Rail supporters were outnumbered one to five by people in support of truncating the Hunter line at Wickham at a meeting with the Premier Mike Baird on Thursday in Newcastle.
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Save Our Rail and the Hunter Environment Lobby members were among the steadfast minority to urge Mr Baird and the Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian to delay work until after the March election.
“We had our hearing, but the numbers there were skewed toward the development lobby,” Hunter Environment Lobby president and Maitland resident Jan Davis said.
“They don’t seem interested in ordinary people.”
Ms Davis relayed a few of the stories of woe from rail passengers she had heard in the past month.
“[Mr Baird] had 700 letters in the past four weeks on this,” she said having collected many of them herself.
“Gladys said, ‘Oh yes, we get hundreds of letters every week.'
“I said, ‘The majority of people don’t want the line cut’ and ‘you should listen to the people’.”
Save Our Rail was a late inclusion in the meeting having initially been passed over.
The group’s president said she had tried to sway Mr Baird from starting work on the truncation from December 26 based on the improper conduct of those involved in the planning process.
“He just said the government was going to proceed with what is in the urban renewal program,” she said.
Ms Dawson shared new survey findings with the meeting that a significant number of Hunter Street businesses were in favour of retaining the line.
“Thirty-three out of 40 businesses surveyed [on Wednesday] indicated they wanted the line kept when [Property Council regional director] Andrew Fletcher told the parliamentary inquiry that not one business wanted the line to remain,” she said.
“It was a very strange round table meeting where half the people didn’t get to speak.”
