Dear All,
The British Regional Transport Association (BRTA) is
voluntary and belongs to all its members and a growing membership is exactly
what we need to enable more and better along with reliable volunteering.
We want a government supported programme of local rail
reopenings on a nationwide basis. This does not necessarily require new money,
but a switch from spending £billions on new and upgraded roads, which is a
hiding to nowhere. Rail offers more and lowers costs. Modal choice enables
alternative transport to the cost of car and other vehicle dependency cultures.
Walking, cycling, bus and in urban areas, Light Rapid Transit (LRT)/Trams in
old words, can play a role in informing environmentally friendly modal shift
from road to rail. The continent never got rid of their trams and they have a
head-start in developing their networks. In Great Britain, the post-war
closures robbed successive generations, places, communities, land use and the
environment of genuine clean rail-based choices. Now demand for rail is up and
the wanton failure to protect old railway routes, to fail to keep new-build
corridors protected and have a programme for progressively re-railing urban,
rural and inter-urban rails means locked-in roads-based agendas, polluting
communities, informing bloated NHS waiting lists and getting ever slower as
volumes of road-based operations grind to a halt. This is not growth or the
best Great Britain can do; rather is lazy, lack-lustre and pandering to quick
fixes, rather than doing the right thing. Pluralism x Pluralism = More
Pluralism; knowing from historical roots of foundational infrastructure
rectification systemic issues, enables a springboard to targetedly address key
issues; noticeably here to “bring back out tracks and trains” Walking, cycling,
and bus can do a role, but do not handle bulk people and goods on the same
rail-based infrastructure. Seaside resorts need re-railing, to bring
sustainable footfall and spend minus the land use parking demand intrusions.
Likewise, as rail demand rises and route become congested/overcrowded;
duplicate routes are needed. One example is Gloucester – Hereford, which would
link Reading and all points to Shrewsbury ‘not via Birmingham’ creating paths
for existing lines to have more passenger and freight using them as well as
serve the des-res tourist hotspot of Ross-on-Wye. BRTA is calling for a study
to shore up credentials and route protection to keep options open. The
government must not push down money to Local Levels as per cheese to a grater
lost in pluralism agendas, rather, if money is delegated downwards, the
government must specify and have a switch of agendas to local rail; the Climate
Emergency, Public Health, Land use stewardship and the environment is crying
out for that systemic change. It must be nationwide. Policy, Planning and agenda
resourcing must reflect and rectify the deficit of rail.
BRTA can readily identify some examples, there’s probably
more. The process was good with Restore Your Railway scheme, albeit grossly underfunded.
The system is too long, complicated and expensive for lay people and
complicated maths, deters both aspiration and bothering, leaving worthy
potential to the winds of profit before people, laissez-faire and those who
targetedly seem to hold a grudge against supporting, funding and work to
achieve better rail outcomes.
Please help BRTA achieve its aims; the wellbeing of the
nation desperately needs it!
Yours sincerely,
Richard Pill, BRTA CEO
https://brtarailvolunteer.blogspot.com/ and https://brtarail.com/our-campaigns/
