Freight rail in Adelaide Hills to stay

Hills residents will still be forced to endure freight trains rattling through their suburbs after a major study found no reason to change the status quo.

The outcome of the 20-month, $3 million Adelaide Rail Freight Movements Study has angered Hills residents, who have been lobbying for freight trains to be re-routed from the area for a decade.

Blackwood Belair and District Community Association past president Heather Beckmann said the outcome would upset large sections of the community.

“I’m sure there’ll be lots of disappointed people,” she said.

“They probably would feel like giving up their fight but if there are weaknesses in the report, I think there’ll be people who will still be fighting to say lets get a better assessment.”

The federal study by GHD, released last Thursday, June 24, stated it would be too expensive to realign or upgrade the track, which would outweigh any social or environmental benefits.

Five options to reroute or upgrade the line were released in a discussion paper in October.

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These included a bypass north of the city, a southern bypass including a 15km tunnel and an upgrade of the existing line, which ranged in cost from $700 million to $3.2 billion.

In September, the Hills and Valley Messenger reported that residents, fed up with taking sleeping tablets and resorting to sound-proofing their homes to escape freight train noise, were hinging their hopes on the outcome of the study.

Eden Hills resident Cynthia Wicks said she had been taking sleeping tablets every night for 20 years to cope with the noise.

“Every night we hear one very terrible train in particular which just screams for minutes and it’s absolute agony,” she said.

A spokesman for Federal Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese said last week the study would be handed to Infrastructure Australia to consider when it finalised the National Freight Network Strategy by the end of the year.

A spokesman for State Transport Minister Pat Conlon said he would obtain a comprehensive briefing from department officials and consider the implications of the report.

The study followed a feasibility study in October 2008, on the back of lobbying from the Mitcham Rail Freight Task Force (now committee), which produced a 2007 report detailing a proposed bypass north of the city. Of 76 submissions received by the government for the most recent report, not one favoured retaining the line in its existing form.

via Messenger News