letter to government

Committee member and Wessex Links Ltd director has just fired off this excellent letter to Justine Greening, Minister of Transport. Perhaps all of us that are desperate for the S&D to return should follow his example?

Rt Hon. Justine Greening MP

Secretary of State for Transport

Department for Transport

Great Minster House

33 Horseferry Road

LONDON

SW1P 4DR                                                                                         22 March 2012

Last week I had to make a round business trip to Bath from my home near Bournemouth. I was horrified to find that there was no satisfactory way of making this journey by train so I had to drive. The round trip took me five hours at an average speed of 31 mph. This slow progress was not just due to traffic density but mainly the fact that there is no decent road link along this common route. Apart form a few mainly single carriageway bypasses, the roads have not really changed since the Second World War. So I had to struggle over this increasingly third world road network filling the air with my expensive exhaust fumes; and yet one relatively simple solution sits there, apparently ignored.

Until the mid 1960’s there was an excellent rail service between Bournemouth and Bath/Bristol, the Somerset and Dorset Railway. This was one of the many lines closed by the now infamous Beeching cuts, despite the fact that it was a socially important and profitable main line.

Remarkably and fortunately, 95% of the old track bed still exists. Of course some of the bridges have been removed and small parts of the track bed have been built over but most of the civil engineering infrastructure is there and could easily be reused. Compared to grandiose controversial schemes like HS2 and motorway construction, the reinstatement of this railway would be relatively simple and cheap with enormous transport benefits. With the economic Armageddon of “peak oil” staring us in the face it is well established that the most energy efficient way of transporting goods and people is by electrically powered metal wheels on metal rails. Yet we grind on with our love affair of road transport whilst simultaneously penalising people for doing so via the tax system; and this is supposed to be a transport policy?

Incredibly, there is an organisation dedicated to the reinstatement of this valuable rail link, The New Somerset and Dorset Railway, and a holding company, Wessex Link Ltd, set up to administer this railway if it can be revived. Yet this is a tiny organisation with very small resources that would probably take decades to achieve its stated ends. We in this country do not have decades! The Prime Minister has already made it clear that he does not think our transport system is fit for the purposes of a 21^st century competitive western economy and your colleague Norman Baker MP has publically stated that it is a well-established Liberal Democrat policy to reopen many old railway lines. Our inadequate transport system is starting to seriously hold us back economically just at the time when out economy needs all the help it can get.

Of course, not all the pre Beeching cuts lines needed to have been kept open, but many should have been and now desperately need to be reopened, including the Somerset and Dorset line. The project would obviously first require an engineering and business feasibility study, but whilst this is totally beyond the means of the embryonic New Somerset and Dorset Railway, this would be relatively small beer to the Department for Transport as well as falling under the remit of what the Department should be addressing.

I have seen you interviewed on television a few times in recent months and you have made some sensible, non-partisan decisions. Consequently I would urge you Minister, in contrast to the usual partisan slogans we have endured from previous governments, to initiate something that will make an impact and a huge practical difference to the lives and businesses of the people in Dorset, Somerset and Avon; look at reopening the Somerset and Dorset Railway, preferably in a time frame measurable in months rather than decades. We need it and, if we are to compete in the modern world, time is short.

views from bournemouth west

If you happen to live in the Bournemouth West constituency and haven't decided who to vote for yet, Anna-Jayne Metcalfe has asked the candidates a few questions on the most important issue.

Alasdair Murray [alasdair@alasdairmurray.net] (LD)

"We will implement the largest expansion of the rail network since the Victorian era and undo many of the cuts made by Beeching as well as support the roll out of high speed rail links. This will be paid for by cutting funding from the major roads budget, much of which is used for motorway widening and hard shoulder running projects, and redirecting it into rail."

Question: Can you confirm whether the LD rail re-openings commitment includes the reopening of the lines from Bournemouth to Bath and Ringwood to Brockenhurst?

"I know we are committed to the Ringwood line but I would need to check on the Bath link (i would say it is fairly likely though)."


Conor Burns [conor@localconservatives.com] (Con)

"On high speed rail, we have one of the most comprehensive policies of all the major parties and will begin work immediately on a high speed rail line connecting London and Heathrow with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, with construction beginning in 2015, as the first step towards our vision of a national network joining up cities across England, Scotland and Wales. Stage two will deliver two new lines bringing the North East, Scotland and Wales into our high speed rail network. In addition we will support crossrail and the electrification of the Great Western line to South Wales and introduce a moratorium on building on disused rail lines."


