The Peninsula Rail Task Force has been working with different bodies to explore how the three priorities of resilience, faster journey times and more capacity could be achieved. The Department for Transport, Network Rail and the train operating companies – Great Western Railway, CrossCountry, South West Trains, as well as the Local Enterprise Partnerships and the wider stakeholder base have all contributed to this piece of work.
Clearly, overhauling the rail network cannot happen overnight and each element of work needs to be funded before being planned into the Network Rail improvement programme, the rail franchises or local authority development plans. Making the business case to secure funds for each aspect is therefore important and can be time consuming.
This consultation is designed to look at the overall PRTF report to ensure we are meeting the needs of communities, commuters, business and visitors through our plans, and to ask you about what you think is the most pressing priority.
We will use this information in our final planning session to try and set out a sequence of improvements, taking into account the funding options, the wider economic benefits, the actual resources in the rail programme and industry and a host of other factors. We will obviously not be able to please everyone, but we are keen to hear and understand people’s views to feed into our thinking.
Many thanks for your time.
