<p>New drug laws for Victorian rail workers came into force on Sunday (June 30).</p> <p>The laws make it an offence to perform rail safety work while impaired by a drug, including prescription medication.</p> <p>Under the new provisions, an impairment assessment can be undertaken when there is a reasonable belief that a rail safety worker’s ability is effected by medication or an illegal drug.</p> <p>Transport minister Peter Batchelor said: "The new laws to control drugs in rail safety work will encourage significant cultural change within the rail industry.</p> <p>"The reforms will necessitate widespread education and shifts in the behaviour of rail workers, rail companies and health practitioners to ensure that workers are not impaired by particular drugs, including medications, while at work."</p> <br />
I think they’ll find they are sadly mistaken on the last sentence in a few years. They did something similar in Auckland back in the 1930s, moving the heavy rail a few kms away from the city, and using trolley buses and trams to connect. In 2003 the council reversed it by bringing heavy rail back into the CBD with great success, and further rail development is planned.
A seriously wrong decision has been made by the NSW Government and Parliament. Firstly, it is simply not true to say that SOR are “opposed to change and economic development”. Indeed a read of their web site shows that they have historically been a supporter of change and revitalisation in the Newcastle city area, something that is achieved by enhancing existing public transport, not by making it intractably harder to use. Secondly, although I am a proponent of “multi-modalism” and what Gay describes as “seamless connections between different modes”, one does not plan to remove a through link and replace it with one where you have to change mode. This is quite regressive and the stupidity of the move is already demonstrated by a fall in numbers using public transport to reach the Newcastle CBD. Thirdly, again I am not opposed to light rail, but replacing heavy rail with a light rail system that in this context does nothing new and reaches no new serious destinations is quite flawed logic. My prediction is that, like the hapless citizens of Bunbury (who lost their city central railway station some decades ago), the future population of Newcastle will also be regretting this move. The general inconvenience and nonsense of the whole debacle is predicated on poor planning and political interference of the worst kind.