Within months, Transport for NSW is likely to recommend strangling one of Newcastle's major roads. This must be opposed.
The agency will almost certainly tell the government that our light-rail line should be extended to Broadmeadow along Tudor and Belford streets - which would mean crushing the traffic capacity of one of the main routes into the city centre.
Yet there are easy alternatives. The tramline extension can instead run through lightly trafficked back streets, leaving the major corridor unobstructed.
There's no sign of when the extension will be built, but the new Labor government can be praised for at least telling Transport for NSW this year to identify a route. The agency says it will complete the work in coming months.
Doing so is urgent because the line must be integrated into the Hunter Park proposal for an enormous residential, sports and entertainment precinct at Broadmeadow.
In various preliminary concepts for more tramlines in Newcastle, Transport for NSW has consistently shown them running down arterial roads, meaning it is willing to decimate Novocastrians' ability to get around in cars.
We know it remains focused on the Tudor-Belford route because it has taken action to ensure a particular block of land near Dairy Farmers Corner can be used for trams to reach Tudor Street from Newcastle Interchange.
Have no doubt about the mutilation that a tram line would inflict on any of our major thoroughfares, including the Tudor-Belford route. You can see what happens just by looking at the state government's handiwork on Hunter Street, formerly a four-lane road that is now so constricted it's barely usable.
The problem comes from limited space and modern safety standards. These days, light rail on major roads gets its own lanes, and a tram stop, built as a platform, uses another lane-width. So some combination of traffic lanes, parking lanes and turning lanes must be eliminated.
Where turning lanes are lost, intersections become clogged - or turns must be forbidden. Taking away parking lanes means that a driver who stops will block following traffic.
Road capacity is further restricted by the need to halt vehicles to let tram passengers walk to and from the platforms. And if a light-rail line goes down Tudor and Belford streets, you can be sure that Transport for NSW will drastically cut the speed limit.
The result: what is now a free-flowing, 60kmh, four-lane road will surely become a slow, choked obstacle course.
I raised this issue two years ago in a Newcastle Herald article that also showed how an excellent set of light-rail routes could be run through back streets, leaving major roads undisturbed.
Back street routes
Now the decision on how to get trams to Broadmeadow is upon us. The correct answer is to use one or two of three back streets through Hamilton: Denison, Lindsay or Cleary. (See the map.)
For the Lindsay and Cleary routes, there is already open land at Selma Street for access from the city rail corridor. Either of those routes would provide a valuable stop in the middle of the Beaumont Street shops.
If Lindsay Street or Denison Street is used, the important feature of a connection to Broadmeadow Station can be provided. Alternatively, a light-rail extension using Cleary Street would offer good access to redevelopment on the showground site.
The Denison route would also offer connections for the redevelopment that is supposed to emerge along Tudor and Belford. Note, however, that to get a line into Denison Street, the government would need access to certain properties on Hunter Street.
None of these back-street routes should be regarded as inflicting a penalty on locals, since modern trams are very quiet and the residents would benefit from getting nearby light-rail stops. Automobile traffic on the back streets would probably be reduced and, being sparse, could share lanes with the trams.
If only one of the three possible back-street routes is to be used, the choice probably should be Lindsay Street. But the key point is that any of them would get trams to Hunter Park without mangling an arterial road.
My criticism of the Tudor-Belford tram scheme probably won't be welcomed by people in Newcastle who have been pushing to get on with this project. They'll think we can do without a spanner being thrown in the works just before we finally get a solid plan.
Their efforts and intentions are appreciated, but we really must ensure that the state makes the right decision on this. The prospect of unnecessarily fouling up a critical arterial road is intolerable.
Novocastrians would certainly regard it as intolerable when they saw the results. So there is political danger in this for Labor.
If the party is in office when a Tudor-Belford route is chosen and also when the line is eventually built, it can expect nothing but scorn from Novocastrians who wake up one day to find it has ruined one of their major roads.
That is not at all theoretical. In any pub conversation about Hunter Street these days, you'll hear only derision and complaints. The former Liberal-National government made a dog's breakfast of it, and everyone knows it.
My advice to Transport Minister Jo Haylen is that she should tell her department to think more widely about how the extension to Broadmeadow can be done. If more time is needed for planning, then so be it, because we're talking here about transport corridors of the highest importance.
The Newcastle of the future, with a much larger population, will need more light rail, but it will also need at least as much road capacity as it has now. By putting tramlines in back streets, it can have both.
