A familiar landmark is about to go. The hand-painted signs on the New England Highway calling for the return of trains to at least part of the disused line between Armidale and Queensland must be taken down.
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The Traffic Advisory Committee of Armidale council has decided that they are unacceptable. The recent minutes of its meeting say: “Police do deem the signs to be dangerous acting as a distraction due to their location”.
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Those who want trains back think there’s a bit of political censorship of their message going on.
Those who don't want the trains back because the track could become a cycling and walking route think the signs should go.
The chairman of the New England Rail Trail committee, David Mills, is worried about danger from the signs: “It's just a noisy individual that has put up illegal signs on the corridor,” he said, “and we see that as distracting to all highway users.
“In fact, it could be quite dangerous.”
The opposite camp which wants the trains back takes exactly the opposite view. Save the Great Northern Railway Group chairman, Rob Lenehan, suspects skulduggery on the whole rail line issue: “I believe that at the top end [of council] there's a biased feeling,” he said. “There have been very close secret meetings going on between the rail trail protagonists and the upper end of council in the last few weeks.”
But there are countless signs on the New England Highway, many of them more prominent than the anti-rail-trail ones.
The law is enshrined in an august document – State Environmental Planning Policy No 64—Advertising and Signage.
Unfortunately, the guidance is so broad that it doesn’t offer much help.