Proposed Link Road
Campaigning for better transport links to Hastings and Rye
In my maiden speech on June 17th 2010 I highlighted the need for better transport links for Hastings. After seven years of investment in the town we still suffer from poor road and rail links.
Roads
Bexhill – Hastings Link Road
- I am fighting hard for the funds for the Link Road from Bexhill to Hastings that will be an important part of the regeneration of the own, opening up a new area for employment and houses.
UPDATE:
- Following the Comprehensive Spending Review, the Bexhill – Hastings Link Road has been placed in a Development Pool as a project that requires further work before it can recieve any funding from the £1.5 bn fund that was announced. A decision will be made by the end 2011 and I will be campaigning hard to ensure this vital project goes ahead.
- East Sussex County Council submitted their best and final bid for funding to the Department for Transport on September 2nd. I collected support from 4 other local MPs and together we sent a letter, which pushes for the funding for the Link Road, that was included in their bid. The decision will be made by the end of the year.
A21 Tonbridge to Pembury
- I am part of the A21 Reference Group, a Group of MPs and other elected officials who represent areas along the A21 who are campaigning for the much needed up-grade.
UPDATE:
- The A21 Tonbridge to Pembury improvement has also been identified as a scheme that requires more work before it can be approved and the Highways Agency are currently addressing these issues. Once this work has been completed, it will then form part of a future roads programme. Again, I shall be working with a number of colleagues to ensure this work is completed in a timely fashion and that the A21 improvements can be carried out as quickly as possible. Depending on what the Highways Agency say, it could go ahead as early as 2015.
Rail
I am a co-founder of SHRIMP a local campaigning group for better rail transport. Please join our campaign by going to the website www.1066shrimprail.org.uk and signing up for news.
- On 17th June 2011 I secured a debate in the House of Commons on Rail Services to Hastings to highlight the problems that Hastings has that are partially attributed to its poor transport links. She urged the Secretary of State to consider a longer franchise for the current Southeastern route from London to Hastings in order to encourage the much needed investment in the line. You can read my speech and the Minister’s response here.
- I met with Samantha Hodder, Communications Director from Go-Ahead, who are the parent company for Southern and Southeastern. We discussed how we can work together to ensure the best service for rail useres from Hastings and Rye. We will continue to hold regular meetings.
SNOW UPDATE
I met with Charles Horton the Chief Executive of Southeastern to demand answers for their poor service during the recent snowfall. I left him with a list of questions that constituents had asked me to raise and here are his answers:
1. Why did Southeastern Trains continue to send trains through the network when trains were already stuck? The service should have been immediately suspended avoiding the need for people to spend a night on a train.
This is a difficult one as many passengers have criticised us for not attempting to run trains. By way of explanation, we are dependent on advice from Network Rail as to the fitness of the infrastructure for purpose and the number of services we are able to run. As you know, the Government has asked the former Head of the Strategic Rail Authority to head a review into rail operations during the past few days and we will be contributing to this.
2. When an extreme weather event takes place, why is it that at the London termini – passengers were not advised to travel to St Pancras and return via the Marshlink which was running at that time as it has diesel stock?
At London termini (Charing Cross, London Bridge, Victoria etc) passengers were advised to travel to St. Pancras. The point about Marshlink services is a good one and will be fed into the communications review.
3. When the decision was taken to run the diesel stock on the coastal service Brighton – Eastbourne – Hastings why was this not made clear to passengers?
Again, the availability of other services and journey options should have been communicated to passengers and will be factored into the review
4. Why didn’t Southeastern work with Network Rail and Southern Trains to reopen the Marshlink line sooner to connect to High Speed at Ashford?
The decision to open and line and the snow clearance operation is a matter for Network Rail. Both we and Southern urged NWR to complete this as soon as possible, but as outlined at our recent meeting with Amber Rudd, despite NWR’s best efforts and hard work by staff at all levels questions must be asked about whether it is adequately resourced to deal with weather conditions of this severity. Should the answer be “no” then investment decisions need to be taken
5. Why doesn’t the Southeastern Disaster Recovery plan include the hire of Coaches with snow chains (like Brighton & Hove buses) to operate services at least into Ashford High Speed where the Ashford to St Pancras service is robust as it does not use third rail conductors?
This is a good point and I’ve put this to the contract manager responsible for rail replacement bus services.
6. Why is it that National Rail shows trains on time when they are actually cancelled, it’s a black art to understand what is running?
There were serious shortcomings in information provision and we apologise to passengers for this. Following the disruption caused by snow and ice earlier this year we made a number of improvements to the robustness of our website and introduced a summary service information guide which was a feature that many customers requested. We also issued our train crew with Blackberry devices and introduced a system of regular service updates so that they could keep passengers informed. These changes worked well but were undermined by discrepancies between information displayed on our website the National Rail website and the information provided at stations.
A detailed review of the causes of these problems has already been undertaken and they relate primarily to the interface between our own systems, the national passenger information system and the new national timetable system introduced during the course of this year. Having analysed these issues we have implemented further process and IT system changes which we are confident will eliminate a number of the problems identified during the recent disruption, particularly the display of contradictory information. We are also planning further changes which should speed up the process of making alterations to information displayed on websites and at stations. The provision of timely and accurate information is always a challenge in a rapidly changing situation during severe disruption but we understand that it is vital to customers and we will ensure that we achieve a significant improvement on the quality of information provided during the recent snow and ice.
7. The website, twitter and facebook needs to be updated more regularly – SHRIMP are quicker than Southeastern at doing this on their twitter and facebook.
See above. This is being addressed.
FARE INCREASE UPDATE:
- It is disappointing that we are facing another high price rise in rail fares from Hastings. I take little consolation from the fact that our rise is the lowest of the South Eastern Fare rises. It is still 8% and hurts our efforts to regenerate and improve the town. This is the fourth year that we have endured such an above inflation fare rise and this despite local intensive lobbying of South Eastern for a more reasonable figure for Hastings. I am going to continue to stay on their case in order to get a better deal for Hastings. There will be no let up to the campaign. The real problem for us is the franchise that was agreed in 2006. This set the terms for our huge increases (also RPI plus 3% for the past 4 years). We must do better in the future.
Please also sign here to register your interest and I will keep you informed of particular transport news.
