| Road repair funds 'should be used for rail' |
 A Humula man says money being sought to fix the Gocup Road should go into reopening the Tumut to Cootamundra railway line.
Truck movements on the road from Tumut to Gundagai are expected to almost double soon to about 400 per day, when the second Visy mill comes online.
Councils do not have the $60 to $80 million needed, but they are campaigning for funding to upgrade the road.
Wayne Halls says he has written to state and federal MPs and the Riverina Development Board trying to get rail back on the agenda.
"Let's spend $100 million on a train line as the Australian Railways Association has quoted $1 million a kilometre on the existing line," he said.
"Where's the commonsense, environmental factors, safety issues and getting trucks off our road?"
Mr Halls says the board CEO Peter Dale has told him rail is not an option for Visy until 2015.
"Why is it every railway line has to be economically viable when roads built in the national interest are not economically viable?" he said.
"The rest of the world, Italy, Spain, China, Germany and Russia are putting massive investment into rail lines - we seem to be going the exact opposite way, we're digging them up."
Road trains or B-triples have been approved near West Wyalong recently with one reason given being the closure of rail branch lines.
Mr Halls says even if the Gocup Road upgrade is funded, safety for motorists between Tumut and Gundagai would still be an issue.
"Even if they do widen the road, it's still a dangerous road, no matter what you do about it," he said.
"I don't want to see trucks coming down there every 15 minutes with 60 tonnes of weight on them for people on that road.
"I think the Government's pretty poor if it they think that people's lives aren't worth anything."
ABC News
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