[Forum] After a three-year battle with Transport NSW, regarding the Kangy Angy site for the Rail Maintenance facility, it is very difficult to read Scot Mac Donald’s justification for the location being that travellers will get a more comfortable ride, and residents a bridge.
The residents of Kangy Angy have been trying to persuade Transport NSW to move their proposed site less than 10km further North to Warnervale. This would put the facility, by Transport’s own assessment team, in the preferred location North of Wyong, in an industrially zoned site, thereby saving Transport the cost of a $50m bridge just to access the Kangy Angy site. Warnervale is a Council endorsed location that offers Transport NSW use of a safe part of the rail line. Kangy Angy is on the fast 80kph section of the mainline that trains will enter and exit at all hours.
Kangy Angy is zoned rural E2 and E3 ecologically important, supporting several endangered species and their habitat. Kangy Angy is a floodplain and water storage area that regularly floods to car covering levels. Warnervale has none of these issues or constraints. In regard to the employment prospects for the facility, the residents welcome the new employment opportunities, opportunities that would still be on offer at Warnervale.
It is disingenuous of Mr MacDonald to infer that the comfortable ride, the access bridge and the jobs are predicated on the Kangy Angy site. Transport NSW has refused to speak with the residents or explain why they are so adamant to develop, at enormous cost, a site that is not fit for purpose and studiously ignores one that is eminently suitable and available. Sensible decision, I don’t think so.
Email, May 31 Susan Zgraja, Fountaindale