PATIENCE – something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead.
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Patience has long been a required virtue for drivers in many of the region’s towns as passing coal trains increasingly become traffic snarls.
With coalmining becoming further entrenched in local communities, the problem can only intensify.
Drivers in towns like Quirindi, Werris Creek and Willow Tree will soon face the spectre of having a freight train rumbling through town every 27 minutes.
It again exposes the folly of having a rail-line running smack-bang through the middle of busy roadways, equating to traffic snarls, stressed-out drivers and potential accidents everywhere.
Yet, despite successive councils having the political will to fix the problem, nothing has changed.
Why? Because of dollars.
The cost of building overpasses, underpasses and other diversions is prohibitive; councils can’t possibly justify spending it and state and federal governments have thus far refused to stump up.
That we have a problem on our hands is undeniable.
Peak-time delays due to passing trains are as absurd as they are frustrating.
Just as infuriating is the fact there’s such a simple solution at hand.
Politicians and RMS pen-pushers in major cities may see the relatively minor traffic delays we face as no big deal.
But, for all the sacrifices we make by living in a regional area, facing traffic delays shouldn’t be one of them.
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IT’S not quite a smoking gun, but Credit Suisse’s epic write-down of Santos’ CSG project in Narrabri amounts to a serious flesh wound for the mining giant.
The respected global financier cited widespread community opposition, a lack of transparency and engagement and scientific uncertainty over risks among its reasons for slashing $572 million from the project’s estimated value.
Santos claims time alone will soothe many of the concerns from restless landholders.
But while ever uncertainty lingers over coal seam gas mining’s impact on our most precious resource – water – so too will opposition.