TRAIN travel from Tamworth could be set for a major overhaul, as MP Kevin Anderson says “watch this space”.
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The deputy premier, John Barilaro made tracks to Dubbo this week to announce the construction of a train maintenance hub in the western NSW city, as well as the plan to replace the state’s regional train fleet.
Tamworth MP Kevin Anderson outlined his plans to add some new destinations and more regular routes from the country music capital.
“We’re going to start looking at that daily return service to Sydney and Newcastle,” Mr Anderson told The Leader.
“There’s also no link west to Dubbo.
“How does someone get from Dubbo to Tamworth? Watch this space.”
While the region missed out, Mr Anderson was buoyed by the regional rail announcement and said it spoke “volumes that they are looking to get it out of Sydney”.
But the next stop on the MP’s rail agenda was to open up more options for travel including a daily return service to Newcastle, but there were some questions to be answered firstly.
“How do you want to get there, why are you going and how long do you want to go,” he asked.
“We’re going to start to work out some options for the community.”
Minister for Roads, Maritime and Freight, Melinda Pavey, said it was important there was a strong link from the region to Newcastle.
“There’s a lot of trains to Sydney from Newcastle,” Ms Pavey said.
“Newcastle and Tamworth are really important cities to each other, as is Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour and Newcastle.
“That’s our tertiary hospital and a lot of our kids go to uni in Newcastle.”
Mr Barilaro said the new XPT, Xplorer and Endeavour fleet, set to be rolled out from 2020, would mean “greater flexibility” in terms of timetabling.
‘We want to see more people on rail’
In Dubbo, Mr Barilaro said the new XPT fleet would provide the “opportunity to look at new options”, for timetabling regional train rides.
The Nationals leader said part of the program would be looking at all the scheduling of regional NSW and looking to improve services.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Liberal, Dubbo was identified as the preferred location to construct a brand new rail maintenance facility, bringing with it a big boost for jobs, as the entire regional train fleet is replaced.
“It was clear that Dubbo because of the infrastructure in place, because it’s where some of the lines terminate, it came out trumps as the right location to put in a maintenance facility,” Mr Barilaro told the Daily Liberal.
“And that means now 60, 70 jobs in Dubbo, which is a great outcome for the Orana region and these are jobs that are going to be around for 20, 25 years.”
An expression of interest will soon be issued for the design, construction and maintenance of the new trains and a new maintenance facility, and be followed by a tender process.
The project will include the use of private financing to facilitate the delivery of the new trains and maintenance facility.
‘Privatisation by stealth’
NSW Greens spokesperson for Transport, Mehreen Faruqi labelled the fleet replacement a “tactic to covertly privatise regional train services”.
“Before the 2015 election, they promised new regional trains and now two years later they are saying they might be on track for 2020,” Dr Faruqi said.
“Regional NSW desperately needs trains after forty years of bipartisan neglect.
“The Government has got a budget surplus well in excess of $4 billion, but here we are with people in regional NSW being ignored and their train fleets being caught up in some kind of privatisation experiment.”
Minister Roads Maritime and Freight, Melinda Pavey, was in Tamworth for an announcement on changes to driver disqualification laws.
“We’re still yet to tender the construction to actually have them built,” Ms Pavey said.
“There was never a commitment to have it by 2019, by the next election.
“But we would have made a decision on who was constructing and how they were being constructed, so we expect that to be made in the next 18 months.”