It is jobs, it is environmentally friendly, it is efficiency, it is what the Northern Powerhouse should be about in support and delivery terms, not roads! Give them your support too please. GB Plc needs re-railing Mr Grayling please! Burscough Curves should be enabled to be put back as a part of planned routine maintenance, not a special condition taking decades amidst competing schemes. The framework and system of the railways, private or public, should allow reinstatement to be done as part of routine maintenance and engineering by Network Rail or other agency and income can be accrued from track access charges or auctioning of paths by passenger and/or freight users potentially.
The builder should also be allowed to make common cause with operators to ensure usage takes place and optimally. Alas where's the rail media when you need it, where is the getting down to grassroots and shouting the case for it not drowing out on main line and cone nosed trains proliferations and handing back the keys thereof! The Northern Power House must put rail expansion and reopenings top of its priorities. It is jobs, it is environment, it is efficiency, it is transport choice, it is re-railed Britain - the long standing deficit and fragmentation which is holding potential back and locking in road-pollution-congestion-oil dependency mainia costing the earth and many human lives one way or another. What can give, what can take?
To reform the framework to enable people just to get on with it would be a open door step in the right direction surely? Instead it is heavy going getting tracks back and many an arm chair critic, stifling the small people, proud in their status as pontificators - it is a misplaced pride. Small and incremental is the grassroots renaissance this country needs - you establish the principle or model and block replicate with local adjustments of fit and relevance. Peak Rail, Woodhead, Harrogate-Ripon-Northallerton, Keswick, York-Beverley, East Lincs Main Line and a number of others. Toll motorways and trunk roads if you need to inform a pot of money, encourage and nurture modal shift, get freight back on the rails. Hull-Liverpool land bridge Europe/North Sea - Atlantic/The World! Brexit or not, these curves would play a key role in unlocking more journeys by rail and boosting local communities in footfall and spend minus the cars and urban parking demand argie-bargie many towns and shoppers face for example. Worthy of support!
http://www.grandnorthern.co.uk/#
https://www.southportvisiter.co.uk/news/southport-news/burscough-curves-not-reinstated-west-6599184
Write to your local MP c/o House of Commons, Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA.
Support Coop Rail - a strategic service and link if given half a chance!
http://www.go-op.coop/train/
About Me
- British Regional Transport Association (BRTA)/Richard Pill
- Bedford, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom
Sunday, 4 February 2018
Saturday, 3 February 2018
Bedford-Northampton Rail Link Rebuild is Vital and should be central plank policy!
ERTA is seeking more members and volunteers and
even as we have grown, still need a lot of diverse skills, time and talent
geographically and locally flexible to cover our front lines and commitments.
One need we have is for a single or pool of talent to inform website
development.
All enquiries or offers to my colleague Mr Simon
Barber: T. 0208 940 4399,
E. simon4barber@gmail.com You can keep abreast of
our main thrusts via our Blogspot which is updated regularly https://ertarailvolunteer.blogspot.co.uk/
In Bedford the vested interest of popularism, vote
catching and London centricity regards the calls by us for Bedford-Northampton
and even East-West Rail as periphery and non-accommodation in even more than a
cursory glance relegates to the side-lines ERTA and it's fight for the majority
of less well-off people disenfranchised from London commuting and who want and
need diversification, wider options and to be able to succinctly choose
'other'.
What our friends who are dismissive need to realise
that is if we open Bedford-Northampton we enable 2 trains per hour to clear
tracks off Bedford Midland Station, allowing other trains to call. Likewise,
2-3 or more will go on to Corby. But I doubt if 5 trains per hour will all go
to Corby? Midland Main Line fasts will call if capacity and business warrant it
to make it appealing - any competition for platform access contrast easier for
more like Luton Airport and Bedford could lose out. Stations north of Bedford -
something our predecessor organisations called for over 30 years of silence,
are now being included along with development of 000's of houses but direct
live in countryside, make it urbanised, a shop maybe and a station for London
and not much else is the way it is. Wixams is the model forerunner of new
development on the cheap contrast proper towns and villages with comprehensive
modern, civilised services from public lavatories to post offices, to services,
health and so on. Section 106 gets you a few metres of cycle path and a school,
maybe a community centre for bad times and elections, the Church is privatised
and left to find its own way to establish a base - mission and pastoral
support. Reality is that life can be more complex and these dumping of
dwellings into a vacuum seems naive and a recipe for distress and lostness?
