Ms Shafer attended the forum about the environmental impacts of the proposed Wickham transport interchange at Maitland Town Hall last week.

She said she was frustrated that Transport for NSW staff could not provide more details on what would happen for commuters when the track was pulled up in December.

“Everyone in there is so frustrated and they can’t give answers,” she said. 

“They just say ‘in the interim there will be buses’ but they can’t say what buses we’re going to have and there is no time frame for light rail.”

Ms Shafer catches the train from Victoria Street station to Newcastle station once a week to conduct business or, sometimes, just have a day in the city.

She said she would stop doing this if she could no longer catch the train to Newcastle station.

The Tenambit woman speculated that the government was in a rush to begin work to remove the line before the March election because it would then be too costly for Labor to make it operational again if the opposition won government.

“Sometimes I go in and just go for a nice walk along Nobbys [Beach], I won’t be doing that,” she said.

“There is no planning gone into this and I feel that Maitland and Hunter Valley people have not been consulted.”