Great Western Coffee Shop

A (new) sticky thread for our "Campaigns for new and improved services" board ...

There are a number of campaigns across the area and we have covered many / most over the years - a very great deal of interesting and detailed content.   What, perhaps, we have been lacking at times is occasional summaries of each campaign for newcomers - the management overview.  I have written a handful of these up ... and noted others where threads could do with a "where are we - for newcomers" post. 

Please ...

1. If you are involved with one of these campaigns and are able to write a summary, please do so on the relevant thread - let me know and I can update the links

2. Please let me know of campaigns / projects that I should add here ... it's very hard to know where to draw lines ... quite happy to quietly add in those that I have missed in this quick initial post

Radstock (24th January 2019)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=20967.0

Patchway, Aztec West and Pilning. (3 December 2018)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=20784.0

Corsham. (27 November 2018)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=226.0

Southampton and Totton to Marchwood, Hythe and Fawley. (3 October 2019)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=10308.0

Redoubling / widening single line TransWits sections (29 November 2018)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=20765.0

Oxford to Bletchley, Bedford and Cambridge. (4 February 2020)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=1219.0

Tavistock. (10 February 2020)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=804.0

Okehampton. (16 January 2020)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=2338.0

Heathfield. (18 June 2018)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=804.0

Portishead. (16 January 2020)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=231.0

Minehead. (23 February 2020)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=17237.0

Alternative route to Plymouth. (11 February 2020)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=2338.0

From a Facebook post I made yesterday (https://www.facebook.com/groups/12135242142/?multi_permalinks=10156469672802143)


Challenged on the bit highlighted:


Answer ...


I post this in a general thread in a hopefully long-living resource to encourage reader who have a campaign and perhaps are new at it not to give up - but to look, analyse, and strengthen their cases from vague ideas to strong cases where all the big questions can be (and have been) addressed.

I can see your reasoing regarding not "defining the elephants," not least because if you were to fall for it with a given proposal someone with an overdose of confirmation bias would seek to discredit your misgivings.

However, it might be an idea to describe in general terms what those elephants in the room might be, for example:

Is there really sufficient potential traffic to justify the proposal? You might be confident there is but are you absolutely sure, and what is your evidence?

If reopening a wayside station on an existing line, is there sufficient track capacity to allow it? Where are the trains going to start and finish their journeys? Is there a facility for reversing trains there, and even if there is, is there enough capacity without expensive upgrades that will add directly to your costs?

What TOC would you plan to run the service and have they got sufficient coaching stock to provide it?

Come on - face real world reality. You might dearly want a train service, but in truth wouldn't a bus do the job equally as well and for a fraction of the cost?

There may well be othere ways to make proponents of schemes look more critically at their babies - these just came to mind immediately.

In general terms, I have a checklist of a dozen things to look at - published elsewhere (I'll need to search it out, or someone may have a link) and not unlike the lists of others, and with considerable overlap with what you have posted.  But not for me to take a project new to me and give an uninformed comment. Everyone's on the same team and a discussion behind the scenes can do wonders for the protagonists.  Helping towards a clearer course.

There is a simple answer to that question, which applies in all circumstances: No.

Comparing a train service to a bus service is like comparing an apple with a washing machine. Both are useful, and both have their place, but they belong to different categories.

OK.

So what would you say to those campaigning for the reopening of the Bude (pop. 10,000) to Okehampton line? Before you answer, remember that there would be 30-odd miles of railway to reinstate, including some land repurchase and rebuilding of bridges and viaducts, and the bus servoce between the two points is currently 2-hourly along roads that are generally empty except in the Summer peak?

You are both right.

A bus is never as good as a train (perhaps that is why the bus is generally empty), but in some cases reinstating the train would be prohibitively expensive.

I've taken a look for other projects which require(d) 30 miles of re-instatement to a town with a population of the 10,000 to 12,000 mark ... and I came up with the line to Galashiels which is about that length - a town which since the Beeching era had only been served by buses.   