Question: I would ask whether you will support re-opening secondary routes such as the direct line from Bournemouth to Bath?

No answer to that one yet.


No response whatsoever from Labour or UKIP.

what to ask your candidates ...

The election will soon be over, and it's doubtful much will change.

But if you are lucky enough to get some prospective candidates on your doorstep why not ask the following questions ...

What are your party's views on peak oil?

What is your party's transport priority?

Do you believe the current road budget should be transferred for the reinstatement of railways?

and, most importantly

Will your party support the reinstatement of the Somerset and Dorset Railway (or your own local routes if you live outside our area)?

politics

(Both Instow 14.5.1985)

Don't you just HATE politicians? I remember when we used to get regular visits by them at Midsomer Norton. They were all spectacularly clueless, thinking of MN as a 'tourist attraction' rather than as a supremely important piece of transport infrastructure. Both Labour and Tories conspired to destroy the original S&D. They must think we have very short memories!

I've no interest in the coming general election, whoever wins the rest of us lose.

But of course things happily progress without politics, and whoever is in power will make little difference to the progress of the New S&D. The three 'main' parties all live in the past, thinking that economic 'growth' will benefit us all. The Green Party are a total shambles, having let the hard left take them over their environmental policies are now just hot air. They don't even mention Peak Oil in their communications, betting their whole future on 'Global Warming'. I suspect that inside they know that Peak Oil will trounce Global Warming but if they start telling the truth they will no longer have a purpose. In fact the only party that does mention Peak Oil is the BNP! And as spent forces go they are even more spectacularly emasculated than the Greens!

But the wider picture is affected by politics and the following is a piece by Christian Woolmar, who needs no introduction!

Although the Tories’ lead in the opinion polls is faltering, it is still worth examining their transport policies since it is highly likely they will have role in government after the next election, even if they do not win it outright (my prediction actually).

They have promised to issue a policy on railways over the next few weeks, although don’t hold your breath. Chris Grayling, Theresa Villiers’ predecessor as shadow transport spokesman initiated a whole rail review with vertical integration at its heart which never saw the light of day because he could not get it past his boss David Cameron.

More recently, however, it has become clear that the commitment to vertical integration has been dropped. The Tories are keen to avoid the sort of upheaval to the railways that they caused last time they were in government and have retreated from that position, arguing instead they would like the rail companies to work more closely together, without specifying how this could be brought about.

The one big idea that has emerged from Tory thinking, announced at the Party Conference in September, was, of course, the promise to scrap any plans for a third runway at Heathrow and, instead, build a high speed line between London and the North. This is a remarkable turnaround for the Conservatives and on the face of it quite brave. Actually the announcement conflates two very important policies – one a cut, the other a commitment – and it will be far easier to deliver the first rather than the second.

Certainly the policy of abandoning a third runway at Heathrow will not be too difficult to follow through. It is a proposal that is unpopular with vast swathes of Londoners, and only a section of the business lobby supports it. The Labour notion that expanding airport capacity in London is essential to keep air fares down, and therefore enabling the poor to fly, is quite simply ludicrous. It is highly dubious whether London needs any extra airport capacity if the cost of flying increases which, despite the current low oil prices, is highly likely with the imposition of environmental taxes and the inevitable return to high oil prices. The argument that the number of passengers flying in and out of the UK is bound to keep on rising because it has done so at a constant rate of around 3 per cent annually since the war is an arithmetical, not an economic one.

Therefore not many people would shed tears over scrapping the scheme, although there is one interesting rail-related side issue. How much of the case for Crossrail, which the Tories support, is dependent on continued growth at Heathrow? Even more pertinently, there must be serious doubts over whether BAA still be willing to lob in a quarter of a billion pounds towards the cost of Crossrail if the third runway does not get built.

While the third runway will, I am convinced, never happen, nor will the Tories’ promise to build a high speed line ever be fulfilled in the way set out by Ms Villiers. Read the small print and you will find that there is no commitment in the Tory plan for any new finance for the high speed line. Rather, she has promised that for a dozen years starting in 2015 she will take £1.3bn out of existing rail funding, about a quarter of Network Rail’s budget, in order to finance the line. The remaining £4.4bn of the £20bn cost would have to come from the private sector

£20bn would only pay for the first bit of a line which, bizarrely, Ms Villiers wants to route through Birmingham and Manchester to Leeds, which may give a useful service in the North but is hardly likely to rival the East Coast between London and Leeds.

