{"id":520,"date":"2017-11-29T12:38:42","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T12:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/?p=520"},"modified":"2020-08-03T15:14:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-03T14:14:30","slug":"ashington-re-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2017\/11\/29\/ashington-re-opening\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashington Re-opening"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Much excitement today as the government\u2019s major new rail strategy was announced. Our very own Ashington Blyth &amp; Tyne re-opening campaign gets a mention in para 2.4.3 (page 25). You can see the full document by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/uploads\/system\/uploads\/attachment_data\/file\/663124\/rail-vision-web.pdf.\">clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I wound up doing 2 interviews for the BBC (different departments) at different times of the day, the 2nd\u00a0going out on Radio Newcastle\u2019s \u201cNorth East Today\u201d programme this afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>The government statement contains a number of different and discrete announcements, but the essence (and I have not yet had a chance to read it through completely) seems to be take Network Rail out of the loop and give operators and stakeholders more control for upgrades, extensions and yes \u2026 re-openings. That does fit with our view that Network Rail\u2019s costs are extortionately high and their process way too complex for something as simple as bringing trains back to a working, fully maintained line.<\/p>\n<p>But the government\u2019s paper says \u201cevolution, not revolution\u201d. Like Network Rail itself, nothing will happen quickly. What we don\u2019t want is the Ashington re-opening slowed down or put on hold whilst these new arrangements come in to play. Please will all stakeholders keep focussed on a target re-opening date of 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Much excitement today as the government\u2019s major new rail strategy was announced. Our very own Ashington Blyth &amp; Tyne re-opening&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chairmans-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":521,"href":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions\/521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.senrug.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}