From reports I've read, the trains have been doing quite well.  But not only the trains doing quite well, but also bringing real economic and social benefit to the area ...

Makes you think.  Not an exact comparison (these things never are) but it does indicate to me that Bude - taken looking at the opening up of the whole area the line runs through including Okehampton - may have rather more of a case than is suggested in some of the posts above.

Sticking my neck out. In addition to the comparison between rail and bus you could add bicycle. Now I don't mean lots of people suddenly getting on their bike.

But where you have a former railway line that has become an established bicycle route. Take the (on/off) idea of restoring the rail link to Cranleigh in Surrey. The route is currently part of the Downs Link from Guildford to Shoreham (Sussex).

How does somebody decide on the balance of benefits; passengers/cyclists, increase/decrease in local business, environmental issues etc.

Who decides, impartially? I believe that the current DfT WebTAG planning tool doesn't model either train or bike well.

Obviously I might have a different view to other members of the Forum.

and


With respect to Grahame's championing of Bude, I regret to say that Robin is correct. The reinstated line to Galashiels runs down into Edinburgh, with masses of potential (presumably now being realised) for commuter traffic into Scotland's capital as it passes through its southern suburbs and satellite towns . The Bude line would run into Okehampton, a town of 6000 odd people. The next nearest major employment centre with rail links is probably Exeter. Even if a full time train service between Exeter and Oakhampton was reinstated, I would guess it would take the best part of two hours to do the whole journey. I'd also guess that the largest place between Oakhampton and Bude is Holsworthy (population about 2700) - so not much potential to generate much traffic there either.

CyclingSid's example of Cranleigh again must be a much better bet. I believe most of the formation is still there, and it's a shortish journey to Guildford, which is a reasonable sized employment and retail centre, and trains could run onto Waterloo readily. There's probably a route capacity problem with St Catherine's tunnel just south of Guildford, but it would take traffic off the overloaded A281 into the town. Hopefully there's room for a cycleway alongside a reinstated single track railway, too.

I just asked questions and pointed to some comparators with, you will note, a comment that no two lines are the same.  I did not "champion" nor did I "rubbish".  Clearly, every single re-opening or service improvement proposal has positive and negative elements, which need to be carefully considered in a very wide sense - looking at the long term strategy for the area, for example, as well as current populations and transport.

I do not have the knowledge of North Cornwall, nor spatial development plans for the future there, to express an authoritative view which Robin and Eightonedee seem to be able to do. I do know that similar armchair concerns were expressed about the (quite different case) service to Melksham but then proven incorrect in time.  "I don't see how it will work" is fair enough ... "it won't work" shows either an expert authority or a degree of arrogance.

I ... err ... would be surprised if the railway to Bude were to be reopened, but then I've been surprised by some things in the past.

Andrew Adonis recently pointed out that the communities that lost their rail connections following the Beeching reports have suffered disproportionate decline, with young people and skilled workers moving away to better-connected areas.

A report by the Centre for Economic Performance suggests that the population of London would be nearly 9% lower had the rail cuts not taken place, yet we spend massive amounts on public transport  there whilst starving the rest of the country.

Putting back lost connections would be an investment. If we don't want large areas of the country to remain as underperforming backwaters, we need to pay up. There are no guarantees, but in the (pitifully few) cases where lines have been reopened the BCR has generally proven to be an underestimate.

I was just coming back to answer Graham's post from last night but I see that 81D has beaten me to it, mentioning all the salient points that I was about to make, save one.

Politics.

The Scottish Government wanted the Borders Line reopened, and where you have strong political backing for something it usually tends to happen. Meanwhile, our shower can't stump up the brass for a new line that the original GWR conceded needed to be built almost 90 years ago, an inland high speed route in South Devon bypassing Dawlish, which is the only way you will ever get trains running between Bodmin and Tiverton Parkways faster than the rail replacement buses can do it. And I very much suspect that line would have been built had it not been for a jumped up WW1 corporal throwing his weight around...

