ERTA Great Central Progress Update 28-03-21

Going forward these things are in our consideration:

1. Horsham-Guildford* for links to Reading and Gatwick and Heathrow. Heathrow link from Woking to extend to Old Oak Common (interchange) and a tunnel to physically link with the Chiltern Main Line. *Currently under threat from a dual canal application.

2. Rebuild Grendon-Calvert.

3. New stations at Calvert (new town mooted) and Claydon (growing satellite settlements) whether served by east-west rail trains and/or GC/Chiltern or both, we don't mind. Getting Chiltern and other operators on board would be a major step forward and any help to that end is a job in itself we welcome any offers to manage.

4. New domestic lines alongside the HS2 new corridor which assumes the old GC corridor to south of Brackley and deviates around the extended town to the east to head north-westerly, whereas our domestic line would a. provide a domestic Parkway Station adjacent to lands near A43/bus link to Silverstone b. rejoin old GC formation north of Brackley for Woodford Halse, which we are looking at carefully, as industrial style units have encroached the old trackbed and unsure on parish's view of a railway now with NIMBYISM rife v poor public transport and a dire need regionally for modal shift choices from road to rail, north-south and east-west. A document out of the quango called England's Economic Heartland (EEH) called for a Banbury-Northampton cross-country rail link serving Daventry, and that could link in with GC north-south feeding both accordingly.

5. South of Willoughby to go via North Barby to join WCML into Rugby. New construction. Needs studying carefully.

6. New build rail link out of WCML Rugby via old Midland formation/corridor serving Magna Park and Lutterworth and joining existing Nuneaton-Leicester lines at Narborough as the old route into Leicester is heavily built on. Our colleague Owen O'Neill is covering that project which we support. 2 MP's have given support to that section being rebuilt/with new interpretations.

7. Therefore our focus is on south of Rugby - Calvert and links to east-west rail into Oxford and beyond (passenger and freight) Southampton/Bristol split for example/could be part of extended Cross Country Network too.

If you feel keen and interested and/or willing to help assist with the project that is welcome. I have one man tackling councils and MP's to build consensus around the general idea and another looking at ground level at the old route today doing a list of blockages and where and his reports will be put on our website in coming months.

Please feel to join ERTA anyway, when lock-down is lifted we hope to hold meetings again. Meanwhile we do Zoom.

Here's our membership page: https://ertarail.co.uk/become-a-member/ 

ERTA Updated Rail Reopenings Pamphlet March 2021

It is good news that places like Ashington, Stratford upon Avon and Okehampton are to get their railway restored and a smattering of reopened or new stations as well. This is progress in the right direction. Still a long way to go. As with our sister organisation Railfuture, we take some of the kudos for ushering the agenda along over the years and indeed predecessors to ERTA organisation, decades. 

We are led to believe we face a Climate Emergency and so a need to cut fossil fuel burning, exhaust and tyre friction on hard surfaces is essential to lower public respiratory illness and premature death as well as cutting greenhouse gases which erode the atmosphere and creates conditions against human and wildlife habitat.

In 1993 I was at a UN Conference in Manchester where we marked the occasion of the calculated crossing of a threshold from a predominantly rural planet to a majoritively urban planet and 30 years on, we are seeing that worked out with bombardments of development, but with stretched resources, high demand and land use being a premium and scarce resource. Infrastructure has mainly been the presumption of roads and road vehicles, even public transport, whereas historically, we need to rectify the rail deficit for passenger and freight. See: Rio 92: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Conference_on_Sustainable_Development.

ERTA continues to push for route protection, reopenings, rebuilds and choice for public transport users. A development of 500 houses at 2.5 cars per household means 1500 extra vehicles per day on local roads. So the issues abound. We do need more volunteers to take responsibility and help us reliably enable more to be done on the right lines! Thank you.

Copies pdf free via richard.erta@gmail.com

Radial Rail Links to and from Northampton, UK

 The Rugby-Leicester rail reopening campaign has reached Northampton!

https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/transport/all-change-for-northampton-could-a-direct-railway-line-between-our-town-and-leicester-be-on-track-3169664?fbclid=IwAR14oag1R0OLHKIj0Uhyj8Du8yFCvrR10dRsCQ7hDUiJFWY41QwoT2nfjiQ

Feel free to wade in and give support to rail reopenings more for modal shift to reduce, check and balance congestion in normal times. 

I am generally supportive, whilst allowing those taking the driving seat to continue to lead and ensure their segment of interest is carried through to delivery hopefully. 

We should all bear in mind that these are exciting times, Climate Emergency is real and time is running out. It starts small and works out from there. Modal Shift cannot happen unless we get tracks back. Happy to discuss further with anyone.

Principles and needs repeat elsewhere across the country and we can compare notes, learn from each other, but also incumbent on public and elected audiences to act to a. keep options open, b. gather and pool resources to study/make the case and c. for Government to sanction, speed up delivery and have clarity of focus in leadership and direction - not pluralism and plethora all things to all people. If re-railing is good for the environment and saving land, then that is the way to go and we should expect £27 billion for new roads to come down and £500 million for Rail Reopenings Fund to be raised up. We need a rolling programme with route protection, even wide enough for green corridors with integrated cycleways, footpaths, ecological features whilst the majority also benefit from fast, cleaner rail choice.

In short, Guildford-Horsham, March-Deeping St Nicholas, Gloucester-Ross area-Hereford and Woodhead (new) all starts with willing people to assist to advance these agendas. ERTA can coordinate, orchestrate and lobby, but cannot do it all and relies on members to rally and take some responsibility.

We need an on-going rolling programme of funded studies support, route and realignment protection to keep options open (formal, legal and binding) and speeding up delivery with a switch from £27 billion new roads to fully funded railways per se and raising significantly £500 million Reopenings Funding to parity with roads. Government needs lobbying for these (hello Railfuture?) and to give leadership and direction as a sign they take Climate Emergency seriously and signal accordingly. Currently we have pluralism and all things to all demands, which is neither principled nor green. Positively a trickle is happening, but no-where near a 'Reversing Beeching' on a scale anywhere near like. If we had line-born freight plans for every line existent and new as well tiered down to mandate Councils to be more creative and collaborative as well, that would bode better. Support via richard.erta@gmail.com or join via https://ertarail.co.uk/become-a-member/