Plans for new railway station hit the buffers
Gavin McEwan, local democracy reporter
Plans to recreate a railway station at Pontrilas on the Hereford-Abergavenny line have hit a further setback.
A “Golden Valley Parkway task force” was quietly set up late last year to co-ordinate progress on the proposal between councils and rail operators on either side of the border.
But now a monitoring report on progress towards 179 council “milestones” has flagged as “red” its goal of completing a strategic outline business case for the station proposal.
Network Rail
“Delays in engagement with Network Rail has meant that the brief for procuring a professional services provider to undertake business case has not yet been agreed by the task force,” the report explains.
The plan has been talked about for years and is supported by local Conservative MP Jesse Norman, a former transport minister.
The council said last June it planned to spend £50,000 developing a business case for the new station in partnership with rail industry figures – but cautioned at the time it was “not possible to commit to a timescale for station opening”.
The incoming Labour government then cancelled the Restoring Your Railways fund, which had been seen as the most promising source of funding to getting the scheme off the ground.
The council’s monitoring report says it has delivered, or is likely to deliver, 140 out of the 179 milestones by the beginning of April.
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
>> “Delays in engagement with Network Rail”
To be fair, they have London to prioritise.
There is mention of ‘the council’. I assume this is Hereford County Council? – as Pontrilas is (just) in that county.
Pontrilas is an English village. Has the new world order inspired the Welsh Government to make a bigly offer for Herefordshire? What about the long campaigns for Carno or Crumlin or Caerleon? (Just to cite three examples of former stations on existing passenger routes.) There is a long list of stations and lines in Wales that should never have been closed. Let’s hope the good people of Hirwaun and St Athan see the promised reopening of their stations soon
An English village in law, for sure, but hardly English in name! And the village centre is within very easy and speedy walking distance of the modern Welsh border, where Pontrilas abuts against Llangua.
So arguably the Welsh government might have a legitimate interest in supporting the project.
As English regional government gathers pace Herefordshire will eventually have to decide if they’d prefer to be run from Cardiff Bay or be Brummies.
The way new stations are delivered is backwards. It shouldn’t be up to local communities to campaign for it, only to be delivered as massively expensive glacially slow bespoke builds. There should be one top down project that churns out new modular stations by the dozen wherever there is a reasonable case for one.
Building a dozen stations when only 1 is required doesn’t seem very efficient. This an Elon Musk burner account?
There is only a need for one more new station anywhere in Wales? How did you reach that conclusion?
To be honest,it’s not close enough to Cardiff. How dare they!