'Green Main Line’ for whole South West
By Andrew Roden, Northern Route Working Group
On January 20, Prime Minister Boris Johnson – prompted by Devon MP Sir Gary Streeter – said that the government’s vaunted ‘levelling up’ agenda also applies to the South West as well as the Midlands and Northern England. Confirmation could not have come soon enough: in large parts of Devon and Cornwall, incomes are low, job opportunities few, access to work and education difficult and local economies dependent on seasonal and part-time jobs. Young people are particularly affected – often unable to afford to buy and run a car, public transport in much of the region is poor, and many journeys for work or education are lengthy if not actually impossible. Better transport is vital, and particularly for an area ranging from Bideford in North Devon down to Launceston, Bude, Wadebridge and Padstow in North Cornwall, and encompassing Okehampton and Tavistock.
This is why reinstating the railway from Exeter to Plymouth via Okehampton and Tavistock could be truly transformative for those without cars, for the environment, for tourism, and for freight trains, taking lorries off the roads. It is a topic that has been discussed many times over the years, so far without success, so why is the Tavistock Okehampton Reopening Scheme (TORS) different? Very simply, because it has asked different questions to previous work. Studies have tended to ask whether the route could be justified as a diversion for trains when the coastal main line is closed by bad weather or maintenance – or whether the revenue from a purely local service would justify the costs. The answers to both were, unsurprisingly, negative. Reopening the railway to Okehampton and from Plymouth to Tavistock is also very important, but a through route will amplify the benefits with comparable operating costs. Why can we say that with confidence? Because this time around, a team of experts with experience in consulting and rail operations started with a different question: can the railway be operated in an efficient way likely to generate good revenue? The second question that follows is: how can we maximise the wider benefits?
By extending the existing London Waterloo to Exeter service ‘around the top’ to Plymouth, we are confident the answer to the first question is a clear ‘yes’, as journey times will be good and with the ability to get to destinations in London without changing, the revenues will be much higher than a purely local service. The return of a regular service from Okehampton to Exeter has already been confirmed by the government. With fast journey times of around 20 minutes for Exeter-Okehampton and Plymouth-Tavistock, and about 65 minutes throughout with stops at Okehampton and Tavistock, there is an opportunity to create a truly integrated transport scheme that spreads the benefits over a huge area. How? By express bus links integrated with the railway which can provide faster public transport journey times than ever before, to and from the centre of Exeter to the places mentioned in the first paragraph. Those new links using bus and rail to best effect are true game-changers and the journey time savings, over the best public transport can currently offer, immense. In an extreme case, public transport journeys from Padstow to Exeter will be around three hours faster than at present.
The effects for Tavistock and Okehampton will be profound. With extensive development planned in both towns, and road congestion and car parking getting worse, rail is the only way of getting large numbers of people to and from them sustainably. Connecting bus links into the heart of Dartmoor would also relieve pressure on our vital national park. Then there’s freight. Currently, the viciously steep nature of the coastal main line limits freight train lengths, while the perceived fragility of the main line deters the likes of supermarkets from sending goods by rail. The ‘Northern Route’ is much gentler and less susceptible to bad weather, and the Rail Freight Group is adamant that Devon and Cornwall could see a rail freight renaissance, taking lorries off our main roads to the benefit of everyone. Our region’s only main line would benefit too. As well as increasing the number of trains running between Exeter and Plymouth, this new railway could act as a diversionary route when the main line is closed. That in turn opens the opportunity to speed up the vital coastal resilience programme by allowing longer closures for the work than could possibly be contemplated at the moment. Emissions will be low: this railway should be electrified from the outset, meaning genuinely zero emission transport, given Network Rail’s aim to power all electric trains with renewable or nuclear energy.
There are challenges and there will be concerns about the impact of the railway on the environment and on property; about noise and vibration; and about the impact on priceless treasures such as Meldon Viaduct. It is vital that everyone with a view for or against is treated decently, kindly and with respect, so the process would involve detailed studies to define potential routes before presenting the options at a public consultation, followed by a review period to address concerns, and find solutions for areas of difficulty.
If the team of experts behind this proposal are right – and we wouldn’t have given months of our time freely for a flight of fancy – this railway will unlock a major regeneration of a huge part of Devon and Cornwall, improving the environment, access to work and education, reducing road congestion and helping our young people to be able to remain in the area they grew up in. For too long, the South West has been the poorest relation in terms of transport investment. For a tiny fraction of the cost of High Speed 2 or Northern Powerhouse Rail, we believe this railway will make more of a difference than any other comparable scheme. If the Prime Minister truly wants to ‘level up’ the South West, we believe this is by far the best transport intervention to achieve that. Increasingly, the region’s MPs are also coming round to that view, led by Geoffrey Cox, and supported by Mel Stride, Scott Mann, Gary Streeter and Johnny Mercer. In our opinion the TORS project simply has to happen.