I Have A (Light Rail) Dream

By Bruce Notley-Smith MP, Member for Coogee on November 4, 2014 in News

As a schoolboy at Coogee Public School, the ringing of the home-time bell meant freedom. For me, it also meant I could again wander home along the abandoned tramway that curved behind the school from Coogee to The Spot. I had missed out on riding the trams by a few years, but as I walked along the disused line I dreamed of their return and wondered what idiot got rid of them and replaced them with a bunch of jolting, noisy, polluting buses that stop and start and clog up traffic.

Soon, my childhood dream will come true. The tram, or ‘light rail’ as we say nowadays, is on its way back to our city and to the Eastern Suburbs. This was the election commitment I made three years ago, and it’s one I will deliver.

The CBD and South Eastern Light Rail Project (CSELR) has been approved and works have already begun. This $1.6 billion project will link Randwick and Kingsford to Central Station and Circular Quay, using a dedicated corridor, separated from traffic, so it will speed along the streets, allowing passengers to wave at all those angry motorists stuck in traffic.

Of course, with any large infrastructure project there are howls of impending doom from those who say the light rail will cut a swathe of destruction through our suburbs, property values will plummet (yeah, right!), school children will lose all sense of road safety, businesses will be bankrupted, pensioners will perish and brain-sucking zombies will roam desolate streets.

Speaking of zombies, you would be forgiven for thinking they’ve been feasting lately given the behaviour of local Labor politicians and their mates. They’ve been doing their best to foul the project’s image while simultaneously resurrecting the long-discredited idea of extending the Eastern Suburbs Railway, a project killed-off by Labor governments in 1952 and again in 1979. Labor’s 16 years brought us only half of one rail project at twice the budgeted price, out of a promised 12 new rail lines. In just three and a half years my government has started and finished building the South West Rail Link, extended the Inner West Light Rail, and tunnelling machines are currently at work on the North West Rail Link. People don’t trust Labor to deliver a pizza, let alone deliver transport infrastructure. They make promises again and again, but they never deliver.

It is, however, vital we address the legitimate concerns raised by residents, and I take my role of listening to the community very seriously. Residents have expressed legitimate concerns about a number of issues such parking and the environment, and these are all being addressed at the highest level. Randwick Council has also raised a number of issues, for which I have been able to negotiate favourable solutions with the Minister for Transport.

It’s been 35 years since any money was spent on public transport infrastructure in the electorate of Coogee. We can’t allow the naysayers to hog the debate, wanting us to do nothing, or bow to those with rose-coloured glasses who want us to wait for an alternative that will never arrive.

Let’s put aside politicking so we can all look forward to a future where Eastern Suburbs residents get the transport we truly deserve – on time, and on budget.

I have no doubt that in the near future, when you are sitting in that fast, comfortable, air-conditioned light-rail carriage on the way home from a hectic day at work, you will wonder what all the fuss was about, and why it wasn’t built earlier.