EURO-MP Caroline Lucas, pictured above, has backed calls for a radical overhaul of rail services between the South Coast and London as part of an ongoing review by the rail regulator.
Dr Lucas, Green Party MEP for South-East England, has
demanded infrastructure improvements and sweeping
timetable changes, including extending Gatwick Express
services to Brighton and Littlehampton, re-opening
the Uckfield-Lewes line and upgrading Ford Station in
West Sussex to become an interchange.
These improvements alone would more dramatically
increase capacity for passengers between London and
the South Coast. New hourly trains could run
from Lewes to London via Uckfield, extending Gatwick
Express services would increase the frequency of
London services and improvements at Ford could
double Littlehampton-London services by allowing
passengers to board trains originating in Portsmouth
and Bognor Regis.
“The South-East economy is overheating and our public
transport system simply cannot cope, either with the
increasing numbers of commuters travelling to and from
London each day, or with those wishing to make
journeys across the region that don’t involve going
anywhere near London,” said Dr Lucas, who is a member
of the European Parliament’s Environment
Committee and a regular rail user herself.
“I have backed these common sense proposals for change
as they would all provide good value-for-money
solutions to some of the region’s worst rail
service bottlenecks.”
She also called for a new hourly Brighton-Reading
train, a new London Bridge – Guildford service, the
doubling and electrification of the line connecting
Ore and Ashford to improve connections between the
Sussex coast and the Channel Tunnel and improvements
to the line near Chichester to allow fast trains to
overtake slow ones.
Fares between London and Gatwick should be
standardised with an end to dedicated express
services, and a new loop service connecting Victoria,
Gatwick and East Grinstead created by re-instating
track between Three Bridges and East Grinstead.
The call for improvements to services, all of which
use the Brighton mainline, forms the Green Party’s
response to a Strategic Rail Authority consultation
into the future of the line. But the Green Party
proposals, drafted by Transport Spokesperson Alan
Francis, risk being ruled out of order by the SRA as
they call for widespread infrastructure improvements.
The terms of reference for the SRA’s consultation
specifically exclude infrastructure improvements.
Dr Lucas said: “The Green Party has produced a
detailed prescription for massive improvements to rail
services between London and the South Coast,
offering more line capacity, more trains and faster
services – and all representing excellent
value-for-money.
“While the SRA has indicated it supports some of the
proposals we put forward, it has ruled out considering
any infrastructure improvements at this stage – and
that’s just crazy. The SRA has announced
higher-than-inflation fare increases without
suggesting – or soliciting – any serious attempts to
make the service improvements needed to deal with
outdated lines and erratic services.”
She added: “You simply can’t undo the damage of the
Beeching cuts, privatisation and a generation of decay
and underinvestment without spending money on
infrastructure improvements.
“We need an integrated, efficient, frequent and
affordable public transport network in the South-East
– and the reality is that means investing millions
just to undo the damage done by previous governments,
let alone provide services fit for the 21st Century.”
Info from Caroline Lucas
http://www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk/