Peer review: Stephen Joseph
Chief Executive, Campaign for Better Transport
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Community Rail Partnerships, and their various offspring, such as station adopters, have been a railway success story. They have developed from a handful of volunteer initiatives to an officially endorsed movement with ‘Community Rail’ designations, a national strategy and now strong endorsements and funding in the latest franchise agreements. |
Paul is typically modest about his own contribution. Much of this is down to his own pioneering work on the Penistone Line, to the research he led and to his role in creating the Association of Community Rail Partnerships, now going from strength to strength with DfT funding. There is now a general acceptance that getting communities involved in local railways generates business and goodwill and gives a sense of local ownership.
The question is: where can this go from here? The opportunities presented by stations are clear and the modular station idea sounds great. There are clearly enormous opportunities to integrate local railways more with other transport, especially as the Government starts to look more favourably on bus franchising. We might look to joint rail and bus franchises, especially in more rural areas. Bike hire and car clubs also clearly have opportunities.
Paul is also right about starting to think of railways as spines for sustainable economic development. This will require support from local planners and Local Enterprise Partnerships (who too often tend to think of development as solely around roads and cars). Stations can become centres of their communities, with the use of abandoned buildings for community purposes and development around them for businesses and workshops.
This and other aspects of community rail will be heavily influenced by what happens to local government. Significant cuts in local government funding could undermine some partnerships and (more fundamentally) lead to a withdrawal of some councils from any interest or involvement in their local lines.
However, against this are the wider moves towards devolution to combined authorities and mayors in England. This is leading to devolution of local rail services to groupings of local authorities, notably Rail North and West Midlands Rail. Community rail is going to have to make its case to a whole load of new authorities and people, but the benefits could be enormous in terms of more local attention and control and the “beyond the boundary” strategies, in the way that Paul describes for the Heart of Wales Line.
Paul highlights the importance of community campaigns in getting lines and stations re-opened. Re-openings can’t be looked at in isolation - they need to be part of wider economic strategies linked to development and regeneration.
However, there is one area where CRPs have not yet been able to fulfil their potential - bringing down costs. Micro-franchising hasn’t happened and there has been no serious attempt by the industry to look at ways of running community lines cheaper and better. This is not about reducing services, safety or staff - it’s about making small-scale enhancements without incurring main line-sized costs.
Community rail has a bright future. The question is whether the industry, the Government and local authorities can get together to help it achieve its full potential.
