There are to be no rail reopenings considered except at local authority level for the next seven years, the electrification decision has been postponed again, there will be no decision on a new north-south high speed line until 2012 at the earliest, and there is little forward thinking and guidance from the Department for Transport in these matters. It, therefore, comes, also, as no surprise that ‘investment’ in roads is talked about quite a lot.

The Times ran a very interesting article detailing this phenomenum: the road network is growing fifteen times faster than the railway network. According to The Times, “In five of the past eleven years, no track was added to the domestic rail network, and in the peak years for rail growth, in 2001 and 2002, the network grew by only six miles a year.” Reopenings have happened in Wales and Scotland, however. The Highways Agency has 40 new projects in the planning stages and the only seriously considered railway project is Crossrail which only benefits London and the surrounding area.

It may come as another surprise that London is already quite well served by railway connections. What about the rest of the country? As usual, it seems like it doesn’t exist or is not of sufficient importance. A very sad situation. This is despite the fact that rail passenger miles have increased by fifty per cent compared to twelve per cent for roads.

This is hot on the heels of the announcement that BAA wishes to build a second runway at Stanstead and the third runway at Heathrow seems to be a given making domestic flying even more of an option. Flybe announced several new domestic routes recently all of which, there is no doubt, will cost less than the equivalent train journeys.

As the BBC recently highlighted in one of their news reports, it is now cheaper for two people to take a taxi from Bristol to London during peak hours as it costs £137 for a return ticket on the day, if you happen to have to attend an important business event in London, or some other short notice event. Similar prices open up opportunities for airlines to run fifty thousand seats between Manchester and London, despite train services operating every thirty minutes.

The changes to CrossCountry have enabled domestic flights to take off as there have been a massive reduction in the number of through trains to many destinations, almost doubling the duration of some journeys. It is quite absurd that it takes eight hours from Preston to Penzance, for example – and for quite a price too! Due to this, there are now 1,200 domestic flights per day, or 454,000 per year offering something in the region of fourty million seats. This is compared with thirty million in 2001.

The changes to CrossCountry and the changes to the portion now served by First Transpennine Express are starting to really affect people’s choice in how they travel. It seems absurd that a three car commuter train is operating InterCity services that people could be on for up to five hours from Manchester to Glasgow or Edinburgh. These trains are not suitable for such journeys and consequently when they reach top speed they feel like they are going to come off the track, the journey is horrendous according to some reports.

These problems are not going to go away over night. But what can we, the taxpayer and passenger, do about it? The answer is as usual: not a damn thing.

There has already been significant railway usage improvement in the local area and the benefits a reopened line would bring to the strategic mix far exceed the costs required to build it. There have been many studies completed showing wider benefits of line reopenings for stagnant parts of the country or those which would grow less economically and demographically without it.

There are two possible locations for reopened stations along the line, the main proposal being one at Earby serving the local community of that area as pictured above. The other opportunity for station addition to the network is Foulridge relatively near to Earby. This would not be a small task as the entire station was dismantled, preserved and rebuilt on the new Keighley & Worth Valley Steam Railway at West Ingrow.

A full consultancy was recently held about the feasibility of the options available for the reopening of the Skipton-Colne line.:

• Single track option (£42.6m) to include both stations;
• More extension option involving some doubling of track and junction improvements at Colne and Gannow Junction (£80.7m).

• Hourly shuttle service from Skipton to Colne with the line being run as a branch line again as in the old BR days (£860k);
• Extension of the existing Blackpool South to Colne service to Skipton (£830k);
• Hourly Skipton to Blackburn service operated by two additional trains but there are implementation challenges with this eastbound (£2.41m). With three additional trains, this challenge would be overcome (£3.36m);
• Hourly Skipton to Manchester Victoria service to complement existing services (£6.25m).

Line reopenings in this era of raising fuel costs, concern about the environment and the choking of Britain’s roads to breaking point are often quite successful with the most notable being the Settle to Carlisle line in the area which has gone from near closure to quite well used today. The following benefits were identified by the consultancy document:

• Direct employment arising from railway construction;
• Permanent employment from the operation of the railway;
• Indirect employment created in businesses supplying the products, materials and services;
• New businesses attracted to the area because of improved rail links;
• Induced employment arising from increased spend in the local area;
• Net additional spend by increased numbers of visitors to the area.

From a personal point of view, I would very much welcome the restoration of this rail link between the two towns. As a resident of Preston, I have often thought Skipton would be a nice place to visit for a weekend trip. There are many ways the line can be publicised to increase patronage and we at Transport Central wish SELRAP all the best in their endeavours.

• SELRAP Website

There will be an hourly passenger service (run by Arriva Trains Wales) in both directions with six stations served in Phase 1 of the reopening, the journey taking approximately 55 minutes. These stations are Rogerstone, Risca and Pontymister, Crosskeys, Newbridge, Llanhilleth and Ebbw Vale Parkway. There are plans in the future to extend the service to Newport as well as the Phase 1 terminus of Cardiff which would include a further four stations if approval was granted: Ebbw Vale, Abertillery, Cwm and Pye Corner.

The six reopened stations will be unmanned and feature only a basic set of facilities. There will be shelters with seating, real time service information boards, lighting, help point, CCTV monitoring, cycle lockers and car parking.The project was generously funded by three bodies in the main: European Regional Development Fund (£7.5 million), Corus Steelworks Regeneration Fund (£7 million) and the Welsh Assembly Government Transport Grant (the remainder). The total route from start to finish is 18 miles.

The full route plan can be viewed on Blaenau Gwent Council’s website dedicated to the new line reopening project.

• Interactive Route Plan

We wish the area luck with their new reopening and hope that Phase 2 can be expedited for operational use as soon as possible. If this kind of thing was done nationally throughout the United Kingdom, we would have a railway system that was actually fit for purpose and not run just for the convenience of government and its executive agencies.

You can chart the progress of the railway reopening project from the early stages in 2006 from the colourful brochures made available by the construction partners below (these are pdf files so you’ll need Adobe Reader to view them):

• Winter 2006/07
• Autumn 2007
• Spring 2007
  
• Summer 2007