Beneath the Neon Lights is an entertaining blog at times – it is good to see that people care about Blackpool.
An interesting issue has arisen about ‘open access’ travel on the rail, which I have actually been doing some work on recently. Readers of the blog may be interested to know that Grand Union is looking at providing London services from ‘east and west Lancashire’. I’ve no idea if that means Blackpool, and am trying to find out, but given the good job they have done with services from Sunderland and now Bradford, things could be about to get very interesting.
But whilst it is good to see if a direct main line service to London is commercially sustainable – if there is no business case, no one will operate it as a charity – I still think our main rail focus should be on improving services within the North West to encourage more people to come on day trips here. Rolling stock needs replacing in many instances, and it would be nice to see an ‘open access’ company developing a wider range of services on some of the shorter transport routes.
As ever, thoughts please! And don’t get me started on the A585…
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July 21st, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Hi Paul,
it’s great you have raised the idea of “Open Access” as a potential option for Blackpool to restore a direct link to London.
A key to whether Blackpool could sustain such an operator will come with the Wrexham and Shropshire Railway Company which has a much smaller number of passengers using Wrexham General Railway Station than use Blackpool North. So if it can work there it will work in Blackpool where we already have a million more passengers.
For it to happen we will need to create an Open Forum in Blackpool possibly led by you Paul as our future MP with the aim of creating a Blackpool Railway Company. Shares will be sold at a fixed price per share.
From there we need to approach a railway company be it Renaissance Trains or another franchise operator to work in Partnership to create a seperate company with 50 / 50 ownership between the Blackpool Railway Company and the other operator to run trains between Blackpool and London and even Glasgow.
The biggest hurdle amongst many we will have will be finding a route to run the trains along as Virgin Trains have a legal monopoly on the West Coast Line.
That said it doesn’t mean it is impossible and it’s something I would really want to get involved with.
I’m a big believer that nothing is impossible and that the longest journey starts with the smallest step.