STADIUM PLAN MUST INCLUDE RAIL – OR IT WILL FAIL

MEDIA RELEASE – 27th April 2023

STADIUM PLAN MUST INCLUDE RAIL – OR IT WILL FAIL

Advocates for a passenger rail service to Hobart’s Northern Suburbs today cautioned the Rockliff Government that any plan for a major stadium must include rail – or it will fail. If the State Government destroys the railway to build a busway, it will gain nothing but lock in more traffic chaos.

Rail Action Group President Toby Rowallan says that “It is a fact that any busway that is built will be completely incapable of handling the enormous number of people that the major stadium is designed to hold. Studies show that a rail service can move up to twenty thousand people in an hour, more than twice what a busway can.”

Mr Rowallan added “The State Government has announced their preferred option is a busway despite their own report clearly identifying rail as providing four times more benefits.”

Mr Rowallan says that “If there were thirty thousand people at that stadium, a really good busway might, under good conditions, be able to move eight thousand people in one hour. Although no details have yet been released, we sincerely doubt that it will be capable of that, which would leave over twenty thousand people using cars and creating Hobart’s biggest ever traffic jam.”

“It is no coincidence that every other AFL city has passenger rail services.”

For further comment;

Toby Rowallan
President
Hobart Northern Suburbs Rail Action Group
0418 997 069