Hi folks,

Graham has finally persuaded me to register on Coffeeshop and do my own posting!

I'm currently secretary of Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways (ww.fosbr.org.uk). We came over to Melksham a while back to walk in the carnival with Graham and his dogs - a memorable occasion - and have kept in touch with Grahame ever since.

Our current preoccupation is to engage with the West of England Combined Authority (WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about)) as they gear up to consult on their Joint Local Transport Plan which they will launch in June 2018 for the statutory six weeks. I have drafted a FOSBR^▸ (Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways) Rail Plan 2018 which you can find on the front page of the FOSBR website. This is the plain-language version of our FOSBR Rail Manifesto 2017. I would welcome your comments. I'm pondering how exactly to get the public on board before the consultation starts; one idea is to re-run our rail survey we did in 2016. I think I probably need to cost up each item on the rail plan, even as an internal document, and ask the public to vote on which elements of our plan they most want to see.

We are also re-starting our FOSBR Quarterly meetings; the first one is on Friday 20 April, at Alma Church Hall BS8 2ES, 7.15pm. We hope to launch the Rail Plan then and invite lots of local VIPs; members of Coffeshop would also be very welcome to offer their advice. The main challenge is to persuade WECA that a rail plan is workable and that Network Rail are perhaps being overly pessimistic when they tell WECA that there is no more capacity on the railways and that WECA are best off investing in roads and MetroBus.

Please browse the FOSBR website (revamped by Carol Durrant last year) and in particular have a look at our newsletters - Tony Lloyd does an amazing job with them! We have a good team at FOSBR and are very happy to meet all rail friends whether online or in person.

Tina Biggs
FOSBR

Thanks Graham for a very helpful summary.

I've only just recently got to the point of even understanding all the terms in the list and can understand the frustration that councils feel at the thought of engaging enough to get a real step-change in rail service, and hence why WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) is now pinning their hopes on MetroBus (and Marvin Rees on a Bristol Underground) instead.

The most useful meeting in recent months we had was with the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) in February where you were too, Graham - it did seem that DfT is the one organisation at the hub intersection of all these players and they have at least the knowledge, if not the power, to have an enlightened view on how things could go forwards. But when we put it to them that they should take responsibility for co-ordinating such a forward plan they then said it was not in their brief.

So I am hoping that Transport Focus could be made to be such an intersection where people could be brought together to consider conflicts of interest. Is this likely?

Tina

It seems very good pay - £12k a year for four days a month - so I am surmising it is only really for the "great and the good" - or at least the "very good" who would add value to the board. I'd love that kind of pay for such a low commitment, but alas not for mortals. It would be good to get a real campaigner on there who knows and cares about trains as the name change from "Passenger Focus" might precipitate the road lobby to apply in force.