Rail crossing missing link needs funding

I am extremely concerned about the lack of action on the Rawson Rd level crossing.

These are my feelings about The Missing Link.

We need community support to get this project back on track.

There are sound reasons why the Rawson Rd level crossing must be replaced by a road tunnel at the bottom of Bulls Hill.

The level crossing is too dangerous.

This level crossing was the site of a fatality on January 17, the latest of many fatalities and suicides at this vital rail crossing.

The Rawson Rd crossing was closed to traffic (both ways) for approximately four hours because of the latest fatality.

The train driver must be traumatised.

Will this Rail Corp employee ever be able to drive a train again?

This particular level crossing is the only currently-available way for tall emergency service vehicles like ambulances and fire trucks to cross the busy Great Northern Rail Line to and from the Woy Woy Peninsula.

These tall vehicles cannot use the current one-way underpass adjacent Shoalhaven Drive.

Long traffic delays at this crossing are quite common, causing lives and property to be at an additional risk during an emergency.

Imagine an ambulance stuck at this rail crossing for five minutes (or more) while en route to attend to a person having a heart attack or a fire truck on its way to a house fire.

These are totally unacceptable delays, just because a 100-carriage freight train (1.8Km long) is severing the Rawson Rd level crossing during an emergency.

This should not happen in 2017.

Millions of Dollars have already been spent on pre-tunnel infrastructure.

Many detailed surveys and designs have been carried out and consultants paid.

Land has been acquired and/or purchased.

The pedestrian and cyclist underpass at Rawson Rd has been completed.

This is hardly used at all, because the level crossing is still active.

Civil works (roads, drainage and roundabouts) have already been constructed by the Central Coast Council on both sides of the proposed road tunnel.

They lie idle waiting for the road tunnel to be constructed.

This missing link (tunnel) is needed to complete the project.

Rail Corp insist on building the road tunnel themselves and have asked for $115 million to construct it using their expensive jacking method.

That price is multiples of the consultant's estimate for the Cardno conventional design and should be questioned as to its validity.

None of this past expenditure is worth anything whatsoever if the project is not completed.

It just becomes an appalling waste of effort and the misuse of taxpayer money.

How do we resolve this problem now and move forward to realistically fund the missing link (tunnel) to the already constructed new roadworks?

Email, 20 Feb 2017

Robyn Thompson, Woy Woy