Wicks quiet about rail carpark. What next?
It is notable that Lucy Wicks has been preternaturally quiet of late about the ephemeral Gosford and Woy Woy rail car parks.
Normally, there would be an announcement every couple of months that the start of the projects is "imminent", so it would be interesting to know the current state of play, in the lead-up to the soon-to-be-announced election.
Given that NSW Transport has just repaved the Railway St parking lot, it would be easy to conclude that the department doesn't expect this land to become a construction site any time soon, so what site is on offer?
The workable dimensions for a parking structure are such that there is no obvious parcel of land for such a facility in the immediate vicinity of the station, so where is Ms. Wicks going to conjure up the required space?
The obvious place is over the train tracks, but there are severe problems involved in raising a building over operating tracks.
Dealing with the constraints of maintaining a rail service, while putting in place a heavy structure, leads to significant costs.
Of course, this Government has never been backward about squandering taxpayer funds, if it sees a political advantage in it, so this might not be a consideration.
Alternatively, the structure could be built over Railway St, combining parking with an improved bus interchange: this would come closest to meeting Ms.Wicks' claim that the parking would be "in the station", but the negotiations involved might be long and complicated, perhaps putting the project off for the 2025 election.
In any event, it will be enlightening to see how Ms. Wicks navigates this debacle in the upcoming campaign: she can hardly plausibly make new promises when she is already three years behind with her old ones, but the ingenuity of politicians in putting a new spin on failure can never be discounted.
SOURCE:
Email, 8 Mar 2022
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy