Newcastle Herald editorial March 14, 2020: Newcastle light rail extension business case published after FOI request

Having begun with 18 possible routes, consultants Corview narrowed these down to four, and then chose an almost straight line to the John Hunter Hospital through Broadmeadow and Russell Road as the "most suitable" next stage.

Little financial detail is included in this summary, but the consultants say that economically, there is "no urgent need" for a light rail extension.

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Further, they make it plain that an obvious obstacle to the John Hunter proposal - a gradient of up to 9 per cent up going up the hill at Russell Road - poses "significant constructability issues".

Such a gradient would make that section one of the steepest light rail lines in the world.

Against these concerns, the John Hunter link "meets multiple strategic planning and transport goals, intersects major urban renewal and employment precincts and has lower impacts to the traffic network compared with other options".

Overall, however, two major problems remain.

The first is Newcastle's "very high levels" of car use and the correspondingly low level of public transport use. More importantly, though, it seems the numbers are just not there for light rail.

The report says Newcastle has a "growing" population, and the figures it presents - a 28 per cent increase in the study area population and an extra 117,000 people in Greater Newcastle - seem substantial enough.

But these are figures for the 40 years from 2016: a population increase of just 0.7 per cent annually for the project area, and 3000 a year across Greater Newcastle.

For perspective, Greater Sydney's population is set to grow by about 3 million over the same time, at a percentage rate about as twice as fast as Newcastle's.

This disparity is a major problem for the Hunter when it comes to prising money from governments that know the bulk of the NSW population is clustered in the capital.

But better services and infrastructure is one way the government can encourage growth in Newcastle as the state's second-largest city.

As controversial as it would be, an extended light rail could be part of that.

ISSUE: 39,553.

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