Dear Friends and Colleagues,
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These new developments face the conundrum of what capacity there is on the West Coast Main Line. Facing media blackout in Northampton currently. However Northampton-Bedford-Bletchley loop would offer capacity for non-time-critical and empty movements for example and that would free some paths through Milton Keynes and Northampton. NIMBYS don't want these depots citing loss of countryside, but more road expansion is not opposed - strange coincidence! Likewise the Government reigns over austerity but has loads of money to splash on big projects like Hinckley, HS2, Trident, road schemes and Heathrow.
More road widening and yet 30 year old units on Marston Vale keep breaking down and a new generation needs to be commissioned - yet we are told no money, take recycled underground stock instead or go bust. There is a role for campaigning on these things and one way or other, it is indispensable albeit we need new blood to come forward to take on front line and active parts to foster a new wave of support. So rare, per chance between a hard rock and hot place with pushes to work, lack of slack with welfare cuts and workaholism being lauded as morally right when balance is more nearer to what wisdom would counsel, not least if you lose your health through over work and tarrying, you're in a worse state than a steady pace. Meanwhile Northampton is worth us working on and directing new team players to wade into. New buildings at the Olney Industrial Estate I observe.
It is a fragile stay of execution, but if frivolously thrown away or dismissed or not pursued with equal vigor to Oxford-Bedford, Bedford-Cambridge, it must be pursued now not as some later addendum 2050! Yet that is the fob off we're getting one way or another. My report will be published in March and will put down a marker that opportunity to move the railway forward exists now, 5 years hence, may not be the case. By that time we'll be reaching gridlock saturate in our town centres and politicians need to realise you can't build your way out of it, rather re-balance the logistical apparatus to give people a fighting chance. Clean Air is not just about what sort of engine one has in ones car, but on fostering the rail alternative. Chicken and egg, no wagons equals can't do when someone asks about freight by rail, to have wagons a demand is required and so it goes on, lorry is cheaper, more versatile and easier to get hold of. But even that is reaching saturation point, so containers stack up, the system slows down and costs rise - enter inflation pittied on diminutives. ERTA may fold, but I as an individual will keep on with producing reports as a rader until we lose our route, then all is lost but for a turning off of the oil supply and making people pick up their bags and walk more.
That is not fantasy but we should plan to prevent it by nurturing the sensible rail choices. It is cynical devils who bemoan and yet won't hire/pay me by the hour to work on this and then say "hey, we're volunteers who work, we don't have any spare time" - so nothing happens x generations relative to the road lobby who have an all encompassing in-built system whereby everyone has cars, everyone wants roads, every user demands cheap fuel and the politics and votes work their way out to lock-in recycling of the pattern. Rail has no mechanism to do likewise as it is fragmented to introverted parts caged by the contract/franchise and reps do not speak freely, they represent the particular interests of their members which is a fix point for xtown and a new pipe for ybox. Cracking the Northampton nut is pivotal to whether we grasp the nettle or concede defeat. Feedback: e. erta.rails6@yahoo.co.uk
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