Government have created costly barriers to deter!

re: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crg66p74e62o

The demand by Government for feasibility studies upwards of £100, 000 to get started and demands for expensive and excruciating business cases at cost, delays, deters and defers all lay people and campaigners and unless someone somewhere, finds the money in a cost of living crisis and austerity, these projects never see the light of day.

We do need local rail solutions. We do need local rail reopenings as a catalyst to modal shift back from road to rail for more people and goods by rail, with multiple benefits like cutting congestion, freeing up parking spaces, cutting air pollution and improving and empowering the public with more choice, options and enablement.

So, what can give, what can take? We need a nationwide programme, region by region of local rail line reopenings. Devon has Bude, Tavistock, Bideford and Ilfracombe in the line-up, and Government, bearing in mind the savings of road wear and tear maintenance and greater efficiency of time-energy usage, let alone climate change issues, should be incentivising such local rail schemes and incentivising parcels companies like UPS, Royal Mail, FedEx, DPD, DHL to mention just a few - all need to be engaging with a nationwide switch policy and facilitation from road to rail, yet apart from the grand success of Varamis Rail: https://www.varamis.co.uk/ we are decades behind where we need to be in terms of infrastructure restoration, incentives, costs and enablement. Switching to rail means capital expenditure and the Government is treating it as a 'free market/laissez-faire' matter, not the public, environmental and general leadership matter. Would Opposition Parties be any better? Alas, from observing Labour responses to 'bads', that opposition is failing to show what it would do differently. To renationalise or not to renationalise and who pays, remain academic and media points of underlying debate, when like other aspects of life, we need bringing more to the forefront with 'this is what we will do...', rather than he said, she said and this is the result - chaos, mayhem, rising costs and barriers! 

Hope of interest. Our projects from a Northampton-Market Harborough rail link and that of Guildford-Horsham, along with Derby-Manchester via Matlock, Bakewell and Buxton/Chinley, need Government of any shade support and that absence and long-grassing into quangos who tell us PFI is the way to go (whenceforth does it come?), remains the 'devil in the detail' (Leviathan!)! We're going round and round, time is slipping by and resolution by default is roads and negativity, blight and unsustainable development without services and infrastructure.

BRTA, with your support, will continue to work to get progress, improvement and chip-by-chip keep all our wheels moving!

Here's possibly an example of where your money has gone?

Avanti Bosses: Hand back your taxpayer-funded bonuses 

To: Mark Harper, Secretary of State for Transport of the United Kingdom Andy Mellors, Managing Director at Avanti West Coast Petition text: Avanti West Coast managers have joked about receiving “free money” from the government and performance-related payments being “too good to be true”. They should hand back every penny in bonuses they have received at the taxpayers’ expense. Why is this important? Leaked slides from an internal Avanti West Coast presentation, whose services are notorious for disruption, delays, short-notice cancellations and overcrowding, show senior management at the operator calling taxpayer money “too good to be true”. Avanti is Britain’s worst performing rail company. Annual accounts show Graham Sutherland, the CEO of FirstGroup which owns Avanti, will be paid £1.1m including £682,000 in bonuses for 2023, while chief financial officer Ryan Mangold earned £3m, including £2.5m in bonuses. In 2022, Mr Mangold received £1.9m. Latest figures from the Office of Rail and Road statistics show Avanti cancelled 2,976 trains between April and November 2023, an average of more than 13 per day. Despite their poor performance, Avanti and Cross Country were rewarded with new long-term contracts by the Government in September. Not only are Avanti a poorly-run rail company, but they also find it funny to laugh at the daylight robbery they are getting away with. They should be made to pay back every penny in taxpayer-money they received as bonuses as punishment. https://act.38degrees.org.uk/act/avanti-bonuses