As The Daily Advertiser reported on Monday, well-known Wagga trucking industry leader Geoff Crouch has joined mayor Rod Kendall, Committee 4 Wagga chief Chris Fitzpatrick and Wagga Business Chamber president Tim Rose demanding Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) take urgent action.

Mr Crouch said it was time to end the dangerous mix of big rigs and family cars on local roads.

“A bypass would undoubtedly be a safer option,” he told The DA.

“It would end the problem of truck drivers contending with motorists cutting in on trucks at sets of lights, cyclists and pedestrians.”

As Mr Crouch went on to tell The DA, our city deserves better than to be split down the middle by a freight route. 

“A bypass is something of critical importance to Wagga’s economic future and the living standards of locals,” he said.

“If the bypass could link up with Bomen industrial park and what will hopefully be the Bomen freight hub, it would increase transport efficiencies for every major local industry.”

Mr Crouch is absolutely right about the need for a bypass, but his mention of Bomen and a future freight hub got me thinking about rail and the recent announcement by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about the latest incarnation of the Very Fast Train (VFT) pie-in-the-sky proposal.

What I was thinking wasn’t that we need a VFT, but – very much like the Sturt Highway bypassing Wagga – we need to improve the safety of the rail facilities we already have.

And one of the best ways to improve safety is to continue to reduce the chances of accidental encounters between trains and road vehicles.

Remember how dodgy the intersection on the Olympic Highway was – and the tragedies that unfolded – before the Five Mates Bridge was built?

Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of other tragedies and near-misses that have occurred in the region in the past couple of decades.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has reviewed 87 fatal level crossing crashes that occurred between 1988 and 1998 and found that such crashes made up only around 1 per cent of deadly road accidents in any one year.

But most occurred in fine weather on straight and level roads and more than two-thirds were in rural areas.

About half of all level crossing crashes occurred at locations with “active protection” like boom gates or lights.

While I seriously doubt that Australia will get its own version of the bullet train any time soon, we still need to acknowledge that our roads are only going to get busier as our populations grows and with the extra people come extra cars and, quite possibly, additional rail movements.

Forget about fantasy trips on a flash train, what we need – and we need it now – is for the government to start using fancy words like “future proofing” in the context of investment in our roads and rail to make both safer.

And one way to make sure both road and rail are safer, is to make sure – with apologies to Rudyard Kipling – that the twain shall never meet.