Why this link has never been built
The coastal shared path from West Ballina to Lennox Head took more than twenty years to build in stages. The equivalent between West Ballina and Alstonville has never happened, and the officers' report gives the reason plainly: the large elevation difference between the coastal flood plain and the Alstonville Plateau produces steep grades, and the space beside the Bruxner Highway through the Ballina cutting is confined and in places inaccessible.
Money to solve it came from Transport for NSW through the 2024 Get NSW Active program, which paid for consultants Burchills, engaged by tender, to assess routes and cost them. The grant carries conditions: any path must be at least three metres wide and comply with TfNSW shared-path guidance.
What was exhibited, and what came back
Four options were assessed and put on public exhibition from 25 March to 28 April 2026: a preferred and an alternative southern route, and a preferred and an alternative northern route. Council received 55 online responses and six further responses. Separately, a submission was lodged by 22 landowners raising concerns about sections of the southern route options.
The fifth route
The report is explicit about the sequence. Following initial appraisal of the submissions, the landowners' submissions, and further site inspections, a plan and estimate was prepared for an additional route option. It is a hybrid: the preferred northern route from Alstonville to the Mountain Bike Park, joined to the preferred southern route from the Mountain Bike Park to West Ballina. It appears in the agenda as Attachment 3, and in the options list as Option 5.
Its estimated cost is $36.5 million excluding GST, a figure that includes an underpass of the Bruxner Highway beside the Mountain Bike Park and a 40 per cent contingency. The report states that it is the costliest of the five and recommends it anyway, giving reasons: it avoids the southern routes' space constriction and the conflict between the Alstonville Cemetery and the Bruxner Highway; it runs directly through Alstonville along Ballina Road rather than the more circuitous Wardell Road, putting it on what the report calls the likely desire line of most pedestrians and cyclists; and it impacts fewer adjacent private landowners in the rural area than the southern routes.
Council adopted it unanimously on 23 July, confirmed Stage 1 as the segment from Alstonville to the Mountain Bike Park opposite the Bruxner Highway and Duck Creek Mountain Road intersection, and resolved to prepare grant funding applications and, subject to funding, proceed to approvals, detailed design and construction.
What to make of the sequence
Two readings are available and both are fair, which is why it is worth setting out rather than settling.
The first is that this is consultation working. People were asked, 22 landowners said the southern alignment would cut through their land, staff went back out to the site, and the design changed in response. A council that exhibits options and then ignores what comes back is the more familiar complaint.
The second is that the option now adopted is the only one the public never got to comment on, and it is the most expensive. Nobody outside the council has been asked what they think of Option 5 specifically, and the next formal opportunity to say anything about it will come through planning approvals, by which point the route is settled and the conversation is about details.
Our view, offered as a view: on the reasons stated in the report the choice looks defensible on its merits, and the cost gap is not the interesting part given that a 40 per cent contingency sits inside it. The thing worth watching is narrower. The report justifies Option 5 partly by the fact that it touches fewer private landowners, and the objection that prompted it came from landowners. Where a design changes because affected people objected, the honest test is whether the resulting route is better for the people who will use it, not only quieter for the council. On the desire-line argument the report makes a case that it is. That case has not been tested against the public who made the other 61 submissions.
What happens next
Stage 1 only, and only if the money arrives. Council has resolved to apply for grant funding; nothing is committed to construction until that succeeds. The practical questions for anyone in Alstonville or West Ballina are which grant round council targets, whether Stage 1 is fundable on its own, and what happens to the remaining segment from the Mountain Bike Park to West Ballina, which is where the southern alignment and its landowner objections still sit.