In 2018 the NSW Government released a vision for a Fast Rail future for NSW. The vision aims at providing better connections to regional centres, cities and international gateways to grow jobs and services and attract investment and skilled workers. Managing a team of urban designers and economists Mecone delivered a study to support analysis and the determination of preferred scenarios. Mecone’s scope of work included:

• Undertaking a rapid assessment of strategic health, education, environmental and economic assets;
• Investigating of strategic land use policy across several regional council areas and a review of recent development activity;
• Creating mesh block-level modelling of existing land uses- and potential land use scenarios. The land use scenarios included a base case that could occur without transport infrastructure upgrades and several intervention cases that identified the potential urban renewal uplift that could occur because of the faster or fast rail; and
• Identifying additional opportunities for urban renewal uplift around stations and surrounding centres connected by potential second tier transport.