Marston Vale under developer v passivity attack!

https://mmetag.wordpress.com/2017/03/08/unusual-view-of-marston-vale/

and

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/jun/autism-and-pesticides

Click the links above for fuller picture and benefit to the reader below:

Comment: Surely we do not want 500+ extra lorries pounding local roads per day? On the other hand, if it were rail connected and doubled up as a zero waste cum recycling hub on a regional scale (ratios of viability and train-load capacity) and if the ash was taken out and if non-toxic such as to not need underground storage for the long term, but could be ploughed back in some shape or form beit an embankment bulking material, fertiliser or some other use - then the demand that it be rail served in design terms from day one should be a planning requirement before any go-ahead considerations. Many Marston residents take a "we don't want it" stance and understandably, but fail to put anything in it's place - creating jobs, conservation with jobs (not mere arbitrary for those with good fortune to spend quiet week-days starring at and objectifying birds and wildfowl).

Likewise whilst we welcome Bedfordshire on Sunday's article about widening pavements and making High Street single lane, this is a half-way to full pedestrianisation which is the nettle which needs grasping. Traffic could be directed down Shakespere Road, Ashburnham and Prebend Street or via the Western Bypass or by St Peters-St Cuthberts-Newnham Road and then Embankment - Town Bridge. You could part pedestrianise the north end High Street and have a one-way Mill Street to south High Street at Debenhams for example. The agenda of getting buses to serve Tavistock Street remains, Bedford Heights - Town Centre out via Turner Way, back via Gainsborough Rise. Park Road North should be made one way except for buses as often there are stand offs. I got too close to a car waiting a clear-way, without warning they reversed over my bikes front wheel and then drove off, such is the attitude behind the wheel sometimes and it only takes one hot head for an accident - pedestrians come off worse.

These things are replicated across the regions and it is our belief that only an incremental reopening of select closed lines, can we break the roads only stranglehold and un-lock locked-in solutions which compound pollution and mayhem. How could this be funded? Well tolling the motorways at £1 a vehicle every 15 miles would inform a pot towards costs and savings on volume-weight of traffic to road wear and tear maintenance and renewal would save Councils money too. The Saints area including St Minerva Road, has appalling examples of cars parking on kerbs and kerb rutting un-addressed. CPZing the area would enable Zone Boys and Girls to police these streets, nip culprits in the bud and book those who are driving stolen vehicles, dumping vehicles and encroaching legitimate pedestrian spaces. Have cried out for a one-way system for St Michael's Road for donkeys years to no avail - a 'can't, won't, don't' attitude seems rife in some elected circles enthralled with aesthetics over bread and butter matters, hoy-poloy arts and culture, than local, urban and rural sustainability. The trouble with their 'progressive gentrification' agenda sweeping out of the London and Southeast region is that it heralds sterility in it's wake. In short poorer people spend and local businesses get a boost, wealthier people are wealthier because they scrimp and save and buy houses and furnishings which last 20 years - Quality Street not Coronation Street!  

Thanks to all who wrote objecting to the Olney Plan which seeks to scupper the Handley Alignment route. More details even though today is the last day - can be found on our reader-Blogspot: http://ertarailvolunteer.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Finally, we are seeking helpers to share a stall with us at St Paul's Church. You must be reliable and keen and have a good manner for relating with customers. Email erta.rails6@yahoo.co.uk for offers, likewise dropping off any donated railway related books, magazines or small memorabilia for us to sell. Please see: https://ertarail.com/events/ for more details.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Pill

ERTA Officer.

Ps. That improvements to the Marston Vale Railway service and indeed the High Street in Bedford are being explored at all is in no small way a result of our campaigning - it works!

Save a rail route around Olney, Bucks., UK

Save a rail route around Olney, Bucks., UK

February 2017

Dear Members,

Olney Neighbourhood Plan. With this letter is a blank pro-forma letter which you can fill in and send by 5pm on Wednesday 8 March, 2017 to: 

Development Plans Team

Milton Keynes Council

Civic Offices

1 Saxon Gate East

Central Milton Keynes

MK9 3EJ

Or by e-mail to: development.plans@milton-keynes.gov.uk

These plans seek to destroy ‘in the name of expansion’ the Handley Alignment which in 2001 our consultant draw to indicate how a new rail alignment could be implemented with reference to walking and cycling distances of Olney High Street. Now if these developments go ahead, it will be scuppered. Matching the eastern approach old trackbed to western is problematic and as building northwards takes hold, will increasingly become so, unless some big player at some future date does compulsory purchases and implements a new rail through built terrain or a new alignment railway bypasses Olney, which means Olney will be disenfranchised from a new railway. They’ve had plenty of opportunity to work with us but are choosing to ignore the railway as ‘pie in the sky’. You can find more information on the Milton Keynes Council website:

http://www.milton-keynes.gov.uk/planning-and-building/planning-policy/olney-neighbourhood-plan and on our Blogspot: http://ertarailvolunteer.blogspot.co.uk/ where the Handley Alignment map also is posted with comment.

