Public perception off the rails

By Mark Carter

A regular correspondent regularly reminds me that today’s rail industry has little relevance for the average man in the street. The fact that rail is not widely recognised for the job it does could be argued as a positive reflection of the way the industry quietly goes about its business with minimal impact upon the community and the environment.

Balancing this though, the average punter does not really care how their Cornflakes ended up on their table at breakfast time or how Australia’s overtaxed mineral exports actually made it to the port.

Despite rapidly growing commuter rail patronage in some capitals, the reality is that a sizeable majority of the population have never travelled on a train and many kids will never have even seen one.

Those that subscribe to the “out of sight, out of mind” theory should perhaps think again. If anyone is in any doubt about how little progress the industry has made in influencing public opinion then the following anecdotes should provide a sobering reminder.

The federal member for Mayo, Jamie Briggs MP, recently launched an astonishing and generally inaccurate attack on the rail industry in Parliament. Apparently Briggs’ ire has been raised by a proposal by Australian Rail Track Corporation to construct a new 1800-metre crossing loop at Ambleside in the Adelaide Hills.

“The construction of a new loop…….will eventually result in up to 30 trains passing through Verdun on a daily basis……local residents…..are deeply concerned about the project as it will lead to increased noise pollution, damage a very special environment, risk heritage buildings and increase an already serious threat from bushfire,” Briggs said.

A few years ago, I lived in Verdun and can assure Briggs that the railway line does not in fact pass through Verdun itself; there would be no more than a dozen dwellings in the immediate vicinity of the new crossing loop and none have any heritage value.

While 30 trains a day might seem a lot, the current average through the Hills is around a dozen trains a day. It will be many years before that figure reaches 30, even then that will only be a miserly 1.25 trains per hour.

In his speech to Federal Parliament he makes an awful lot of the supposed bushfire threat even implying that trains shouldn’t be allowed to run on days of extreme fire danger, despite no major bushfires having been attributable to trains passing through the area. Briggs would have required medication to calm his heart had he been the local member when steam locomotives still roamed the rails.

Personally I know one of the local property owners whose land the railway passes through and while we have often spoken on rail matters, it’s funny that the issue of bushfires has never been raised?

“The rail freight corridor through the Adelaide Hills has the steepest gradients in the world for rail freight movement, and the noise produced by trains in navigating his track is significant. ……In real terms, this is louder than a 747 taking off in your backyard,” Briggs went on to say.

This of course is errant nonsense. From where I live in suburban Broadview, on a windy day I can here jets landing at Adelaide airport some ten kilometres away, but I certainly never hear freight trains departing the Adelaide Freight Terminal, a mere three kilometres away.

As for the steepest gradients in the world, Briggs should check with his researcher for there are plenty of examples around the world, the USA and China to name just two, with similar gradients that are in every day use by freight trains.

Briggs parliamentary style of misinformed rabble rousing would probably go down well over the border in Victoria where Bridie Byrne reports for the Werribee, Hoppers Crossing Star that local residents of a recent housing development are leaving in droves because of the coming of the railway.

“…….Wyndham residents are selling their homes, amid fury over plans to build the Regional Rail Link at ground level……a number of families have put their homes on the market, while others are considering a move,” Byrne wrote.

The next line defies belief: “Manor Lakes residents were too distraught to speak last week as they began the painful process of uplifting their lives. The Manor Lakes Residents Association has started a petition to have the stations built underground.”

The rail easement (along with a road corridor) has been part of the planning for the area and Manor Lakes residents will even get their own station. But in our car centric society, road = good, train = bad. Even though improved public transport links have been show time and time again to lift local property values.

President of the Manor Lakes Residents Association Ray McAlary with a line that Jamie Briggs would be proud of says the social and economic implications of the decision to put the rail line at surface level will be “irreversible”.

Quite what makes Manor Lakes and Verdun different from any of a thousand similar locations around the world where a community co-exists with its local rail line is beyond me.