Ex-Sydneysider STUART PEARSON looks at Bathurst and its future from the perspective of a new resident.
IF you wish to travel to Sydney from Bathurst, you have three main choices of how to get there.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
You could try air travel, a 50-minute flight at a cost of about $400. Or you could go by car, a three-hour road trip at a cost of about $100 in petrol and motor vehicle depreciation. Lastly, you could travel via rail on the Bathurst Bullet, a ride which takes three-and-a-half hours and only costs $8 (even less if you are a concessional card holder).
The choice is yours, but passenger numbers clearly show that when travel times are not that important, people will pick the cheapest mode of transport. In Bathurst's case it's clearly rail. Passenger numbers on the Bullet continue to grow strongly - now up to almost 30,000 a year - while the number of passengers at Bathurst airport have been in a slow decline for the past decade (down 4000 to 20,500).
READ ALSO:
There is a strong, yet little known correlation between a regional airport's distance from a major capital city and the number of people that use it.
Dubbo, Port Macquarie, Wagga Wagga, Albury and Coffs Harbour are all further than 400 kilometres from Sydney. Each have regional airports with passenger numbers between 225,000 and 415,000 (Air Traffic Data from Dept of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities, March 2019). It takes only an hour to fly to Sydney from any of these locations, but six hours or more to drive.
Orange, Mudgee and Bathurst are all less than 250km from Sydney and passenger numbers only range between 9200 and 64,000. It takes less than one hour to fly to Sydney, compared to a drive of up to four hours.
Of course, proximity to Sydney is not the only issue besetting Bathurst Regional Airport. There are ongoing disagreements between council and tenants over leases. The annual cost of leasing space, such as a hangar at the airport, varies enormously - from a high of over $25 per square metre down to a miniscule 10 cents (the average is about $3 per square metre). This leads to disgruntled tenants who feel they're not being treated equally.
Council has responded by recently appointing an independent valuer to reassess the leases and it may be that all tenants will end up paying a similar, yet slightly higher rate in the future. At least there will be consistency.
READ ALSO:
The other lingering issue is that of tenure. To attract more investment in the future, council may have to look at increasing the average length of leases. The purchase of an aircraft and its housing in a hangar is very expensive. If tenants were given the option of a longer lease, then (hopefully) more people would consider the significant capital investment worthwhile.
But the issues of leases and tenure are of secondary importance when compared to the airport's proximity to Sydney. With the right determination, the issues of leases and tenure can be resolved. However, no amount of goodwill can alter the distance Bathurst airport physically lies from Sydney.
But does the fact that Bathurst airport is relatively close to Sydney have to be a negative? What if it became an advantage instead?
There are currently three airports in the Sydney basin - Mascot, Bankstown and Camden. In the next decade they will be joined by the massive new airport at Badgerys Creek. Land values, rentals, and running costs for aviation are already hideously expensive in the Sydney basin. Annual leasing costs alone in any one of Sydney's airports can be as much as five times higher per square metre than the equivalent space in Bathurst airport.
Even though people will pay enormous sums of money for the convenience of having their airplane housed near where they work or live, they don't have to have their aircraft serviced there.
Bathurst is close enough to Sydney to have any number of planes and helicopters serviced, repaired and maintained for considerably less than it would cost in Sydney. It may be that in the future Bathurst airport becomes less reliant on passenger travel and better known as a location for aircraft maintenance and servicing.
When Bathurst Regional Council gets around to appointing a full-time director of economic development (something which many other local councils in NSW have already done), that person should be talking to the operators currently located in Bankstown, Mascot and Camden. If the business case is compelling enough, then Bathurst airport could turn itself into a major maintenance and service centre for light aircraft and helicopters in NSW.
It's all up to Bathurst Regional Council. Does council see the airport's proximity to Sydney as a strategic liability, or an asset?
