27th July 2007

The Green Party welcomes the proposals in the government’s Rail White Paper published this week but is disappointed that they do not go far enough.

Cllr Martin Whiteside, the Green party's Parliamentary candidate for Stroud, said: "It has taken Labour 10 years to get round to drafting a rail policy. After that long delay it’s a bit a bit of a let down. It is not the ‘step change’ that is needed. Rail fares must be affordable. The government will allow train companies to increase regulated fares by 1% more than inflation each year. Many other fares are not regulated and will increase far more. So rail fares are becoming more expensive in real terms. Meanwhile motoring costs have fallen in real terms over recent years. These trends should have been reversed so that train travel becomes cheaper and motoring becomes more expensive to encourage more people to use the trains."

Martin Whiteside added: "While the go ahead for the Thameslink 2000 project is welcome there do not appear to be any other significant expansions of the rail network. Bottlenecks at Birmingham and Reading stations are to be relieved but at Birmingham it is only the passenger facilities that will be improved, there will be no increase in the number of trains."

Martin Whiteside concluded: "It appears that government is going to fund the rail improvements by making fares even more expensive than they are now. This will price people off the railways and back onto the roads. The Green Party would scrap the £30Bn roads programme and invest the money in affordable, good quality public transport including rail. That is the way to fund rail improvements, not higher fares."