Duncan said:
What some debaters on this blog seem to be missing is the prospect (still a few years off) of the reconnection of the railway.This will enable high spenders to come down for a day in mid November, to eat at the new expensive restaurant, buy the higher value goods in the new upmarket shops and stay overnight in the boutique hotels. No I'm not being sarcastic. As roads will inevitably be priced to discourage driving and rail fairs are high it stands to reason that the users of the new service to the jurassic coast will have money. we need Swanage to be ready. Thats why there MUST be change here and it needs to start soon. Those who advocate Swanage staying as it is can't have realised that change is inevitable. Surely those who have been here for more then ten years can't have missed all the changes in that time, let alone the 40 years I've had. Swanage is lovely. The only sensible debate is how we plan and manage the evolution of this town to retain the best of it.Duncan
Posts
20 comments:
"We have come a long way to see the world heritage site. can you direct me to it?"
You are standing on it! "What"?
"Where is it?" "This is it"
Sounds like a bit of a Con to me.
There is one huge disadvantage here....That one clogged up road in.
A few of us tried years ago to bring in employment to the area. All that looked at it, pointed out the same thing...The dead end!
Hear hear, Duncan. Let's have some positive posts about what can be done rather than what can't. And if things have been tried in the past and failed, it doesn't mean they will fail again.
For my part, I've proven with the Blues Festival that you can bring hundreds of people spending a lot of money into the area for very little outlay. I could do more if I could get the right backing.
Why go to the expense of reinstating the train? A bus connecting with each departure and arrival from Waterloo would do the trick for a fraction of the cost.
The bus company isn't interested and the train people are!
The problem with the rail network is that is serves the retail and work destinations of a hundred years ago. The bus routes are little better. A restored rail link, if the fares policy permits it will make it easy to come here for a day out from London and the south west suburbs. We have the advantage that the beach is close to the station and for anyone with pushchairs etc this makes a material difference. The problem is that the destinations served going the other way are not a great deal of use to many residents. The same goes for buses. Fancy a night out at the cinema. Hop on a bus to Tower Park? No chance. Shopping? All the big shops have moved to retail parks. Do the Swanage buses call at them? Fat chance. That leaves you with rows of fashion stores in the Dolphin centre set up to cater to non car driving teenage girls or precisely the same mix in Bournemouth.
Lets use the re-opening of the Swanage link to press for a re-think of the public transport network in east Dorset in general to bring it in line with modern needs. That way there is hope of a sustainable year round service of real use to the community not just a glorified theme park ride.
Looking at Swanage railway's restored link to the network in a larger context and thinking about the problem of traffic congestion on the A351 corridor it occurred to me that a possible project would be to have a "Parkway" station where the mainline crosses the Holes Bay Road and run trains from there to Swanage. If a pier was constructed there could also be a boat service to Swanage or Poole. A round trip one way by boat and returning by train or vice versa would be an attractive propositon.
Obviously a station there would be attractive to general rail users from withn say a 20km radius on the inland side who would be able to avaid driving into the town centres to get their trains. With a shuttle bus via the yet to be built second harbour crossing it would also serve the ferry terminal. It could be packaged with the new bridge as part of a traffic management scheme. for the whole area south of the harbour and serve as a terminal for bus routes serving the retail, employment and leisure developments on the periphery of the conurbation that have appeared in the last generation.
whats 20km sorry im old
It is true that the bus service is pretty poor. The reason is the structure of unregulated and privatised bus routes. You only have to look at the priorities of W&D. Running 5 minute services on the high use Poole to Bournmouth corridor. Rural routes continue to suffer. This will only get worse as the impact of free travel for oap's is felt next year. The subsidies from local authorities will be further stretched. In Swanage only the 150 is really attractive commercially due to tourist use in the summer months.
Kieth's proposals are interesting, but I fear the level of investment needed is unrealistic given the likely costs of the link-up on the rail line alone. It will all depend on where the money will come from. will it be all private finance or will local government be allowed to price roads and use the funds to cross subsidise public transport?
I expected someone would immediately ask where the money would come from. Its a natural enough question. However, its not as if money for other things was sitting there, earmarked, in the treasury, waiting for someone to come along and ask for it. Every project has to demonstrate that it is a good idea before the politicians start working out which pot to dip into.
I don't think we should get into the question of which of its various pockets the government puts its hand. Could be railtrack, could be european money, could be a number of sources. What about PDC's levy on developers which is intended for projects that mitigate the impact of their activities. It answers the criteria for that quite precisely.