So, our rail schemes are relevant to connect people
and give options outside just a London focus or "I'm an academic who wants
to commute to X location without changing" translating to a whole plank of
a campaign purported to represent many others. Yes we need fast services up and
down the Midland Main Line and yes Government approach is chaotic, inadequate
and unfair but we have to have a joined up, coherent, cohesive, integrated and
diverse plans for the whole of what is needed, not just partisan or parochial
interests vying akin to a creche for individual attention x however many there
are relative to micro-managing civil servants at the Department for Transport
who themselves are under the Treasury and it - a seemingly unknown quantity for
power, reach, range and where does the buck stop, not Theresa May surely?!
ERTA continues to be a still small voice and seeks
to relate that it is in Midland Main Line interests to have
Bedford-Northampton, it is in Milton Keynes' interests to support
Bedford-Northampton and it is definitely in Northampton's interest to be linked
to Midland Main Line, Bedford, Luton Airport and East-West Rail at Bedford via
Olney. If only they all realised, bought into that and worked with us, we could
unitedly pull for a better Bedford and sustainable transport future to build
quality jobs and prosperity not austerity. Currently Bedford, I feel is being
systematically marginalised, it has a caring, retail, warehouse, coffee shop
and charity sector economy and needs to raise its game on quality, quantity and
the redistribution of wealth to make a more inclusive and even-handed society.
Please support us and help us. Our events are open to all and your support may encourage others to snowball our ideas towards those who have the means and ways to make a go of things. Thank you.
Friday, 2 February 2018
Rebuild the Great Central South of Leicester. Coming off the Leicester-Nuneaton line you serve Lutterworth, link with West Coast Main Line
Rebuild the Great Central South of Leicester. Coming
off the Leicester-Nuneaton line you serve Lutterworth, link with West Coast
Main Line*:
a. At
Rugby (on-off links) *Do you use the old Midland line from Leicester where the
two lines crossed each other for Rugby ground level access?
b. Loop
to link with the Northampton loop for Rugby/Northampton direct to Leicester
service capability on one core line.
c. Loop
to link Daventry/Southam – shared Park and Ride Station? New town proposed for
Calvert as part of East-West Rail. Links onwards with Chiltern Lines, Old Oak
Common, Heathrow and elsewhere/vice versa.
d. The
fast line via Catesby Tunnel (needs saving from development blockages),
Woodford Halse (deviation needed to avoid housing), Brackley (new rail bypass
needed), Calvert (HS2 needs to ensure it can get in). It may take 10-20 years
to reverse stupid planning encroachments and devastations, but if a large
backer/consortium buys into the idea, studies it and makes the case problems
can be overcome pro-affirmatively.
The Benefits:
a. New
railway using old trackbed in part, creates capacity end to end of Midland Main
Line south of Leicester,
b.
Creates capacity onto and off the West Coast Main Line at Rugby – enter via the
north, exit via the south and loop round via grade separated junctions.
c. Can be
used for a variety of long and short conventional passenger and freight
workings.
d. Can be
designed and engineered to cater for new and experimental freight flows like
Roll-on, Roll-off, Piggyback and Motor-Rail as well as more capacity for
growth. Blisworth freight depot, a pre-planning condition should be that it
invests in reopening Northampton-Bedford to keep its freight off the busy West
Coast Main Line, currently these developers have no guidance or incentive to
make that contribution, and they should.
Join ERTA
The English Regional
Transport Association (ERTA) is a voluntary pro-public transport group which
started originally in Bedfordshire in 1997 and has grown in reach and range to
apply principles on coherent networks and foster conditions of access and
service to suite a wide and diverse range of customers. We advocate passenger
and freight by rail, unblocking our roads and improving air quality we all have
to breathe!
Our association is
membership based and membership welcome is extended to all supporters. Please
fill in the form and send with remittance to: Membership Secretary:
Mr Simon Barber, 20
Fitzherbert House, Kingsmead, Richmond, Surrey, TW10 6HT
Let's have it for Guildford-Horsham-Shoreham-Brighton reopening railway please!
