Extract from ABC News
It was once a vital means of connection between communities, but it's been almost 40 years since a train rattled along the track.
The rail link between Crookwell and Goulburn in New South Wales ferried both passengers and freight through the hilly countryside in the decades after its long-anticipated opening in 1902.
But since a train hauled the last freight wagons out of a yard at Crookwell in September 1985, the tracks have remained quiet and unused.
For years, passionate locals have been trying to get support to bring activity back to the rail corridor, with a 57-kilometre rail trail for cyclists and hikers among the proposals.
Breathing life back into unused rail infrastructure is an endeavour that has been taking place across Australia, and the world, for decades.
The projects range from humble tracks through the countryside to multi-million dollar urban transformations that can alter a major city's character.
Overseas, you might have been lucky enough to take in New York City from the heights of the leafy High Line, or admired the beauty of Paris from the lush Promenade Plantée René-Dumont.
Closer to home, you might have gone for a weekend cycle through the bush or commuted to your job on a former railway corridor converted into a path.
This infrastructure left over from the rail heyday can shape the way people move around in sometimes subtle ways.
And experts say the practice of converting former train routes into parks and paths will play an increasingly important role in keeping people healthy and happy as cities grow and grapple with issues like climate change.
Rail trails have a 'natural relationship' with cycling, walking paths
The origin of rail trails dates back to the 1960s in the UK and the US, when many thousands of kilometres of train lines — both freight and passenger — were no longer in use.
Lee Roberts, a research associate with the University of New South Wales City Futures Research Centre, said repurposing rail lines was then seen as a great opportunity, particularly in growing cities.
"Because of changes in the way people move trade, or because of changes in city character, there ended up being a lot of abandoned rail lines," he said.
"Often what happens is when a rail line is abandoned, it kind of reverts to private ownership and is usually broken up into small pieces and just gets absorbed into nearby properties.
"There was a recognition that those continuous, linear paths through the city were a pretty rare and scarce resource and it was worth trying to figure out some way to save those and use them for the public good, as opposed to letting them revert to private ownership."
Dr Roberts said there was a "natural physical relationship" between typical characteristics of rail corridors and what people look for in walking and cycling trails.
"Think about how trains operate — they can't go up and down steep hills and they can't make sharp turns and they can't stop and start very quickly," he said.
"So rail corridors tend to be very smooth gradients, very gentle hills, smooth curves and they don't have a lot of intersections with streets."
The addition of a park or walking trail does more than simply improve an immediate space, according to Dr Roberts.
"The experience of every city I've looked at is that the space around the rail trail is considered really desirable as a place to live," he said.
"If it's in the right place it reduces your need to drive everywhere, if you can ride a bike to work or walk to the shops along the rail trail.
"There are a lot of other causes of sprawl and [the lack of] housing affordability that rail trails don't address, but it can contribute to the solution."
How one space went from 'no man's land' to a 'city spine'
Nestled right at the heart of Sydney's Ultimo, the transformation of a defunct freight route into a linear park has not only enticed people into the space, but even changed the surrounding built environment.
At about 1km in length, The Goods Line is one of the shortest rail trails in the country, but given its location, it packs a punch.
On the elevated walkway, gravel and old rail lines have been replaced with trees, vegetation as well as infrastructure like a playground, exercise equipment and an amphitheatre.
Aspect Studios design director Sacha Coles, who led the The Goods Line project, said when he took on the task, the space was "kind of a void in the city".
"Because there was no rail going down there anymore, there was no productive use for it," he said.
"That piece of land was in no-man's-land for a long period of time."
He said the former railway corridor lacked connection to the spaces around it, and for a long time buildings had been designed to "turn their back" on it.
"The whole strategy of The Goods Line was 'OK, this beautiful linear track exists, why don't we turn that over to feet, and bikes, and active transport?'" he said.
"Then if it works well, the whole idea is that all the buildings will transform their back doors to front doors and it becomes almost like a city spine, or a campus spine that you might have in a university."
He said the transformed section of The Goods Line was carefully designed to connect with its surroundings.
"If we think about these rail lines as the backbones to a body, they have vertebrae, and they are the side streets which connect down and through," he said.
Mr Coles said the pathway was able to become a "natural choice" for people moving from Sydney's Central Station to Chinatown, or to cultural institutions such as the Powerhouse Museum.
"It actually connected the city in a way that had not been connected since the 1850s," he said.
Despite the radical change, the space's former life has not been completely erased.
Its name pays homage to its past, and some rusted rail lines have been retained, with vegetation planted inside.
Mr Coles said the rail line, which was once a "driver of the economy" had been replaced with something that reflected newer industries that defined Sydney, many of which were based around ideas rather than products.
"We talk a lot about the Goods Line as social infrastructure rather than rail infrastructure," he said.
Dr Roberts said projects to convert old rail infrastructure in large cities, such as New York's High Line, proved that it was possible to get "really substantial, big results".
"The more important lesson of the High Line is that because rail corridors are sort of separated from the rest of the city fabric, they all have an almost other-worldly quality to them," he said.
"You're in the city but you're somehow, on some level, removed from it."
Rail conversions 'aren't going away anytime soon'
Rail Trails Australia president Damian McCrohan said in Australia, interest in repurposing abandoned rail corridors came a few decades later than the UK and the US, and rail trails were popularised in the 1980s.
"In the late 70s and 80s, a lot of railway lines closed in Australia," he said.
"Some communities began to realise, wait a minute, we have this great corridor we can use to bring communities together again."
Across the country, there are 174 rail trails ranging in length from the 161km Brisbane Valley Rail Trail to some that measure 1km or less, like The Goods Line in Sydney.
There are a few dozen more prospective projects in the works, with most of those in regional communities across Australia's east coast.
Victoria has the most established rail trails in the country, including the Great Victorian Rail Trail, which winds its way through 134km of the state's High Country.
The Inner Circle Rail Trail in central Melbourne follows 4km of the original route of a passenger steam train that used to service residents in areas like Fitzroy, Parkville and Carlton North, and is heavily used by inner-city dwellers.
Mr McCrohan said in some cases, converting the trails for use by pedestrians and cyclists enabled them to become as important to communities as train services once were.
"Quite a few of them are becoming essential parts of the community again," he said.
In some areas, the conversion of unused rail corridors to recreational paths has been controversial.
During the planning and construction of a recently-opened section of the Northern Rivers Rail Trail in NSW, opponents said they would have preferred to see train passenger services returned.
But there, as in many areas, feasibility assessments have shown the expense associated with restoring railways and running services make such projects difficult to achieve.
Mr McCrohan said he understood the sentiment.
"Another way of looking at rail trails is rail banking, because the corridor stays continuous and in public hands. So if there's a need for a rail service in the future, then a rail service can be introduced there," he said.
He said in some instances, railways built during the 19th century for steam engines were very windy and would need to be "straightened out" to accommodate modern trains that travel at higher speeds.
Despite some differing views about the best ways to repurpose old railway lines, experts like Dr Roberts said the sheer abundance of the spaces made it likely that creative conversions would continue for a long time.
"The reality of how we live in cities now — transport and health and access to open space and green space — those are the pressing issues of our time in cities," he said.
"Those issues aren't going away anytime soon.
"Maybe 100 years from now we will have solved transport issues or climate change to the point where there won't be a pressing need for building rail trails, but I don't think that's happening anytime soon."
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