Alternative transport plan for Newcastle and Port Stephens

BY JESSICA ROUSE

A concept plan for a high speed Rivercat Ferry between Fullerton Cove and Newcastle Airport is being dusted off and brought back out from the 1990s.

Traffic and Transport Engineer Rob Caldwell is behind the plan dubbed the Port Stephens Ferry Service which he first suggested in 1991, but now with more and more people moving to the Hunter, he thinks it's becoming a more viable idea.

The link would be created along a canal, parts of which would have to be excavated, from the north shore of Fullerton Cove to Newcastle Airport (about a 4 kilometre distance) linking with Newcastle's CBD taking in parts of the Hunter River. Taking in the CBD would extend the trip to 16 kilometres.

"You don't have to have rails and roads alone - a high speed ferry would transport just as many people as a railway line and it could run from Newcastle's CBD, whereas the rail now because it was cut short it can only run from Wickham," said Rob.

Rob looked into the idea of a rail line between Kooragang Island and the airport as another option, but the canal service still looks to be the better idea.

"A canal by comparison uses the existing waterways of the Hunter River - that route would involve only 4 kilometres of canal linking Fullerton Cove to the airport which is a big difference in construction to the 13 kilometres of new railway."

Rob suggested the plan to local politicians back in 1991, but he says it was swept up into the bureaucracy and he never heard anything more about it. Now he wants to take it back to the politicians and see what they think.

There would be a lot of hurdles to jump through though, and the plan could be years away.

"The process of finding funding for something like that because it's something entirely new in Australia, I don't know where it would come from it would be a combination of the Federal, State and Local government with possibly funds coming back into it maybe it could be used as a toll canal for private craft."