Dear Councillors and MP's,
The long established trend of commuting into and out of Central London and the issues of over-crowding, price managing supply and demand and the lifestyle patterns it creates in daily drive-time and parking/accessing rail means in a context of growth we need more capacity at every stage. The downside of the equation is that the London commute for a 100 mile radius of the M25 tends to dominate most other considerations and beshadow non London centric aspirations, informing more choice and diversity.
The English Regional Transport Association (ERTA) is a small voluntary association seeking the progressive and systematic re-railing of the English Regions - Celtic fringes like Scotland are forging ahead with reopening the Borders line and Wales with the West Wales lines, but the English Regions have been lagging behind in delivery terms. Where are the queues of entrepreneurs and railway building companies to gag for reconstruction? Private or Public or combinations these elements need a glue to bring them together and focus them on tangible results - delivery being a key plank surely?
The current proposal of a direct conventional rail link into Heathrow is a laudable aim, giving direct rail access from the Guildford-Woking lines into Heathrow with obvious public transport off road benefits and freeing up parking for other users. https://heathrowrail.
Likewise, we support the new build of the Guildford-Cranleigh-Horsham line which would enable direct trains to link round to Gatwick from the South. A deviation would be required at Cranleigh, but better that than a road bypass! Likewise from Christ's Hospital to Shoreham informing a joined up Guildford-Brighton direct railway which could relieve the Brighton Main Line, offer more journey by rail opportunities and declutter urban areas, rural roads and free up parking capacity through more choice and options. As attached map indicates, Oxford and Heathrow-Brighton via Guildford would draw in significant footfall and spend minus the volumes of traffic places without rail choices suffer beit daily movements or seasonal booms and slumps.
We are hoping to have a Forum and welcome any support to advocate these ideas, invest in studies and case making and advance them with potential interests once the business case is made and it seems full of potential if only delivery vehicles can be forthcoming/sourced and found to be partners with a commitment from consortia orchestrated by Local Government and LEPs and such agencies as may wish to be involved please.
REOPENINGS FORUM – SATURDAY 26 MAY, 1.00pm food and social, 2.00-4.00pm business,The Lynd Cross Weatherspoons,St John’s House,1 Springfield Road, Horsham, West Sussex, RH12 2PG, 01403 272393. If you would like to receive a delegated meeting to discuss working together further please contact my colleagues Messrs Simon Barber and David Ferguson who I am sure will gladly work with any pro-affirma interest in advancing these ideas and getting others on board. Mr Simon Barber: T. 0208 940 4399, E. simon4barber@gmail.com Mr David Ferguson: T. 020 8977 4181 E. daferguson1212@gmail.com
Yours sincerely,
Richard Pill
ERTA Campaigns Coordinator
Note too: RHS Wiseley will and does attract huge visitors and is close to the Woking line - so capturing market share for rail makes environmental sense, ditto a joined up through track from Woking-Heathrow - Old Oak Common and the Chiltern Main Line - not just chaging and using Crossrail which is London centric. We must foster diversity and choice options more: https://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley
Local News Article worthy of a perusal - Re-Railing Mr Grayling please! https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guildford-horsham-railway-line-reopen-13970405Note too: RHS Wiseley will and does attract huge visitors and is close to the Woking line - so capturing market share for rail makes environmental sense, ditto a joined up through track from Woking-Heathrow - Old Oak Common and the Chiltern Main Line - not just chaging and using Crossrail which is London centric. We must foster diversity and choice options more: https://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley
Thursday, 1 February 2018
The Milton Keynes Strategic Position and Transport Dilemma
Dear Councillors and Colleagues,
The 50th anniversary of Milton Keynes, the advent of the English Economic Heartlands, the SEMLEP, East-West Rail on-coming and the growth of footfall, reach, range and diversity should indicate we need to have a robust rail system to cater for all this socio-economic activity and the weight on the landscape and environment which affects us all sooner or later. The reality is that there is little spare capacity between Rugby and Watford on the West Coast Main Line and so we have a queue of trains seeking more access to Milton Keynes Central but which cannot e.g.
1. West London Southern's restricted to 1 per hour rather than half hourly frequency due to no spare paths. Surely given the popularity of contra commuting to Milton Keynes via the Central Station should put it at the front of the queue for and were any spare paths available for a half hourly frequency? Yet it has been waiting for years! MK Central lacks baying facilities commensurate to the number of trains seeking access to it and sitting on the through tracks of Platform 2 blocks access by other trains.
