The spending review is slated for the spring of next year I think.

 


Portishead Railway Group
 
From:
portisheadrail@183601974.mailchimpapp.com
To:
pbmusician@aol.com

Mon, 4 Nov at 11:55


Dear Member,

Last week's budget contained news of the three big rail projects - HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and EastWest Rail to Cambridge - but nothing about smaller projects like Portishead & Pill. This wasn't surprising, nor does it mean bad news.

We understand that MetroWest Phase One – the Portishead & Pill railway reopening - forms part of the ongoing review, which was mentioned by Rachel Reeves in her October 30th Budget speech.
 
We also believe that the Full Business Case is to be submitted soon, which seems to be a positive sign. More news is expected over the next month or so.

Regards,
Peter
 
Peter Maliphant
Membership Secretary
Portishead Railway Group

 

New Forest East (Fawley-Hythe) - Tory MP
North Somerset (Portishead) - Labour MP

Just saying....

 
Dan Norris quietly confident Portishead will happen....

“There is cost stability now of around £150 million and we are in a strong position to proceed with that, but it’s not a guarantee because that’s a decision that’s being made against other projects up and down the land.

“But what I am confident about saying is that I would argue our Portishead line is so close to starting that it puts it in a good position to go forward.

“They were clearing the trackside of trees and various other foliage with a view to doing significant things in the spring and getting on with the tracks.

“We’ve very close to doing it. That puts us in a strong position because we’re literally at the point of putting shovels in the ground.

“Economically it makes a lot of sense compared to the other lines that are in contention against us.”

He said the government would make a priority list of railway projects currently under threat of not happening.

Mr Norris, also MP for North East Somerset & Hanham, said: “Nothing is done until it’s done.

“You think you’ve got it and then somehow it slips out of grasp but we’re very close and I’m quietly confident.”

 
Sadik al Hassan presented the petition the day before, on Wednesday 11th September.

 
From the Portishead Railway Group



Dear Member,
 
Thank you to everyone who signed and helped gather signatures for the Public Petition to restore the missing funding for the Portishead and Pill line reopening.
 
We ended up with 5,604 signatures, collected in just over 2 weeks. The petition was handed to Sadik Al-Hassan, MP for North Somerset, and he has told us that he will be delivering it in Parliament this Thursday.
 
Just to be clear, in the light of some comments in the press and social media, the reopening project is under review. It has not been cancelled and the majority of the funding remains in place.
 
We have no timetable for the spending review that is currently underway, but we assume it will be completed before the October budget. All our local councils and MPs continue to support the reopening project and will be exerting whatever influence they have.
 
As our petition stated, the project offers important benefits to Portishead, Pill and the wider Bristol area, benefitting the environment, reducing congestion and emissions and encouraging investment and economic growth.
 
The foolishness of stopping a project that has 10 years’ work already completed and over £32 million already spent is not hard to see. The project to reopen the railway to Portishead and Pill is ready for construction to start and, given the necessary funding, could deliver a flagship completed reopening and operational railway in less than three years.

Regards,
Peter
 
Peter Maliphant
Membership Secretary
Portishead Railway Group

 
From the BBC:

 

We don't normally *do* too many closures in "On this day" - but I have added this one so that it will come up next year.

 
60 years ago yesterday since closure.


https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/portishead-railway-fight-60-years-9536703

 
Thanks for the reminder.  I'll get myself down there for 19.00.

 
Come on Coffee Shop members ...get yourselves down to Temple Meads tonight,join the rally and sign the petition !

Dear Member,

Thank you to everyone who is collecting signatures for the Public Petition to Parliament. We're hearing impressive examples of members gathering more than 100 signatures at a time!
 
We now have permission to collect outside Waitrose (but not Sainsbury) and will be in the Precinct on Tuesday morning. If you would be willing to help at either of these locations for an hour or two any time over the next 4 days, please reply now to this e-mail with the times and date you can offer.

The petition sheet and briefing note are here : www.portisheadrailwaygroup.org/petition.html
The total signatures received so far will also soon appear there.

Thanks very much for your support. A reminder of all the key information is below.

Regards,
Peter
 
Peter Maliphant
Membership Secretary
Portishead Railway Group

Collecting Signatures
You can carry on collecting until Friday 30th August, but please make sure you hand your sheets in by Friday at one of the locations below. If you’re in the Portishead area and unable to do this, let me know and we can arrange to pick them up any time.
 
