What’s been happening on the Northern Rivers Rail Trail?

Although progress seems slow on the proposed Northern Rivers Rail Trail (NRRT) in Northern NSW, there is a lot going on behind the scenes. This includes grant funding approval, Biodiversity Reports, Landowners Meeting and the method by which the corridor land would be managed.

In addition, we undertand that the Tweed Shire Council has selected the five contractors that will be tendering for the construction of the rail trail when legislation is passed to allow construction. The council has also began preparing the branding scheme for the Northern Rivers Rail Trail.

The Northern Rivers Rail Trail organisation continue to push for development along the whole proposed route, and report that the finalisation of arrangements for release of the $7.5M Federal Government funding for the Casino-Bentley section is expected shortly.

There is a lot of funding available to begin construction of this rail trail and we hope the NSW government can proceed more quickly with the land management and legislation processes.

In August the Tweed Shire Council also released the Tweed Rail Heritage Study, which contains a lot of history of the rail line and the features to be incorporated into the rail trail. Well worth a look.

1. The Tweed Shire Council’s application to the Federal Government’s Regional Jobs and Investment Packages – North Coast (RJIP) grant program for the Tweed Valley Rail Trail (TVRT) has been successful. This is the culmination of a May 2013 resolution to actively support and promote the establishment of a rail trail on the Casino to Murwillumbah rail corridor.

Refer to Tweed Valley Rail Trail Grant Funding – report to Council February 2018 for further details.

2. North Coast Local Land Services (North Coast LLS) was engaged by Tweed Shire Council to prepare an independent biosecurity risk assessment for the railway corridor land between Crabbes Creek and Murwillumbah Railway Station, which is proposed for conversion to a shared user path (Northern Rivers Rail Trail). Key stakeholders such as local landholders, state government and industry groups were involved in the process.

The full report can be found here.

3. A meeting for Landowners was convened on 13 August 2019 to share details of the proposed rail trail and to enable them to raise any specific requirements. At this meeting the project status was presented, ie. NSW Government has commenced the process of amending the transport legislation, Federal government is continuing to fund the rail trail, Council’s Project team is continuing to refine the overall project assessment (including information gathering from this working group), and Council is liaising with State government departments about a range of technical and operational matters.

View the full presentation here.