2. Others seeking paths to MK Central are the Bedford-Bletchley out of Platform 5 at Bletchley to MK Central for Virgin connections. Ideas of the Holyhead express trains stopping at Bletchley to give the area back some express services which have inevitably led to decline in status and connectivity remain just ideas unless there's a tabling of such at meetings and explorations of what can give or take to spread the wealth, the load and opportunities more, without robbing Peter to pay Paul so to speak. East-West Rail will want to access MK Central via the flyover at Bletchley from Aylesbury. Northampton Councils now table the idea of a Northampton-MK-Old Oak Common/Crossrail north-south service over East-West Tracks.
In short if these goals are to be achieved you have to create more capacity on the West Coast Main Line, you have to support alternative route options and loops commensurate to creating the slack required alongside port-London freight and so on. Something has got to give.
3. On freight, there was a view that with the East-West Rail Central Section (Bedford-Sandy-Cambridge) you could send Felixstowe - West Midlands freight via that route to the Midland Main Line through Bedford via St John's and via a curve south at Leicester to West Midlands and other destinations and vice versa. That would take a considerable amount of freight trains which currently go into, across and out of London, through MK Central to elsewhere, paths and capacity which could be used by other passenger and freight by rail services.
The reality is that apart from a need to install a road bridge over the railway corridor at Cardington Road, Bedford, the trackbed for a rail link east of Bedford is distinguishable for 4.5 out of 10 miles east of Bedford St John's. 20 years ago Steer Davis Gleave looked at all the routes and options and little has changed since then except what nature and man does incrementally if nothing is happening. Fallow is not a static situation, whims and winds of developer eye and aspiration fuel the drive to develop and that can impact on landscapes. In 1993 the Inspector at Side Roads Order 199 Bedford Southern A421 Bypass said that in the event of pursuit of reopening the railway the DfT/Highways Authority would give favourable consideration to providing rail access over or under the said bypass. It is time to call their bluff and demand that this is the time to do so as now, unlike then, there's a consensus for reopening the railway.
4. Bedford-Olney-Northampton would benefit Milton Keynes by:
a. providing a loop between Northampton-Bedford-Bletchley/
b. By offerring seats to commuters at Olney/A509/A428 areas, freeing up parking and seats at MK Central and Bedford respectively
c. allowing some non-time critical trains to traverse the loop created, freeing up more paths at MK Central.
If you allow piecemeal housing or other development to encroach the Handley Alignment or block as to be beyond recovery the two sides of the railway east and west of Olney Northern Perimeter, you throw away and lock in a set of dysfunctional aspects which in a context of growth will compound rather than cure. The railway would enable more options on east-west freight, feed East-West Rail with more business and cut unnecessary road driving milages making commuting and drive time closer to home. We need your support and action to save the day on this one which includes:
a. stopping current and future development
b. studying a recoverable railway route and station access and parking site and protecting it as a greenbelt
c. getting Bedford and Northampton to a table and agreeing a common route policy of protection and support to the principle of reopening sooner or later
d. investing via English Economic Heartlands or other collective agency contributions to studying the case and credentials for example to go from Northampton-Bedford by rail via Bletchley takes 1.5 hours and costs about £20, No. 41 bus takes same amount of time but costs about £6. The railway would transit Northampton-Bedford in just 30 minutes, Olney commuting options with more visitors, footfall and spend reviving the ailing town economy on a sustainable basis. It is therefore much in Milton Keynes' interest to support Bedford-Northampton strategically please and grow a coalition of support to take it onwards akin to how the East-West Rail Consortium has done. Even if an afterthought, unless we crack the Olney conundrum, and act now, it will be lost.
More information about ERTA can be found on our Blogspot: https://
I attach a flyer which explains some more and a map showing what is where in basic conceptual terms. Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Pill
ERTA
Saturday, 27 January 2018
Bedford Borough Councillors Notebook
Dear Councillors,
The charm and psychological break on a sunny day by walking along the river or in a park lends itself to untainted and unspoilt landscapes and development must be in-keeping with such.
Bedford is well positioned on the edge of 3 regions and must command the transport to nurture a diversity of nodic access and radial commutes not just London fixations.