If the money could be made available for a Sandford bypass what about that? Partnership is all the rage so some combination is the most likely.
The first reaction of politicians at all levels is "we haven't got the money". This usually means "go away, I don't want the work of dealing with this." At this stage its more a question of finding out whether there is support locally, hence my posting. Its the politicians job to decide how to allocate resources in accordance with public demand. Its out job to tell them what we want.
Why does the local transport system have to be in Public hands and be subsidised to work? The fact is it doesn't work because there is no demand. It’s difficult to see how much more expensive you could make it to drive a car (in Purbeck), yet if public transport was free I can't see too many more people using it. Let the market sort it out! See how cheaply we can now fly between cities using private companies instead of nationalised carriers. Please don't point to our poor roads as a disincentive for people to come: Look at the millions who brave the route to Cornwall! In peoples minds it is the quality of the destination that counts.
On the whole I do agree with Dave H, but the flying bit - remember their fuel is untaxed.
If we look around the world, public transport that works is highly subsidised - not english way
British Airways fuel was untaxed too, but until the likes of Stelios Haji-Ioannou and Freddy Laker turned up only the rich could fly. As for the green issue, roll on nuclear fusion.
True, many public transport systems are subsidised. But what cost to the country of not providing transport? When I was a kid the subsidy to British Leyland was the equivalent of £2500 per car in real terms, but that did not make them a bargain. They were appalling.
Let’s put public money into a high speed rail line between Wareham and Waterloo. People can take the car, taxi or bus as far as Wareham. It is ludicrous that you can drive to Waterloo quicker than going on the train.
The question of transport funding is an interesting one but a bit more than a local issue. If David wants to know how the present situation came about he should consult an economic historian. If he proposes an agenda for change he needs to talk to the politicians. Nobody complains that motorists are being subsidised when a new road is built at public expense. Lets stick to discussing how to make the most of a restored rail link.
Traffic projections are a matter for a properly conducted feasibility study. It pointless making wild guesses.
What possible point is there of restoring the rail link to Wareham? It is not intended to be part of the local transport network is it? You can't expect volunteers to provide a service except basically for tourists in the Summer. It would require an incredible subsidy far in excess of subsidising a regular bus service. It would also be very slow.
Reducing traffic on the A351 is the reason. The Corfe Castle and Sandford bypasses are not going to happen. The only solution, apart from congestion charging, is to offer an attractive alternative. I don't have issues over the subsidy side. The costs are something that needs to be established. Wildly saying they would be incredible without having the slightest real idea is pointless.
Once Swanage Railway is connected to the network it has to be run like a proper grown up railway. This applies wherever the trains go. As they are keen on having the connection the railway must have decided to accept this as a fact of life.
Nuclear fusion! We've been wating for that since the 60s. Its a chimera.
So why not tarmac over the railway line and have a dedicated inter-town bus route?
In the various public consultation exercises that have been run in Swanage in recent years restoring the train link has always come near the top of the "want list."
If the line was turned into a road the pressure to open it to general traffic would become irresistable and the advantage of a dedicated route immune to traffic jams would be lost. Buses that turn back into trains when they reach Wareham and continue on their journeys to Poole etc might be a little bit of a problem.
Comparisms with the airline business and nuclear power are a little odd. Both are heavily reliant on subsidy. If you look at the US plane building industry it has for decades managed to have a high proportion of its r&d paid for by the military. An excellent example of this was the Boing 707 which was developed as a military refuelling plane before becoming an airliner. That was a long time ago but it illustrates how the US subsidises its airframe builders. Nuclear power was a side line of atomic weapon development and manufacture. The UK magnox generating stations were optimized for turning uranium into plutonium and heavily subsidised. The public purse will be covering the multi-billion cost of cleaning up the dregs for decades, if not centuries. Fusion may be the answer but it would not be sanguine to rely on it not being another economic disaster.
Unfortunately it tends to be small business that are left to face the rigours of the free market. Large industries are skilled at getting help from the taxpayer whereever they are.
As Henry Ford said: "if I had asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse".
Funny then that rail passenger traffic has grown so much, for example by 60% in the East Midlands region between 1995/96 and 2004/05.
All these little enthusiast's lines are now turning themselves into proper businesses and doing their best to be part of this growth on rail use.
Post a Comment