A DECISION by the Victorian Department of Transport not to reopen the Glenrowan railway station as part of the major upgrade of the North East rail corridor had greatly disappointed the local community, member for Benalla, Dr Bill Sykes said yesterday.
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Dr Sykes said he would be contacting Public Transport Minister, Lynne Kosky, to express his view of a lack of co-ordination between the Department of Transport and the state’s tourism and regional development offices in relation to a survey to assess community members’ travel needs.
He said a meeting at Glenrowan on Thursday between the community and the Department of Transport had delivered the bad news.
“The survey concluded for a range of reasons that the cost to reopen the Glenrowan railway station was not justified and the Glenrowan transport needs for locals would be met by a combination of buses and trains while visitors could get off the train at either Benalla or Wangaratta,” Dr Sykes said.
“My response is that there was clearly an omission in the strategic planning that failed to consider the value of Glenrowan.
“I believe the Department of Transport is not working closely with tourism or Regional Development Victoria, when both of those organisations have made significant projections for growth in North East Victoria of visitor numbers climbing from 250,000 to 500,000 by 2012 and up to 750,000 after that.”
Dr Sykes said he believed the survey had recorded the views of local residents and visitors already in the area, but did not quantify what effect reopening the station would have on boosting visitor numbers.
He said it also appeared upgrade works to the railway at Glenrowan had already reached “the point of no return”.
“It seems the feedback to the community on February 12 was after the fact, the Government had already made the decision to pursue its original plans,” he said.
Ms Kosky, who was visiting Wodonga yesterday, said the Government had committed to do a survey to find out how many people would use the railway station.
“The tourism figures show the bulk of people don’t use the train, they need to travel further afield to other sites and that generally means using their own car,” she said.
“But the survey found that the local public transport is not good and we are looking at that.”