Returning your signature sheets
Completed sheets can be dropped off at any time that these locations are open:
 
SoleLution, High Street
Westcoast Properties (opposite Waitrose garage)
Pure Offices reception, Kestrel Court
Portishead Town Council reception, upstairs at the Folk Hall.
 
Pill Resource centre, 4 Baltic Place, Pill. BS20 0EJ
Portishead Railway Petition, 17 St John’s Rd, Clifton. BS8 2ET
 
Petition details
The petition is formally for ‘persons desiring reopening of the Portishead railway branch line’ – so anyone can sign it and there are no rules about age or location.

The petition states:
‘… Reopening the Portishead branch line is necessary to reduce traffic on the congested roads between Portishead and Bristol; reducing such traffic would lead to lower CO2 emissions, thus benefitting the environment; and is needed to encourage investment and economic growth in Portishead and the greater Bristol area.
 
The petitioners therefore request the House of Commons to urge His Majesty’s Government to recognise the considerable work already performed to reopen the Portishead branch line; to recognise the public funding already invested in it; and to ensure that the necessary central government funding is provided to reopen the Portishead branch line’

 
See also https://bristolrailcampaign.org.uk/portishead-railway-needs-your-support/

 

A budget is nothing other than choices of where to spend the available money. For comparisons sake, from what i can tell, the Restoring Your Railways fund was going to provide significantly less money to the station development than what say bristol council have recently spend on refurbishing the bristol beacon. It's all about the choices made. The relevant local authorities and other organisations can easily decide to spend money on this over other things. It's just priorities.

 

Does a petition actually influence any decision making?
Surely is all comes down to budgets?

 
I have moved this from 'And also 'in order to give it more prominence, as so many people liked it. It refers to what I think Lord Peter Hendy should be doing about the Portishead line.

In that case, he should be arguing the case really vigorously with Reeves and Haigh for a scheme that is 25 years old, runs to 27000 pages and is 7.5km long if each sheet was laid end to end. ....double the length of track in question. I have challenged the Chancellor to join me at 7am on the average weekday morning to travel out of Portishead...perhaps then she might see that this scheme does not deserve to be sacrificed on the altar of her political expediency.
{like} liked by Mark A, Witham Bobby, Richard Fairhurst, rogerw, Western Pathfinder, Timmer, eightonedee, Red Squirrel, johnneyw, PhilWakely, Andy E, TaplowGreen

 
An excellent summary of the current situation.
However the only bus service (X4) connecting Portishead to Bristol now takes 1 hour and 20 minutes even on a good day. Even more evidence, if any were needed, that the railway can't come soon enough. Does everyone know that this town of getting on to 30,000 inhabitants hasn't had any sort of a Post Office for the last 18 months? Another example of over development outstripping infrastructure !

 
Bristol Rail Campaign's call to action is here:

https://bristolrailcampaign.org.uk/portishead-railway-needs-your-support/

 
The fightback begins.....



Dear Member,

The Public Petition supporting funding for the Portishead line is now live and will be presented to Parliament in September by Sadik Al-Hassan, MP for North Somerset.

The petition has to be created in a specific way and there are some changes that you need to know about as a result.

The most important is that the petition must have the original, handwritten signatures, names and addresses of the petitioners (photocopies and electronic signatures are not permitted). This means we need lots of people personally gathering signatures, which PRG will then collate and pass to our MP to take to Parliament.

We are inviting our members to collect as many signatories as they feel able to gather and then return the completed sheets to us. We quite understand if you are unable or unwilling to do this, but will appreciate as much help as we can get. We will also be out on the streets gathering signatures as well, in Pill this Saturday morning and in Portishead on various days. Thank you to all those who've offered to help with this.

There is also a rally at Temple Meads being planned by the Bristol Rail Campaign (formerly FOSBR) at 7pm on Tuesday 27th August. More information on this will follow when we have it.

If you'd like to help by collecting signatures from your circle of friends, family and organisations, here's what you need to know:
You can find the petition and a briefing note explaining it here:  www.portisheadrailwaygroup.org/petition.html
Please print off as many copies as you need, but do not alter the petition form in any way.
If you are unable to print copies, let me know and we'll physically get you some.
The PRG Frequently Asked Questions document has been updated and can be found on the PRG website. This may help with any questions you need answered.
Please check that people only sign once, no matter how often they've seen the petition.
Please collect complete sheets of signatures if possible and minimise half filled sheets by stopping, or working with other PRG members to share and fill whole pages.
The closing date is Sunday 25th August (10 days time!) and you can either return sheets to me by post ASAP or drop-off (8 Little Halt, Portishead. BS20 8JQ) or to any PRG signature collector on Tuesday 27th Aug.
Tuesday August 27th is Petition Day! This will be our main public signature day and we're aiming to cover Portishead High St, Sainsbury, Waitrose, Kestrel Court, Folk Hall etc. We will then head for Bristol to collect more signatures at the Temple Meads rally.
Other public signing days like Pill can happen as well of course.
PRG will then collate all the signature sheets for Sadik Al-Hassan to present to Parliament at the earliest opportunity.
We'll send more details on the Bristol Rail Campaign rally and other public signing events when we have them. Please ask if you have questions.

