The price of progress

Grace men­tioned this quite a while ago, but her par­ents’ shop at Suth­er­land sta­tion will be for­cibly taken away by Rail­Corp, which wishes to widen the con­course at the sta­tion to, appar­ently, ease con­ges­tion. Des­pite their invest­ment in the busi­ness, from what I under­stand, the prob­lem lies in the fact that their con­tract does not provide for recom­pense in the event that Rail­Corp needs to do some­thing with it.

I’d say that most people would be sup­port­ive of rail­way infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment – who doesn’t want bet­ter sta­tions, and bet­ter trains, and bet­ter ser­vices. The prob­lem here is the way in which this devel­op­ment has been ear­marked to pro­ceed – to the det­ri­ment of one fam­ily, and with dubi­ous bene­fits to rail­way com­muters as a whole. RailCorp’s alleged atti­tude (i.e. silence) doesn’t instill con­fid­ence in the abil­ity of this case to res­ult in an equit­able solu­tion. As I com­men­ted (on the news­pa­per art­icle), just because it’s legal doesn’t mean you should do it. If the redevel­op­ment of the sta­tion must go ahead, other solu­tions, such as buy­ing out the busi­ness, or offer­ing to relo­cate the busi­ness to another part of the sta­tion, are both reas­on­able altern­at­ives that Rail­Corp should con­sider. Rail­Corp is a cor­por­at­ised busi­ness, but at the same time, as a busi­ness owned by the people of New South Wales, a more caring atti­tude would not go amiss, and should be man­dated in the organisation’s practices.

Some­how, I get the impres­sion that push­ing Rail­Corp but­tons won’t work in this case. The Ngs will have to search for other, big­ger but­tons to push. Let’s all rally behind them in their moment of need.

Related posts:

1. High-​​​​Speed Rail
2. Aus­tralian con­sti­tu­tional law notes