The British Regional Transport Association (BRTA) continues to appeal to the wider public and elected representatives for the following:
1. old formation of rail route to be protected with deviation alignment spaces where blockages may exist as much as possible.
2. For the pooling of talent and resources by councils, agencies and government grants to commission a study to explore the business case, merits, feasibility and engineering required to provide a modern railway serving this glaring gap in the current rail network.
We are progressively delivering our flyer (attached) in the Cranleigh area and welcome donations https://brtarail.com/become-a-member/ and offers to volunteer to help speed up delivery and production of the flyers to more readily get our message across along all parts of the line to a 3-mile cordon either side. Simon Barber is coordinating and has been given the task to bring people together over a Costa Coffee and assign locations accordingly to deliver. We deliver flyers until 30th October and re-start 1st February to avoid the winter period. Please pro-affirma offer to help and indeed, where reliable, lead.
If willing, please email your MP and invite them to pro-actively work to get this railway reopened in particular but also for a government backed nationwide programme of local rail reopenings. From the English-Scottish Borders, to Northumberland and elsewhere, those reopenings have far exceeded predicted usages and there is growing public demand for more rail capacity to enable for rail services for people and goods.
Reality is, as development is going-in, unless the rail network is comprehensive, it tends to translate to growing road usage, congestion, land use for parking amidst other demands and growing exhaust and rubber on hard surfaces, which informs deteriorating health. In short, there is a cross-societal value and benefit if we choose rail again. Please email your MP: https://members.parliament.uk/members/commons?sort=1 Please also see our wider South East focused programme, these schemes need studying and progressive moves towards enabling reopening:
BRTA is nationwide in aspiration and with enough new members and actively reliable volunteers, we can be enabled to do more and better. Government paid Transport for the South East (TfSE) are a huge disappointment, they seem to avoid these reopening nettles to grasp as foundational to a more environmentally cleaner way of doing transport and logistics and fail to acknowledge that rail should be more of a priority, as rail deals with bulk people and goods, walking, cycling and buses are good, but periphery to handling mass demand.
Heathrow expansion and that of Gatwick, will bring floods of people, but so far no improved rail access. Guildford-Heathrow Southern Link is the bones of an idea, but needs:
1. a west to north curve from South London/Waterloo directions
2. extension to Old Oak Common (OOC) and via a tunnel to join the Chiltern Main Line for a Banbury/Aylesbury - Guildford and beyond rail arc.
Again, we need the public and politicians on board to advance more joined up thinking and
3. Guildford-Cranleigh-Horsham would enable more wrap around rail services to Gatwick from Three Bridges for example, the reversal at Redhill is limited and a direct curve from the Tonbridge Lines would also enable more by rail to the Airport and beyond and vice versa, those audiences to wider Kent rail network and the Channel Tunnel.
Please give us your support and let's retain the green and pleasant land of the South East with development being made sustainable, not as an afterthought but as a prerequisite to any expansion plans?
Copyright: David J. Start May 2026 Redhill
The British Regional Transport Association (BRTA) sees the following in favour of reopening this rail link with deviations where blockages now exist:
1. Direct South Coast to Horsham, Gatwick and Guildford rail access for further afield.
2. Save changing at Brighton to get to London
3. Inward footfall, visitorship, spend and regenerative flows minus the traffic
4. More freight off the roads and on the rails with portal connectivity, employment and supply chain stimulus.
We appreciate over the years like so many places, councils have been tasked with providing housing allocations, but not with former rail route protection. Thus all the traffic from residential and industrial expansion goes onto local roads, which then at cost and land-take, are upgraded and so the pattern spirals. That impacts urban and rural air quality, noise levels and environmental blight. If we don't want the pattern, we need to recover select pieces of railway to give modal choices, create modal balance and enable lifestyle choices to 99% car-road dependency cultures.
BRTA calls for a study into reopening Shoreham to Horsham rail link and how problems structural and engineering can be overcome and cycleways re-routed either alongside a railway or diverted to give routing options. You retain the amenity, but rail handles bulk people and goods, is faster end-to-end and opens up areas to inward investment whilst retaining their land mass and natural beauty.
This may be the last chance, but growing places need more and better rail-based access to and from. You can't put heads in the sand and pretend the glaring gap and associated deficits do not exist. Indeed, were this railway restored to modern standards, it could be part of a regional through route between Brighton and Chichester and Reading/Heahtrow respectively for further afield travel.
At this stage we ask:
1. the remaining corridor is protected adequate width for a twin-track railway corridor
2. a policy of relocation where possible to restore the route. Not all houses need demolition, but enough to enable railway recovery or lands adjacent even bypassing growth areas, to enable a railway end-to-end to be functional.
3. The study can look at business cases, engineering, environmental impact and feasibility to base policy on and advocate with neighbouring councils and agencies to fund the reopening with full government support and that of leveraging in other investors.
Please consider this proposition and I hope our visionary diagram helps put it in a regional and strategic context.
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