The petition states:
‘… Reopening the Portishead branch line is necessary to reduce traffic on the congested roads between Portishead and Bristol; reducing such traffic would lead to lower CO2 emissions, thus benefitting the environment; and is needed to encourage investment and economic growth in Portishead and the greater Bristol area.
 
The petitioners therefore request the House of Commons to urge His Majesty’s Government to recognise the considerable work already performed to reopen the Portishead branch line; to recognise the public funding already invested in it; and to ensure that the necessary central government funding is provided to reopen the Portishead branch line’


Thanks for your support.

 

Absolutely no surprises there. Mr Cash, incidentally, lives in Bristol.

 
There is a letter in the North Somerset Times this morning arguing the 'merits' of running buses along the Portishead line signed by the Portishead busway campaign. I suspect this is a one person outfit headed by a certain Barry Cash. I will waste no more time, energy and space giving this any more publicity !

 

I suppose one possible crumb of comfort could be that the government has no reason to string this out any further, nor excuse for doing so. It will be here for at least 5 years, so if a decision is made to finance the building sometime this year, the work should be finished before anyone else will be in office to cancel it again.

RYR had the whiff od a political bone being thrown to distract from other problems. More of a stench now.

 
PRG are seeking clarification on whether 68% or 90% of the budgeted cost of the Portishead line was already covered before RYR came along. Either way, it is clearly mostly non-RYR. But - and this may be a big but - DfT were also committing to cover any over-run. Following the Northumberland Line, this will likely make them nervous.

 

Clearly I was wrong about Portishead and, despite it long predating RYR, it had been wrapped up in the RYR programme.  Fingers crossed the DfT review gives the thumbs up.

 
I have asked Sadik Al-Hassan as to the nature of these assurances ....are they verbal or written ?. I would refer readers to my earlier post where Rachel Reeves confirmed Wellington station is going ahead......much further back and much later in the GRIP process.

 
It is clear that the project is not cancelled, but that's not the same as saying it is funded:

 
Are you able to extract the text of this article, chuffed? We (Bristol Rail Campaign) haven't had such reassurance from Portishead Railway Group, who are working with Sadik Al-Hassan to try to plug the funding gap.

 
The latest edition of Todays Railways (#271) is reporting on Page 7, that 'Labour's new North Somerset MP Sadik Al-Hattari said that he had had it confirmed to him, that the Bristol-Portishead re-opening,part of the Metrowest scheme that predated the Restoring your railways programme, IS SAFE, not least as Network rail is about to submit what seems to be the 493rd update of its business case!

 

Well said, RS!

 
Try this: https://bristolrailcampaign.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Portishead-Radio-Bristol-30_7_24.mp3

 

That didn't work - I was going to do a MP3 clip of the exchange, but couldn't find it before bedtime.

 

Agreed: and it will be interesting to see how 'engaged' North Somerset Council are, bearing in mind their historic reluctance to join WECA and their historic reluctance to fund anything to do with the re-opening of the Portishead Line. 

 

You might find this a better link. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0j935s3

 
I added my two penn'orth on Radio Bristol this morning (this link may change when the show finishes) - scroll to 11:24:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_bristol

 
Re the above, here's Hansard from yesterday:

 
In response to a question from the new Lib Dem MP about Wellington Station,Rachel Reeves said that any project at GRIP stage 4 or above would go ahead. Portishead was there 4 years ago!.I emailed the new Labour Mp for North Somerset about Portishead and he replied within the hour. I think this one single issue will make or break his reputation as an MP.

 
Thanks for your encouraging comment, RichardB.  As you say, Portishead predates - well, almost everything since Beeching. 

 

I agree re Portishead.  We need clarificatiion to be 100% but I don't think Portishead is a "Restoring Your Railway" scheme - it long predates that programme.  I agree re Euston too and I think the line to Crewe will also be built.   We'll see soon enough.

