Transport Reality - what for rail choices? TfSE needs a reality check

re: https://transportactionnetwork.org.uk/campaign/road-to-ruin-for-se-plan/ 

Please do a meeting and try and win over to what we wish for - namely Guildford-Horsham and Shoreham + Polegate-Stone Cross or variants thereof. 

This is appalling if we take a Climate Emergency seriously. 

They should be coming forward incorporating our rail-based solutions and delivery mapping in a timely manner 2030 not 2050!

People can join ERTA and swell our active ranks. People can write to their MP's, any 5+ letters and they are mandated to act apparently and join our Guildford Forum on Saturday 29th October 1pm at the Rodborough: https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/pubs/all-pubs/england/surrey/the-rodboro-buildings-guildford

If you want more and better, join us, help us, offer to serve and assist. It can be done if we can get enough reliable people involved, holding councils and candidates to account - what can THEY DO? They need to audit the blockages and find/study solutions. They need to pool agencies, other councils and tap into grants to invest in case-making studies to take the projects to next stages of Network Rail's GRIP and DfT Reopen Railways Grants to advance the candidacy and have development policies tailored to inform pro-affirma re-railing. I don't under-estimate the challenges, but do also feel alongside that, the problems conceived or actual can be seen as a looming shadow, when the reality is more straight-forward and less daunting.

Please give us your support: https://ertarail.co.uk/

Electrification of the North Downs Line would bring footfall and spend to Guildford from South London/East Croydon by a direct Thameslink inclusion semi fast, leaving interim stations for the Reading-Gatwick shuttle to serve, which - given the sea of third rail - should be pragmatically done as an infill engineering rectification for efficiency, not debates and no action on hydrogen, greening or default status, unsatisfactory quo. Likewise, Guildford Station - we get mixed feeds of 'loads of spare capacity' and 'lacks capacity for more services'. Which is it? But in any case, the restored rail link to Horsham would enable a train to deliver and off-load, run onto somewhere else, clearing the platforms for other services. Currently, coming in, unless you're heading North Downs or Portsmouth, standing idle at Guildford blocks that other access. More land, more sidings, more reopenings is the way to go if rail market share is to increase, reducing congestion. More roads just deliver more congestion, pollution and harms the public. https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/33/2/160/1591440?login=false Food for thought! But there's big money and influence at every level and so the log-jam of people having more alternative choices needs breaking and enabling choice more and people to walk free of locked-in dependency, however luring.