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