 
Yes - probably 

There are other re-opening station / branch lines which might survive - but only a few.

CfN 

 
Was that just a gut feeling?

 
Hmm. 

In our meeting this morning, I think grahame and I concurred that Portishead is probably not going to happen. 

 
I think Portishead will happen but I think others will end up being chopped.  Same with hs2 to Euston I think that's too far forward not to cut

 

 

Couldn't agree more. All the commentaries on the last budget pointed out that the predicted figures could not all be true at once. This is from the Institute for Government, but note the quote from the OBR:

 
No a good sign for future capital spending on infrastructure.

I'm not convinced by the "it's worse than we thought when we took over" line either.

 
Confirmed.

 
A303 Stonehenge tunnel and the RYR projects yet to be built, I'm hearing

 
The guardian newspaper saying Instead there I'd a alternative way for her to.plug the black hole and raise close to £10 billion her year and that is to increase taxes on wealth and shares etc

 

BBC reports at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c724g07qwdwo

 

I read that too, and hope the rumours are unfounded. Apart from the eons spent getting as far as the project has managed to get so far, it would make absolutely no sense in a period when the economy is supposed to be growing and emissions cut.

 
There are rumours in one of the Murdoch papers today that the Portishead line may get the chop due to Treasury cuts to plug the ‘surprise’ financial hole…

 
I may have missed it during the protracted history of this project but is there a separate Travel Plan document lurking somewhere which specifies whether buses will call at the station and what, if any, facilities for cyclists will be provided?

Also it seems to me that, in common with many recent public buildings, the design is a triumph of form over function (make it look pretty and sod providing proper protection to passengers customers from wind & rain, which I imagine is fairly common in this area).

 

I'm not sure where that came from for Portway - did we have planning plans? But measured off Google Earth, it's 126m too. Turbos are close to the nominal 23m per carriage, plus couplings, so 5 cars (3+2) is about 118m, which will fit (either station). Obviously that assumes sensible car stop positions, which for Portishead depends on the end of the line (buffer stop) position, but you'd expect that to be OK.

Operationally, that always did look odd. The Turbo fleet is a mix of 3s and 2s, and we all know that what's available to pick from on a given day doesn't always match the standard train plan. With only 126m, if you've no 2-car units then it's a 3-car or nothing. But by the time Portishead opens, maybe the Turbo fleet won't be relevant any more ...

 

Maybe we should carry out an MVP on the various Sir Humphrey’s at the DfT and Treasury and see has they like that!
[/quote]

Au contraire, dear boy. Sir Humphrey would enjoy spending money. It's that nasty chancellor telling him what to do that is the problem.

As always, cheese paring will get in the way. Taking the Tarka line as the exemplar, the fairly recently improved services are turning out to be very popular, to the surprise of nobody but DfT. Early trains leave Barnstaple full and standing, to the chagrin of waiting passengers further down the line. Studies are under way to find a way to resolve this, which will cost a lot of money. I cannot imagine that the Portishead services, when they finally start, will be any less popular with commuters, given the time it takes by bus and the cost of parking a car in Bristol. Being shoehorned into a 3-car Turbo at Pill will not be an appealing experience, and before long some will ask "Why wasn't the Portishead platform built long enough for 5-car trains?"

 


"A Development Consent Order (DCO) was sought and obtained for this design. Subsequent to
the DCO and GRIP 3 design, DfT initiated a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) exercise which
removed the station building at Portishead."

Mark
[/quote]

Maybe we should carry out an MVP on the various Sir Humphrey’s at the DfT and Treasury and see has they like that!

 

Indeed, the canopy seems to have enough headroom to accommodate 25Kv OHLE... beneath the canopy itself. Not sure what the magic wall's for either.

Mark

 

Indeed, it's reasonable to expect that that information would be easy to find.

Meanwhile, in the detailed design statement we find the following immortal words, and perhaps in the distance we hear a muffled crash as designs that would accommodate capacity enhancement are bulldozed into a remote quarry by a Treasury-funded JCB.

"A Development Consent Order (DCO) was sought and obtained for this design. Subsequent to
the DCO and GRIP 3 design, DfT initiated a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) exercise which
removed the station building at Portishead."

Mark

 
Looks like a pared down version of Ebbw Vale Town/Parkway. Given the exposed nature of the site at the head of the Gordano valley, I can't help thinking the whole lot will be blown away in the first good gale! As it stands, I cant see any shelter from the weather whatsoever.

 
It has the look of a metro style station to me...and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense.  Also, I reckon I like the colour scheme for the brick wall.

