Did you know that NSW has approximately 2,000km of abandoned railway lines yet only 146 km of rail trails?
Recently the NSW government has taken 3 important actions toward the faster development of rail trails.
- Tumbarumba report: Publication of the Tumbarumba to Rosewood Rail Trail report, showing positive outcomes on practically all measures.
- NSW Framework: Release of A Rail Trail Framework document, providing guidelines for the development of rail trails in NSW.
- Introduction into NSW parliament of Draft NSW legislation: to enable the NSW government to grant leases to local councils on rail corridors for selected purposes including trail construction.
(Photo: NSW Rail Trail Framework)
Draft legislation comes before the NSW upper house next Tuesday, 9 August. Bicycle NSW strongly supports this new direction from the NSW government. We also need your urgent support NOW to let the NSW parliament know that rail trails have very strong wide community support.
The Immediate Problem
There have been many emails from ANTI-RAIL TRAIL activists urging parliamentarians to reject the amendment.
How You Can Help
We need you and as many other people as possible to contact the members of the upper house (the Legislative Council) to show your SUPPORT for this long-awaited amendment BEFORE the upper house debates it again on 9 August.
Send an Email
Following is a suggested email you can send. Please add your own comments or create your own message, then send it to all the members of the Legislative Council and if possible, to all the MPs in the lower house too.
Show Your Support Now for the amendment.
Contact members of the Legislative Council BEFORE August 9, when they are due to vote on the amendment. Included below to help you is a list of the emails of the MLCs and MPs in the NSW Parliament.
Please email all of them BEFORE the 9th of August.
(Photo: NSW Rail Trail Framework)
Background
On the 21st of June this year the Minister for Regional Transport and Roads introduced the Transport Administration Amendment (Rail Trails) Bill 2022 into the Legislative Council of the NSW Parliament.
In short, this very welcome amendment removes the need for each rail trail proposal to have a separate act of parliament. The amendment enables the Minister for Regional Transport to permit rail tracks to be lifted and a lease granted only for ‘recreation, tourism or related purposes’ or ‘for roads or road infrastructure’ (e.g. public road level crossings), the land will remain in government ownership. The land cannot be sold off under this amendment.
The amendment is the result of findings in the recent government report ‘NSW Rail Trails Framework 2022.’
It is a great step forward in helping to develop rail trails across our state by removing the need to go to parliament for an amendment for each new rail trail. It will remove a very costly and time-consuming bureaucratic hurdle for local community rail trail projects while retaining the route in public ownership into the future.
FYI - You can see a statement by Minister Farraway about the amendment. See, HERE
We have provided a suggested email template you can use and send HERE.
Email addresses of the MLCs and MPs in the NSW Parliament have been preformatted and ready to copy and paste directly into your email send field and are available in either PDF format HERE or in a Word Doc HERE.
Join Bicycle NSW and Rail Trails for NSW. Contact your local State Member and ask them to vote Yes on the Transport Amendment Bill, YES for rail trails and resilient communities.
(Photo: NSW Rail Trail Framework)
