Government pledges £900,000 to railway plan (Cheltenham Liberal Democrats)

Cheltenham Liberal Democrats <info@cheltlibdems.org.uk>

Government pledges £900,000 to railway plan

February 9, 2009 11:27 AM

TRANSPORT MINISTER Andrew Adonis has pledged £900,000 of central government money to kick-start the proposed plan to redouble the Swindon to Kemble railway line, following an earlier meeting with Cheltenham MP Martin Horwood and other local MPs. In a letter to the South West Regional Development Agency (RDA), Lord Adonis confirmed the government's 'strong support' for the project and has now promised central government funding towards the initial engineering study required to get the project moving. The doubling of the current single line is expected to allow more direct trains from Cheltenham to Reading and London, a more reliable service overall and less disruption in the event of individual train breakdowns and delays.

At a meeting with Lord Adonis last month, Martin, Stroud MP David Drew and Cotswolds MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown presented a united front in support of the scheme and received explicit government support from the transport minister. Now his letter to the RDA has confirmed that the government is to back up this support with cash. In the letter Lord Adonis writes: 'I am strongly supportive of the railway re-doubling proposal.' He goes on: 'I recognise the value the extra capacity route and improved train performance could create for the region. The total cost of the re-doubling is now estimated by Network Rail to be £42m, including the £2.5m for an engineering study necessary to design and price the scheme. Given the potential value to the national rail network of the re-doubled route in the longer term, I am prepared to commit to funding £0.9m of the study costs from outside the regional funding allocation programme, from the Department's National Networks budget.'

Martin commented: 'This is great news. For once, government has really put its money where its mouth is. There's a long way still to go and a lot of money to be found at regional level but there's a real head of steam behind this proposal now.'