 
Can anyone work our how long a train this station can accommodate? There's been some debate about whether they're going to cheese-pare it down to 3-car. These plans have the platform length as 126m, which (as far as I can tell) is just over half the length of Portway Park & Ride, which is designed for 5-car trains. But according to Wikipedia a Class 166 3-car unit is about 70m long...

 
https://planning.n-somerset.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=S9V7M4LPK5Q00.

This should get you to the right page.

 
The proposed Portishead station plans are up for consideration on the North Somerset website. It is also referenced on the Portishead Railway group website and can be found by following this link...24/P/0474/DCW...

 

That's one pre-election bribe I will happily take. I don't have to vote for them, though.

 
So approval just before the November election is announced.  How convenient.

 
A couple of us from Bristol Rail Campaign (FoSBR) attended the AGM of Portishead Railway Group last evening. We were very grateful for their invitation to come and observe, and it was a privilege (and a bit humbling) to chat with some of the people who have been campaigning for decades to get trains back to Portishead and Pill.

James Willcock of North Somerset Council, Programme Manager for the Portishead line, gave us a very detailed talk on the current status of the project. The upshot is that the DfT will do its best to get all the paperwork signed off before the summer recess. Then it's just - just! - a matter of getting the Treasury to release the money... which should allow for final approval in time for work to start later this year.

First train to Portishead should run in December 2026.

James believed that transport Secretary Mark Harper was very impressed by the scheme when he visited last summer, which may have helped oil the wheels.

 

Expectation management is well noted. We have become so used to seeing hopeful timescales that don't happen that we automatically roll our eyes, say "that won't happen", and are proven right. Just occasionally though, things actually happen and when they do they can move quickly.  Thinking Okehampton, thinking the restoration of usable TransWilts service 10 years ago.  "Haha" turned into "my goodness - it's actually happening".

 
The illustration is Pill, rather than Portishead.

 
Spades in the ground by August?  The Bristol Live site has an article suggesting work on the line could commence by August this year. 
Expectation management statement;  It's from Bristol Live.  Much of it's substance is taken from the North Somerset Council statement in the previous post and there's no specific attribution as to who gave the August date.
Oh and unsurprisingly, the loading ads make it nearly unreadable.  I did find the "illustration" comical though.

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/local-news/construction-could-start-new-portishead-9030389?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_reading_button#amp-readmore-target

 

Source: North Somerset Council

 
Bristol rock cress is a new one for me!

 
The latest statement on the travelwest website reads as follows:

Source: travelwest

 
If you look at the covers of the two earlier business cases (filed under Developer's Application / Other Documents by the PI), they refer to the requirement for one at the DCO enquiry stage. This is is the National Policy Statement for National Networks (itself required by Section 9(8) and Section 5(4) of the Planning Act 2008). Here is section 4.5:

Note that bit I bolded - easier said than done, if you are told to write one.

 
I see there's a lot of nostalgia for the era when a navvy with a shovel was all the business case anyone needed to build a railway. But the world has moved on, even if this project hasn't.

I couldn't say whether the Portishead Line needs a new business case - but it hasn't exactly suffered from business case deprivation. There was a preliminary business case in 2014 - not just on the back of an envelope: 800 pages. Then in 2017 there was an outline business case - a little longer. Each of those comes (like Gaul) in three parts. Part one of the latter calls itself "Outline Business Case 2017, Part 1 of 3,  Addendum to Outline Business Case. All six parts are dated on their cover November 2019, and also bear their original dates. I can't see any newer ones, you would not expect any during the examination period as that's not the sort of exam question the "Examining Authority" asks.

All the covers are MetroWest ones, though I can't see anything explaining why - the "applicant" is always North Somerset Council. I guess that comes down to what kind of a beast MetroWest is. Or maybe it really is, as Google insists, "a cluster of cities and towns lying west of Boston and east of Worcester".

 
FFS

1) Portishead has nigh on 30k people, many of them fairly well heeled
2) Portishead has one very wiggly road to Bristol
3) The railway goes right next to the M5 and is more or less ideal for a rail-based Park & Ride (the car parks are there already, just got to build the station)
4) Pill also has one very wiggly road to Bristol and plenty of well-heeled folk
5) Pill has a secondary school with 1000 kids, many of which come from Bristol and would probably happily take the train over the bus
6) Ashton Gate on it's own could doubtlessly support a half-hourly service between UWE, Ashton Park school, the stadium, offices and all the new housing

Job done, JFDI, my consultants fee can go behind the bar at the Coffee Shop Christmas party

 

Depends if the objective is to get the project appraised quickly and successfully, or to generate consultant's fees quickly and successfully

 
The March 2024 submission date for the new business case does seem a long time to me.  I only had limited exposure to the world of business case writing during my years in the telecoms, motor and insurance industries but I can't help but feel that all those companies that I worked for could and would have moved faster, especially with the expectation that one would be requested.
Was there not an earlier business case made that could act as a framework?  Not all of the details would have changed..... there's still a huge traffic problem in Portishead for example.

