Monday, July 20, 2009

HDC Report Threatens to Remove Passenger Rail from Newcastle

Parks and Playgrounds Movement wishes to place the following supplementary submission before the inquiry because since our submission made on 23rd of February there has been a report made public by the HDC, that threatens to remove existing passenger rail services from the historic city of Newcastle NSW.


Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia



Dear Sir,


Supplementary submission Inquiry into the investment of Commonwealth and State funds in public passenger transport infrastructure and services

Parks and Playgrounds Movement wishes to place the following supplementary submission before the inquiry because since our submission made on 23rd of February there has been a report made public by the HDC, Hunter Development Corporation that threatens to remove existing passenger rail services from the historic city of Newcastle NSW.

The Movement would have liked to place evidence before the Senate Standing Committee Inquiry showing that it is a misuse of the Hunter Development Corporation to have it prepare a Newcastle City Centre Renewal Report that removes passenger rail services to Newcastle.

The Corporation was previously named the Honeysuckle Development Corporation and had been operating without an Approved Scheme since 1997. We can show that it has not prepared a Varying Scheme pursuant to Sections 14-16 Growth Centres (Development Corp) Act 1974 even though its Growth Centre has been extended from time to time and now extends with its name change to include all of the Local Government Areas in the Hunter Region.

In our earlier submission we wished to show how the $100million dollars directed to Honeysuckle under the Building Better Cities Initiative of the Commonwealth Government in 1993 was allowed to be misdirected by an endemic bias against the provision of rail services to historic Newcastle. The Corporation had continually denigrated the importance of rail services to the City and allowed the removal of three pedestrian overpasses and two at-grade controlled vehicular and pedestrian crossings in their development area whilst at the same time complaining that the rail services created a barrier. The 1993 Honeysuckle Scheme proposed the construction of a road over bridge across the rail at the Stewart Avenue. This bridge should have been constructed using Building Better Cities Funds but was not.

Furthermore we believe that the HDC did not fully achieve the purpose of the $100million dollar Building Better Cities Program which was ‘to promote improvements in the efficiency, equity and sustainability of Australian cities and to increase their capacity to meet the following objectives: economic growth and micro-economic reform; improved social justice; institutional reform; ecologically sustainable development; and improved urban environments and more liveable cities’.

Any new passenger transport funding initiative from the Commonwealth Government should be clearly directed to genuine transit orientated development and funds should not be used for removal of rail infrastructure or degrade the provision of passenger rail services to Newcastle as proposed by HDC Report to the NSW Government March 2009.

The Newcastle City Centre Renewal Report prepared by the HDC March 2009 is clearly biased against the provision of rail services to Newcastle:

* It is not fair in that it denies social justice to public transport users and those that rely on passenger Rail services.

* It is arbitrary in its promotion of the construction of a new transport interchange at Wickham for its development without proper regard to the wider region and the already proposed interchange for Glendale in the Lake Macquarie Local Government area which is more central to the lower hunter urban area and on the main line.

* The Parsons Brinckerhoff Identification of Preferred Scheme used to justify the general recommendation to cut passenger rail services to Newcastle is wrong in claiming Railcorp policy on level crossings (page 9) means that no new crossing for vehicles or pedestrians can be built to replace those removed. We are not aware of any policy that would prevent the construction of controlled railway crossings in NSW.

* HDC frails to promote Ecological Sustainable Development by their failure to support the continued provision of passenger rail services to historic Newcastle.

* The argument that the railway is a barrier to linking of the CBD to the harbour cannot be sustained because it is the HDC that has allowed the removal of crossing in their original Growth Centre Area and has not promoted their replacement.

* The HDC Report is dominated by unsubstantiated claims blaming the Newcastle railway as a straw man argument. It claims to promote an integrated transport concept which it also denies by its lopsided and narrow focus against passenger rail services to Newcastle

Future urban development will need to be based around sustainable innovation and increased efficiency that replace oil and herald a renewable green and polycentric City. The transport options that support this new resilient urban pattern will have to be new electric passenger rail services for fast cross and inter-city movement and a series of small scale electric bus and hybrid electric vehicles and a resurgence of cycling and walking.

The HDC Report sadly takes the wrong and arbitrary attitude to the future of passenger rail services to Newcastle and should not accepted as a base for Commonwealth funding.

The Parks and Playgrounds Movement would be pleased to provide the Inquiry with documentation and oral evidence if called to the public hearings.

We trust that the inquiry will give weight to our submissions in its report to Parliament.



Yours Faithfully,
Doug Lithgow Freeman of the City of Newcastle
President of the Parks and Playgrounds Movement Inc.


Below is our February Submission


Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia



Dear Sir,

Inquiry into the investment of Commonwealth and State funds in public passenger transport infrastructure and services.

The Parks and Playgrounds Movement is a community organisation established in the early 1930s. Its secretary was the C E W Bean, the historian, lawyer and journalist. It was brought to Newcastle in 1952 by R.E. Farrell, and continues the work to safeguard our Natural and Cultural Heritage. The Movement’s early work included the protection of the openspace provisions of the 1952 Northumberland County District Town and Country Planning Scheme.

Parks and Playgrounds Movement has been deeply concerned at the way funds from the Building Better Cities Initiative of the Commonwealth Government were allowed to be misdirected by the NSW State Government with respect to the Honeysuckle Development Corporation at Central Honeysuckle Newcastle.

We are totally opposed to the misdirected activities of the Honeysuckle Development Corporation over the past 15 years in continually denigrating the importance of rail access to the City and for allowing the removal of 3 pedestrian overpasses and 2 road crossings in their development and the current outrageous push to have the commonwealth fund the removal of direct railway access to historic Newcastle.

The Honeysuckle Approved Scheme 1993 adopted under the NSW Growth Centres Act of 1974 was flawed in that it did not acknowledge and blend with the 1988 Bicentennial harbour foreshore work which was partly funded by the a Commonwealth Grants used to implement features of the Winning Design from the International Competition that informed the Newcastle Harbour Foreshore Landscape and Urban Design which was published in 1982. The Competition was assessed by a team of noted Architects and landscape Consultants lead by Lawrence Halprin the internationally renowned Landscape Architect and Urban Designer of San Francisco.

The principal characteristic of the Foreshore design was the landscaped rail corridor providing a uniquely attractive rail entrance direct to the Historic Newcastle Railway Station.

The Movement would be pleased to present evidence to the Senate Standing Committee outlining why and how future funding can be properly targeted to improving all aspects to the railway access to historic Newcastle and promote historic Newcastle as a destination. We are adamant that commonwealth MUST NOT USE scarce public funds to further debilitate public railway access to Newcastle from its hinterland and the Central Coast and Sydney.

The enclosed essays are provided to demonstrate the Movement’s attitude to this issue and its opinion that Newcastle’s 150 year rail access and distinctive railway station is a boon to the city of Newcastle and can be integrated with future transit orientated development of the region.



Yours Faithfully,

Doug Lithgow Freeman of the City of Newcastle
President of the Parks and Playgrounds Movement Inc.

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