Tesch looks at transport issues

Improving transport and infrastructure for Peninsula residents will be one of the Member for Gosford, Ms Liesl Tesch's main priorities for 2018, she has told Peninsula News.

Ms Tesch said she was currently working on a submission on the need to increase commuter car parking in Woy Woy.

"I need to be planning ahead past the March 2019 election," she said, based on confirmation that she will be Labor's candidate to recontest the seat in the NSW state election in March 2019.

"It will be really tough from a government perspective because we may need to put additional layers on the Woy Woy commuter car park."

She said there was "a plan to transform some of those layers into apartments because at some time in the future it will be cheaper to have automated vehicles".

"By 8am, there is currently a radius that is full of cars parked around Woy Woy station in untimed spaces.

"Many of them have a very long walk from where they are able to find a park to get to the station.

"Then we have the Mayor of Hornsby berating them because they drive and park in Asquith or Berowra," she said.

Another part of her transport proposals will be to fix what she considers to be the "broken" train system.

"Western Sydney has been given a lot more trains but we have been given a couple of new trains but no increase in the number of services," she said.

"The lead time for a train timetable change is 18 months so once we win government it will take 18 months to do the planning on the train line that is already at capacity.

"Then we will need to fix the North Shore line that has tracks that will not be suitable for our trains."

She also said she was looking into the adequacy of bus services to and from the Peninsula and exploring whether there needed to be express buses between train stations so commuters were less dependent on their cars and on commuter parking.

SOURCE:

Interview, 23 Jan 2018

Liesl Tesch, Member for Gosford

Reporter: Jackie Pearson