Meanwhile we are seeking a new team of people to look with fresh eyes on Northampton-Bedford and by whatever means, to seek reopening beit preservation, community rail or conventional modern rails, to get a foothold and move out from there. Too much is at stake to abandon the railway, as No. 41 bus now winds through Biddenham and Bromham villages meaning a longer journey duration, off-putting and detrimental to commuting, work and visiting opportunities. Dualling the A428 will create brownfield for development, but where will those commuters drive to catch a train? Bedford and Milton Keynes, informing demand for massive parking provision. The conflict is inherent in the design plan. Ill thought out, opportunistic, call it what we may, short-termism is the name of the game. We have to think medium term even as we hand over to a new generation who hopefully will take up the baton for this strategic link. We lack the resources, bigger fry needs to be involved like the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) but the danger with quangos is that they get lost in bureaucracy, bigger projects or the politics rather than delivery of small to medium sized projects which could revolutionise local public transport, mobility and rejuvenate town centres. Out of town sink estates beit for jobs, housing and education are mopping up the numbers game, but at what cost to town centres, the environment and real wealth creation than whittling down fossil fuel reliance and geo-politics and wars to procure them? This is what the media ignore opting for focus’ on President Trump which although entertaining is somewhat ‘out there’ and takes away focus’ on the closer to home issues beit NHS crisis’, gridlock and bad air pollution to our focus’ of remedial actions to reduce and prevent these nasties from exacerbation.

Good news is that our association is growing and we hope to grow our team to ensure more fronts can be worked on as the old phrase goes “neither be too heavenly minded to be any earthly good nor too earthly entrenched to keep a heavenly vision”. Action starts with individuals. It is the case some have more time than others, others more money than time. It is often the odd hour stashed there and the odd donation given there which we both can capitalise on and produces best results all things being considered. Everyone can play a role and give support. Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Pill

ERTA Principal Officer.

For further information and who to write to:

https://www.milton-keynes.gov.uk/planning-and-building/planning-policy/olney-neighbourhood-plan

New Trains, New-Reopened Local Railways and who pays?

New Trains, New-Reopened Local Railways and who pays?

Late in the day! But beit Vivarail, Parry People Movers or Light-weight revisited - they need to coincide with a regional plan and agenda for re-railing places not just service branch line stock renewals. Maldon Branch, Stansted - Braintree, Northampton-Brackmills P&R - here they flounder and leave it to others - they must be challenged - Colonel Stephens had his track and trains! 

See: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-frills-mini-trains-offer-route-to-reopening-lines-that-beeching-shut-qtcwpbrzh

and visit: https://ertarail.com/campaigns/ Ideas of where those tracks and 'new' trains may wish to go!

What makes for cohesion?

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

ERTA past newsletters can be downloaded freely as pdfs on our website: https://ertarail.com/campaigns/

Our rail schemes matter to us because we know how much they could bring to regenerative effect on local people and places and lessen the bads. We find a parochialism in some parts which is a bit too introverted whilst we have other professionals behind the scenes making much ado about community cohesion quests. Parish, Borough, Constituency, County and Nation-wide-ism are all tiers and added aspects of a whole. If they have a drawbridge attitude how can a coming together be informed? 

These reopenings affect a wide arc of Oxford-Cambridge and London-Leicester but the principles are transferable to other areas too. Happily other areas (some) are picking up the baton and seeking reopening of their local closed rail links and if that means deviations and new pieces of railway so beit.

We have HS2 given the go ahead now and in some ways the real work continues. It's claim to create capacity remains to be seen. If a transfer of travel patterns whereby for a few minutes saved and (more cost?) people flock to it between let's say Birmingham and London in commuting terms it may free up seats on existing Birmingham - Euston lines although the planned developments along the existing corridors and the new brownfield created will fill those up quick enough. But if HS2 is not going to take much except very dedicated and particular types of freight, the existing lines will bear the brunt in absorbing the many new freight to rail depots spirnging up along the Thames Estuary for example - they will use existing tracks and may find that frustrated due to other competing service demand. So there is a role to compulsorily purchase and move blockages from the Great Central South of Leicester to the East-West Rail (in Buckinghamshire) and Aylesbury/Old Oak Common to provide not just more track capacity for growth but also to alleviate both the M1 and M40 arterys. Those who say it will cost must think about £55 billion for HS2 and £3.5 billion for an East-West Road - yet yet another when what we have is crying out for a rail alternative. It is not about whether there's a categorical promise to fund the lot or not, it is whether given so many other needs beit health, elderly care, welfare or education - we are using what funds we may possess wisely and whether or not overseas real estate buy-in/capital could better be re-directed by Government to invest in smaller localised line reopenings and new rolling stock whereby we return to a train which does a load of things in one go. 

The Guard reassuring passengers, giving out information, selling tickets, ensuring safety, the Guard's Van designed into modern rolling stock for bikes, prams, pushchairs, buggies, parcels, post and maybe even the odd pallet load. Likewise making better use of the railway stations we have - a post office and health hub for every station serving a population over 20, 000 people. Now that's a vision and a plan to make more. We got larger stations like St Pancras to have more shopping and leisure built into it, now we need trains and railways doing more at the centre of communities, plugging gaps, providing services where people go regularly and turning derelict buildings into meaningful, purposeful engagement with the nation's needs. There's an opportunity. But if free or internal markets or competition services to diminish service ethics or costs more, we need to be equally as persnickety  as has been on supposed 'waste' in public funded services. Suffice to say in Bedford, the retraction and quasi privatisation of the Civil Service resulting closure of local offices has robbed the area of clerical/office jobs and the model has now transferred to banks, hiding behind a supposed take up in digital on-line banking (insecure) to closing branches in smaller towns including Kempston (Nat West) Bedford. This disenfrachises customers and if it saves a business cash it is either take up of on-line or real estate savings, can it be both coincidentally happening at one and the same time?

Suffice to say bus and rail stations could become community hubs to cater for these integrated services and hold up the path of accessibility for a swathe of population who neither trust nor want total digitalisation and on-line for everything and prefer people interaction and actual person-hood accountability. The Prime Minister cannot be everywhere or do everything, but accountable local managers can do their bit, get rid of them to the internet and it is lost and communities are poorer. So more local railways and local stations can do more, we need more of them, enter the work ERTA seeks to make a contribution with.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Pill

ERTA. 

01-03-2017