The English Regional Transport Association (ERTA) is a voluntary assoication advocating and calling on Government to start and continue to mainstream a rolling programme of local, conventional railway line reopenings. Basically the closures of local and duplicate lines in the 1960's went too far and today glaring gaps exist. This a. stifles railways ability to compete with other transport modes namely roads and b. the railways lack the capacity to carry all the people and freight that could be taken by rail.
The recent success of the rebuilt Borders Railway between Edinburgh and Tweedbank shows what can be achieved and if the English side played fairly and rebuilt from Carlisle to the Scottish Border, a through route could do far more. Alas it is the English side which is the weakest link x the English Regions.
The recent Extinction Rebellion acts as a wake up call on climate change and bedevilments like congestion, air pollution, accidents and waste of time, fuel and efficiency mount up to £billions lost every year and if we are to inform cutting these 'bads' we need to re-rail the country and incentivise modal shift back from road to rail and support businesses which club together and bid for modal shift to be built into their logistics and transport designs. A rolling programme of reopenings would give a green light to local authorities and consortias to work up schemes and make submissions for delivery more. Currently there is a strong feeling of stifling, stagnation and fobbing off with high sided business case rules and study costs but no delivery at the other end for those who do prolongingly jump through the hoops whilst at the same time £billions are wasted on road renewal and expansion for more of the blight they deliver especially to urban areas where land allocations are finite between parking, road space, accommodation and employment for example.
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