds up due to the traffic lights at all the intersections. Seems to be a case of they want it gone, so they’ll blame everything they can on it.”
posted by Mark @ 10:53 AM
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