About 150 frustrated residents attended a Mitcham Council public meeting to push for a northern bypass at the Blackwood Hills Baptist Church last Friday, July 30.

Boothby’s Labor candidate Annabel Digance was scheduled to address the meeting, but did not attend. Ms Digance did not respond to the Hills and Valley Messenger’s inquiries before presstime.

The meeting resolved to write to the leaders of the major parties at State and Federal level, calling on them to fund a northern bypass by 2014.

It follows the release of the Federal Government’s Adelaide Rail Freight Movements Study in June which, much to the angst of long-suffering locals, found the cost to realign or upgrade the track would outweigh any social or environmental benefits.

Share your opinion: View and discuss the Adelaide Hills rail bypass proposals.

Earlier in the night, Boothby MP Dr Andrew Southcott (Lib) announced that, if elected, his party would suspend any current or future work on the existing line and “revisit specific elements” of the Federal study, prepared by consultants GHD. However, he did not pledge to fund a northern bypass.

Rail Freight Committee chair and Mitcham Cr Mark Ward welcomed Dr Southcott’s announcement but said more needed to be done.

“It’s much stronger than the position of GHD’s paper but it needs to be even stronger,” he told the Hills and Valley Messenger after the meeting.

“If the (Federal) budget is going to be in surplus by 2013, then let’s commit to a bypass by 2014.”

Eden Hills resident Stephanie McCarthy said Dr Southcott’s commitment needed to go further.

“At least it was better than nothing, at least it indicated support for it (northern bypass) and I would like to see the GHD report thoroughly pulled apart and some sensible action begun immediately,” she said.

Bellevue Heights resident Bob Hunt, who double-glazed his home to mitigate wheel squeals, said both parties needed to commit to a northern bypass.

“They’re all waiting around for somebody like Infrastructure Australia to come up and say ‘Yes, you should go with that’,” he said.

via Messenger News

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.

Share your opinion: View and discuss the Adelaide Hills rail bypass proposals.

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