Our best chance for an improved traffic flow at the Clyde Street and Adamstown railway gates is for the non-passenger rail traffic to be rerouted.
AN unfortunate accident recently has drawn attention to the Adamstown railway gates yet again. There is little chance of getting rid of the gates, but there should be a concerted effort to mitigate their effects.
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Our recent survey found the gates are a major issue in regard to the safety of drivers using roads that cross or intersect at the gates, or are close by.
Delay times are enormous. It is impossible to know how long a trip from one part of town to another will take. Some delays are predictable; the time of trips through these crossings are not.
This is no small beer. We want and need a liveable city and we are seeing massive increases in population. We seem to be good for freeways to get to and from Newcastle, but once you are here, well, it turns out to be a different story. The three at-grade railway level crossings are major deterrents to traversing our city.
All three - Beaumont Street in Hamilton, Clyde Street at Islington and Adamstown - are here to stay, but the trains (some 90-plus trucks long) cause huge delays at Adamstown and Clyde Street.
There is a very sensible, partial solution to be had: eliminate the goods and coal trains from the city by building the bypass from Fassifern to Hexham. There is not much difference in the length of the journey coal trains would make to reach the loaders at Carrington, albeit along a less circuitous route, and would also be freeing up the existing line to service passengers in the greater Newcastle area.
We recently conducted a survey of traffic at the Adamstown gates. We surveyed in peak hours, in quiet times, and in school zone times on weekdays. Our findings were collated and we found the following.
Intercity trains are regular contributors to the rail traffic. Freight and/or coal trains featured regularly and often these were of a length in excess of 90 wagons. Freight/coal trains were the main cause of gates-down delays, which often exceeded three minutes.
Freight/coal trains regularly haul in excess of 90 wagons with up to four locomotives providing power. The gates down time for these trains is less when travelling south as a through train (from a remote origin), since the train is already moving at speed. However, when such trains emanate from the Broadmeadow sidings, the gates down time can be significant. This results in extensive vehicle queuing.
Analysing our data on queue durations showed the total delay time in cumulative minutes to be 8547 or 142.45 per day, in excess of five car days of queuing. Some vehicles will experience more than one gate closure delay before they are able to cross.
Anecdotally, some drivers have advised delays of between 12 and 15 minutes.
Possible solutions include an overhead bridge at Adamstown railway gates. This solution is often touted as being the ultimate, but given the urbanisation of the precinct surrounding the gates this is now an unlikely option. The opportunity for an underpass was lost with the sale of essential land several years ago.
A Fassifern freight by-pass to the Hexham vicinity is the option most likely to succeed, for it would remove not only general freight trains from the urban Newcastle/Lake Macquarie rail corridor but would liberate the line from freight train breakdowns as well. It would also have a highly positive effect on closures of the Clyde Street railway gates. We have heard that preliminary studies of this option have occurred, but to date we have not seen any progress.
All passenger services to and from Sydney are part of the Sydney suburban network. All trains stop at Cardiff, Fassifern and Morisset. They also stop at the outer reaches of Sydney, anywhere from Warnervale to Strathfield.
Timetabling from Newcastle Interchange is part of the Sydney suburban network and subject to very strict scheduling. Given the content of our survey, there is little room to schedule any faster trains from the Newcastle Interchange to Sydney under current conditions, so there seems to be a very slim opportunity to return to the express services of pre-electrification days.
Our best chance for an improved traffic flow at the Clyde Street and Adamstown railway gates is for the non-passenger rail traffic to be rerouted on the yet to be constructed Fassifern-Hexham bypass.
With the prospect of a rise in unemployment caused by a recession potentially heading our way, what better time than now to commence work on a shovel-ready infrastructure project of such high value for us Novocastrians, and for the state?
We deserve better than we are currently getting.
