Lockyer Valley Mayor Tanya Milligan slams Inland Rail as Australian Rail Track Corporation defends communication

The mayor of a regional Queensland council has slammed the Inland Rail, claiming the current route would rip through the heart of their disaster-fatigued region.

Australian Rail Track Corporation has been forced to defend the country’s largest infrastructure project after a regional Queensland mayor launched a blistering attack against Inland Rail and its builders.

The $15 billion freight rail link between Melbourne and Brisbane through regional Victoria, NSW and Queensland has been touted since the first official route was examined in 2006, with ground broken more than a decade later in 2018.

With landholders in the state’s south objecting to the proposed route from the Queensland border to Gowrie Junction at Toowoomba, Lockyer Valley Regional Council mayor Tanya Milligan has joined the chorus of calls for ARTC to re-examine Inland Rail’s proposed route through the state, and her local government area.

Lockyer Valley Regional Council is up in arms over the proposed route of Inland Rail through their local government area, including mayor Tanya Milligan (left).

In a withering broadside, Ms Milligan said council held “grave concerns” for the community’s future and that concerns have been ignored, as the project was slated to go straight through the middle of a region still recovering from two major floods in a matter of months earlier this year.

“Our region has been put through the ringer with overlapping natural disasters and soon we’ll have infrastructure of national significance dividing our towns in two and creating further hurdles to overcome on our journey to flood resilience,” Ms Milligan said.

“It doesn’t matter what part of the process you look at; the proposed route will have serious generational impacts on our townships, and decision makers designing the railway are not taking our concerns seriously.

“Despite repeated requests, ARTC has been unable or unwilling to provide council with key information such as costs of the planned infrastructure and the alternate route, specifics of the assessment process used by ARTC to compare options or even revised traffic modelling and safety assessments.

“The decision on alignment will affect the safety, amenity and liveability of our community for 100 years – yet councillors have been given platitudes rather than facts. This project will be devastating for our community unless the reference design is improved substantially to address council and community concerns.”

The Inland Rail project, slated to be one of the nation’s largest pieces of infrastructure, has been met with opposition in parts of Australia.

In response ARTC Inland Rail director public private partnership Tony Lubofsky said the Helidon to Calvert section of Inland Rail would be built within the existing rail corridor, and the Department of Transport and Main Roads Gowrie to Grandchester protected rail corridor due to environmental concerns.

“At the request of the Lockyer Valley Regional Council, ARTC has undertaken additional studies to assess the feasibility of the rail line bypassing Gatton,” he said.

“Initial findings of this assessment identified significant environmental and design challenges if Gatton is bypassed, including additional impacts on koala habitat and prime agricultural land, increased flood risk, affecting new landholders, and extensive additional costs to the project.

“Flooding is one of the major concerns of residents and ARTC has undertaken extensive modelling on flooding impacts and shows that the proposed alignment does not exacerbate flooding in Gatton.”

Mr Lubofsky said ARTC had briefed LVRC on their reasons not to progress with bypassing Gatton, including concerns the alternative alignment would go through sensitive koala habitat, prime agricultural land and the Lockyer Valley flood plain.

An estimated cost for the alternative route was also developed, and Mr Lubofsky said LVRC was given indicative costs without itemising infrastructure costs, but contracts and designs had yet to be finalised and underlying costs were regarded as “commercial in confidence”.