Actually such details are irrelevant. Frankly, at this distance all this is as likely as a hippopotamus being sent to Mars. The costings are mere vague guesses, the route is completely unknown, the relative costs of different travel modes are in a state of flux and there would have to be a huge planning enquiry. It is easy for politicians to promise things which will happen after two elections, since they certainly will not be around in their present posts to see them through. Ministers and shadow ministers have a low life expectancy. And so many events could get in the way. However, that said, it was brilliant politics on the part of the Tories and certainly put Labour on the back foot – so expect a response from Lord Adonis which will trump the Tory plan before the next election.

It is possible to glean a few further thoughts from Tory thinking. They have clearly said that they want less interference from the Department for Transport and have also mused that franchise lengths might be lengthened. Again, though, the details will be important. There is a problem about lengthening franchises without some way of disciplining poorly performing train operators which would amount to further interference. While no one would support maintaining the existing system, there is also a question mark, too, over whether train operators would take on the added risk of trying to guess revenue levels in, say, 15 years time, without charging a premium for taking it on.

Nevertheless, it is welcome that the Tories do seem to be about to come out with a strategy for the railways, something that has been absent since they went into opposition over a decade ago (remember John Redwood and rubber tyred trains, surely the nadir of Tory thinking). However, in one part of the Britain, a Tory transport policy is being enacted and there are few signs of anything positive.

That area, of course, is London where Boris Johnson has now had six months in which to impose himself as mayor after eight years of Ken Livingstone’s administration. It is only over the past month that anything concrete has emerged and the signs are bad. First Mr Johnson scrapped a whole lot of proposed transport schemes including several rail ones such as the Cross river tram linking Peckham with Camden Town, the extension of the Croydon Tramlink to Crystal Palace and the Docklands Light Railway extension to Dagenham Dock. Mayor Johnson’s argument was that these schemes were unfunded and therefore there was no point spending money on working them up but these schemes represented a hope that things would get better. Moreover, the DLR has been shown to be excellent value for money, with a series of previous extensions all coming up on time and on (very modest) budget.

Then Mr Johnson, announcing the funding available to the boroughs from the mayoral budget, cut back on the cycling budget in favour of money to rephase traffic lights. Various schemes to improve junctions in favour of pedestrians have also gone out of the window. Most important, he appears to have ditched the accepted hierarchy of road users, which is to favour pedestrians, then cyclists, then public transport users and finally motorists. All modes should be treated equally, he argues, which is to accept inherently the present position that favours car users. This bodes ill for the view that he is serious about continuing Livingstone’s strategy of trying to shift Londoners onto public transport, both rail and bus.

Rather than a clever cull, this looks like old Tory thinking. Kulveer Ranger, Mr Johnson’s transport adviser, rather gave the game away when, in a recent speech, he said that the administration was only going ahead with schemes to which it had been committed by the previous regime. That does suggest a total absence of strategy or vision.

Mr Johnson has shown remarkably little backbone and an ignorance of strategy because having a series of unfunded schemes on the stocks is a vital part of negotiating for funds from central government. Without them, there is no hope of any major improvement for decades ahead because if money suddenly becomes available, as it might in the downturn, then the cupboard is bare. That was bad politics, as well as being a pointer to true Tory thinking. Theresa Villiers, or her successor, will need to be very much stronger once the Tories are in power to resist similar pressure or else there will be rocky times for the railways.

Boris Johnson has real power and has made a series of executive decisions that reflect his policy. Ms Villiers is still in opposition and her words are just that. She has given some impressive speeches recently and seems to have a real commitment to her brief that was not apparent in her early days in the job. She is doing what transport politicians need to do, which is to articulate big ideas rather than, as Boris has done, retrench.

However, transport is an area which could be ripe for Tory cuts, in the same way that Boris has wielded the axe. There may be a gaping hole in rail finances by 2010 if the recession and the swingeing rail fare increases bite deep into passenger numbers. Train operators may be screaming for more money or throwing in the towel, which will blow a hole in Network Rail finances. Railways need more subsidy, not less, in a recession.

Given that the Tories have now said that they are abandoning the promise to stick to Labour’s spending plans, the key question is this: if they win the next election, will they adopt the Theresa Villiers or the Boris Johnson approach to transport infrastructure and investment on rail?