By Gavin McEwan – Local Democracy Reporter
A national campaign group has voiced support for a reopened Hereford-Ross-on-Wye-Gloucester railway line.
After the call was made by Ross councillor Louis Stark last Friday, Richard Pill, chief executive of the British Regional Transport Association (BRTA) said the campaign group “was one of the instigators of this idea, and others are now seeing the potential”.
Urging supporters to “email your local MP in support, the media and the councils at both ends and along the line”, he said the plan now needs “studying and making the business case”.
Given that more than 60 years have passed since the closure of the line, there would need to be “deviation spaces and realignment of original railway, some compulsory purchase, relocation packages and compensation where pinch points arise”, he pointed out.
Strategically, however, “as a through route, Reading to Merseyside via Shrewsbury would create paths for other routes and enable much more by rail out of Southampton and elsewhere”, he said.
“But we need to add our voices and usher it along.”
BRTA could convene a forum “to bolster public and other groups working together for the reopening” next year, he suggested.
Hereford and South Herefordshire MP Jesse Norman, a transport minister under the previous government, said: “I suspect this would not be easy, since much of the land seems to have been sold off or built over.
“But anything that improves road and rail connectivity in Herefordshire is worth looking at.”
Mr Norman has previously voiced his support for a reopened station to serve the Rotherwas enterprise zone southeast of Hereford, using part of the former Ross line which remains unbuilt-on as far as the Shell Store.
He also supports creating a “Golden Valley Parkway” station at Pontrilas on the existing Hereford-Abergavenny line, a proposal which has seen stop-start progress in recent years.
These two schemes “could be part of a really effective long-term integrated and sustainable county-wide transport strategy”, he said.
While neither are mentioned by name in Herefordshire’s now-approved Local Transport Plan, this does list among its “aspirations” a new station “to the south of Hereford” as well as the scoping of “further new railway stations linked to new development across Herefordshire” and improved rail services to Birmingham, London, Manchester and Cardiff.