I must admit to being somewhat bemused by the letter from Peter Booth, chairman of the South West Conservatives, that suggested the Government’s policy on the railways is ‘right on track.’
There were lots of promises of new trains, faster journey times, more seats and assurances the problems around Dawlish were ‘near’ to being solved (not until 2021 “if approved”) as the study moved into the next phase.
However, Mr Booth appears to be adopting a similar model of ‘pie in the sky,’ thinking as his fellow Tory, the Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling, who you may recall promised that his new timetable changes would “deliver hundreds of new services across the country,” when the actuality was chaos across all networks and considerable inconvenience for rail customers, as well as costing the Northern economy £38m and rising.
If Mr Booth had bothered to talk to commuters across the south west he perhaps would have discovered that what they want is more reasonable fares (up 32 per cent) since the Tories came into power in 2010; trains that are clean; and that arrive on time with far fewer cancellations.
Customer satisfaction as measured by Which? recently resulted in First Great Western coming 16th out of 29 companies while Cross Country came even lower at 22nd.
His sanguine, uninformed approach to the reality facing commuters across the south west echoes those of the Department for Transport, which labelled our region as one of the ‘extremities’ of the rail network.
In the same document, Cross Country has suggested reducing or eliminating services to Torbay, Plymouth and Penzance, while First Great Western is looking to cease high-speed services between Exeter St Davids and Bristol Temple Meads. In other words, the ‘extremity’ is to have less connectivity.
The fact is, Mr Booth, that the rail network across the south west fails travellers and continues to negatively affect our economy.
You and the remainder of the Tory Party remain in acute denial about the needs of businesses, private passengers and commuters in the region.
Political fine words and false promises will not improve the situation.
Only a change of Government will.
Michael Elsmere
Campaign coordinator, Totnes Constituency Labour Party