 

Can't help feeling there's a case for using JFDI principles here.

 

How much will costs have risen in that time?

 
The need to complete the business case was always there from the point when the DCO was granted. Has anything changed?

 
Not good news about this new line, they have now decided they need to do a new business case to see if the line will pay if re opened as the previous one was done before covid so they want to see if it's now changed,

They hope to have the new full business case submitted by march 2024 with hopefully approval of this by summer 2024 September at the latest ,

So we are now potentially a year away from them starting the building work on the new line,

 

Ensuring plan really.


"Holy pipistrellus pipistrellus, caped crusader!"
"Yes, to the bat corridor, Boy Wonder!"

(Music: Dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner...)

 

Hey!  It's autumn (or early winter). Watering plan, really?

 
From Somerset Live

 
As any fule kno.

 

Back by popular demand! http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=7434.msg263391#msg263391

 
Or the complete version:

Caesar adsum iam forte
Pompey aderat
Caesar sic in omnibus
Pompey sic inat

 

Caesar sic in omnibus.

 
Gives a whole new meaning to that popular phrase people use when they can't deliver by Friday:

"Sick Transit, Gloria. Monday?"

 

Or St Marvin on the Mount Without (an Arenal)? He said Mass more often than the Pope, although usually with the word Transit after it.

 
The only deity they might dig up in constructing the Portishead line might be an effigy of St Dawn of Primarolo, coloured bright red, eating Richard Cotterell previous chair of ATA ..Advanced Transport for Avon.

 

Sounds like a painful end

 
Another international example - why great care should be taken in looking around prior to construction - this from Heritage Daily

 

Has anyone suggested one of these, thus sharing the waterway's footprint without digging an underground.

 

I had a civilised chat with Barry Cash at the 'Future of Transport in Bristol' meeting on Saturday. His position was that transport planners should look to the future, not the past, for solutions. On that we could agree. We didn't agree on how these terms should be defined, however!

Barry has a history of opposing the Portishead Railway and has proposed a number of alternatives. His latest idea appears to involve laying a road up the gorge. This would presumably involve some widening of the trackbed to allow buses to pass, along with crash barriers and other interventions. Might be difficult in a SSSI, and it's not clear how the existing freight trains fit into his plan. My guess is that £20 million is a low estimate.

I could propose that Community Payback people with wire brushes could reopen the line for quite a lot less than Barry's £20 million, but that would be just as absurd.

 

"A" member, or "The" member?

 
I think we've been here before - from North Somerset Times


The case for buses with the figures given still looks like a colander to me, and the rail case presented with a different and negative bias to the road case. I do agree that the 21 years is too long.

 

I have been a Decision Maker in another area of the public domain. That doesn't matter much - it just seems rather radical to have someone actually making decisions on the Portishead line. As to the current phase*, we might just slip from Jurassic to Cretaceous this time. With the ink dry on the VolkerFitzpatrick contract, I should imagine that the decisions to be made will be more "How" than "If".

*Not that sort, ET.

 
I don't think we should read to much into this.

The current phase (should I say era? Aeon?) of the project is the preparation of detailed designs and the full business case. Having looked at the full DCO pack, I am surprised that there is still design and business case work to do, but we are where we are. As to the business case: this is the final part of the DCO process. And who better to make that decision than a Decision Maker?

 
Would this be referring to GBR being set up in the meantime & future decisions being taken by them as 'decision makers', not the DfT?

 
The comment about "while preparing the full business case for decision makers." is somewhat worrying. Hopefully that means what dull shade of grey concrete to use at Portishead station rather than binning off the whole project.

 
According to Network Rail:

"Decision makers" is ominous, isn't it? By definition, if a decision is to be made, it can go either way (or there can be more than two options to choose from). But at least the cart is still trundling on down the road, even if the horse is stalled waiting for that case* of business to be delivered.

* Presumably twelve bottles? Though at this point my metaphors are in a tangled mess under the sofa.