Parliamentary Secretary for the Hunter Scot MacDonald has announced the first round of Fixing Country Rail funding and is urging Hunter stakeholders to apply.
The projects are targeted at improving freight movements across the NSW rail system especially out of regional areas which will ease pressure on our roads.
Applications have opened this week, and will deliver $150 million in this round of funding out of the $400 million announced for the whole project.
Scot MacDonald says they are looking for applications from a number of different sectors.
"It's not necessarily just confined to the rail operators. any groups so producers, councils, transporters, infrastructure managers, intermodal terminal operators, we're looking for good ideas about how to improve efficiencies across our rail network, how to expand it, how to expand the economic opportunities"
The program is a complement to the Fixing Country Roads program which was all about improving freight movements between farms,key freight hubs like grain silos, saleyards, rail heads, supermarket distribution centres and depots.
The Hunter is set to benefit greatly from the Fixing Country Rail, and Scot MacDonald says it will be quick to deliver the benefits.
"Rail is extremely important as we know to the Hunter, we've got about $160 million tonnes of coal of course that comes down the chain, we've got grain, we've got a range of goods. So anything that can improve the freight part of it is really what we're looking for and of course there's some good ideas out there."