1. Bedford-Northampton: the debate on the Save Our Trains Campaign rumbles on but what Midland Main Line needs is a plan and means and ways to nurture it. Secretary of State for Transport seems to have run out of money and hence a hard sell on bi-modes rather than a comprehensive electrification. So some lobbying of the Treasury is needed to secure our place in the queue whilst at the same time councils and other bodies of influence would do well to work together to nurture diversity. Bedford-Northampton if rebuilt would remove 2 Thameslinks off the rails per hour to Northampton, freeing up access paths otherwise blocked at Bedford by trains idling. We lack capacity and need to reconfigure the tracks for more platform space, more baying, and to ensure trains from East and West come and link with Bedford Midland (passenger-wise) and Midland Main Line (freight-wise). Bedford-Northampton would give local people more work-commute and less cost options both ways and lend more footfall and spend to both town centres - both of which are ailing - minus the traffic, congestion, land use parking demand and cost management. Free for all with inadequate capacity sends a wrong signal for polluted air pedestrians have to breathe and hazards of rat runs pedestrians and cyclists have to endure currently. It may only be peak time but are we making the most of what the bypass lends to?
ERTA is tabling a committee and welcomes councillors to get involved or set their own up and invite us to have a say, rather than ignore or marginalise us when getting these things sorted is critical for the well being of the town we all take an interest in.
2. No. 7 Bus. Today I waited from ten to 13.00 until 13.30 - one bus had broken down and driver or manager never turned up to tell us. Moreover the Optare Buses are 20 years old, are clapped out and need bigger buses and replacing. Lots of people use the No. 7 during daytime and peak time and we need more seating as many are elderly, women with buggies or a wheelchair and walla 3 seats are gone and another 8 including the pick up at St Paul's and everyone else has to sit at the back or stand. Likewise substituting the X5 coach with double deckers is a regular occurrence and the coaches need the inside windows to be cleaned as they get smeared with breathe patches meaning people cannot see out much. Grant Palmer Buses are a mixed bag experience. Nil RTI screen at the town stop opposite the St Michael's Road/Kimbolton Road shelter, means unlike for example Morrisons coming into town, people do not know when they are coming. Punctuality is patchy, cleanliness could be better. It needs someone getting out of the office, usuing them and identifiying these sorts of issues making for a more joined up, comprehensive and accessible bus experience across the whole town, not just pockets. Could for example the Grant Palmer Tesco Shopper service not return via Longholme Way, serve the Aspects Centre en route to town centre either via the Embankment giving it a service or Castle Road, giving them more options? We need to also consider the return of buses to Tavistock Street, a stop outside the Tavistock Arms Carvery/Sainsbury's would be useful and the potted bushes outside Sainbury's which double up as litter and drunken urine pots, could be replaced with cycle racks and maybe just one proper tree planted? Likewise the path from Chandos Street to the Roff Avenue Zebra Crossing should be made up to a proper consistent pathway for pedestrians and cyclists. It is a popular thoroughfare but a mud track only in places, paths go east-west, but not joined up north-south. For about 20 yards of tarmac, it could boost the area.
Please work with us for small but incremental improvements. There's always more, but are we improving what we have and making it more inclusive, accessible and comprehensive for a town-wide choice more to just car-legs and travel. CPZ and a one way system for St Michael's Road would ease the parking issues and stand-off crisis especially day and evenings. We need stimulous to elected representatives to do something, beit opposition or just consulting people meaningfully. If we can do CPZ on a case by case basis for Pemberley and Oaklands roads, we surely could do St Michael's whether surrounding streets or cheque-book influence disagrees.
Finally, as China isn't willing to take our recycling, could we consider a recycling centre served by rail at Forders Sidings near Stewartby on the Marston Vale Railway? It could serve both Bedford and Central areas and create a load of sustainable jobs. Currently it is sitting disused awaiting destruction, what a waste of an asset? Hitchin has a glass collection scheme which is mounted up and goes by rail to a glass recycling centre. Forders could do the same on a regional receive, sort and send basis as well as on-site processing from paper to cars, fridges to bottles and all in between.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Pill
ERTA Area Rep.
If having read this you agree and wish to reinforce it, please politely email or contact via this link: http://www.councillorsupport.bedford.gov.uk/mgCommitteeMailingList.aspx?ID=0
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