Ironically, the outcome of the election might actually do something for public transport in Devon and Cornwall because, if the government renage on their promises to spend more on infrastructure projects outside of the South East, there are a hell of a lot of seats in the south west that could turn yellow when we all get invited to put our crosses next time. THat said, Bude will have to get a lot more marginal before that gets into the cross hairs

But going back to Okehampton to Bude, I too was not coming down on one side or the other. My post was in response to Red Squirrel asserting that a train was always best, irrespective of circumstances, something that I saw as a case of the very "overdose in confirmation bias" that I mentioned in an earlier post. The sub-text essentially was "Oh yeah, well how do you square this circle, then?"

Finally, and for the avoidance of doubt (because I'm not toally sure whether I'm being accused of "either an expert authority or a degree of arrogance" ;D ) I would point out that I have walked and cycled every bloody inch of the former LSWR lines west of Exeter when researching my book "Cycling the Withered Arm." I can therefore tell everybody whatever they need to know about Bude to Okehanpton as it stands now (or to be more precise how it stood in 2014/15), and therefore also know what I am talking about.

http://www.robinsummerhill.co.uk/65801.html

Special deals available because I would rather like to get some space on my office floor back ;D

That's the only issue.

It's taken 20 years for the Portishead line to progress from its first feasibility report to the point where Network Rail agrees that it's feasible. This is so far beyond ludicrous, it can only be policy.

Off topic, but lest we forget...

Crossrail was first proposed in 1946 ;)

Well that rather touches a nerve. I can see that 80 years (I think it was first mooted in 1941) is rather a long gestation period. To be fair, though, can we really compare an £18BN project involving 24 trains per hour running through a 21km tunnel under the capital city, with what is essentially a new set of points and a couple of sheets of wet and dry?

Will all this be "at risk" with this administration's need to repay its borrowed votes up North. With talk of changing the Treasury funding rules are we in new territory?

Probably yes, new territory.

I neglected to note the link in my previous post ... it's at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50925321

Headeline reads "oh dear" for the South West ...

... but then perhaps there's good news for the South West ...

It goes on


The South West seems gloriously unmentioned in the article. Whether it's good or bad news for us is clear and I get the feeling that we're the forgotten region - from the BBC at least.

In many respects a bus would not, could not, do the job of a medium-long distance services as well as a train. However, there are cases where the train would be slower than the bus (even though the train would still be better than the bus in other respects). Even on routes where the train is faster than a bus, the benifits of the train might not be sufficient to justify the much higher costs of trains versus buses.

For example, the railway between Carmarthen and Pembroke Dock takes a rather slow route via Tenby compared to the trunk road which has bypassed every major settlement on the route. As a result a non-stop bus would likely be faster than the train, even if the train only stopped at Tenby and Whitland.

More importantly, a bus is almost never faster than a car journey. A train can be, but is not always. The Carmarthen-Aberystwyth line is an example of this, if it is built but still slower than the car, all the train would do is abstract revenue from the bus service. The benifits of reinstating that particular railway are therefore tiny unless the linespeed can be improved enough to attract modal shift away from car.

Bad new for Devizes from Paul Clifton on Twitter (https://twitter.com/PaulCliftonBBC/status/1641718630227296257?s=20)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsiOZA7WYAQFqfI?format=jpg&name=small)

If only Westbury had been built with four platforms...

Mark

However, re-opened stations for Wellington and perhaps, Cullompton still seem to be "proceeding."

More at https://news.railbusinessdaily.com/findings-of-devizes-station-feasibility-study-released-today/

http://www.networkrail.co.uk/devizes

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Devizes-Gateway-Interim-Feasibility-Study.pdf

Yes, plans for Wellington and Cullompton stations are progressing.  Here's an update re Cullompton from January.

https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/cullompton-railway-station-would-give-8075450 (https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/cullompton-railway-station-would-give-8075450)