Sheffield cable car plan on the move

THE much quieter bid to build a cable car to carry tourists up Sheffield’s Mt Roland has attracted protest like a similar proposal in Hobart.

The Mt Roland Cableway project is finally making progress — more than five years after it was first mooted.

The $21 million proposal to provide transport up the NorthWest landmark has been approved to proceed to lease and licence negotiations as part of the State Government’s Expression of Interest process.

But the Greens say it is another sign the Government is intent on privatising public land through its “secretive” EOI process.

Greens senator for Tasmania Nick McKim says the Government had not learned from the backlash over the Lake Malbena process.

“Tasmania’s reserves, national parks and the TWWHA are not theirs to sell,” he said.

The stage one approval lays the path for Sheffield’s Mt Roland Cableway and Adventure Precinct to undertake a Reserve Activity Assessment and seek planning approval through relevant commonwealth and state processes.

The proposal includes a 13cabin gondola cableway to provide direct access to the summit where it would need to use crown land as a disembarking point.

The cableway would be set within an adventure precinct with mountain bike trails.

The approval comes several weeks after the director of the Mt Roland Cableway project, Justine Carman, expressed frustration at how long the process was taking.