Rother Valley Railway

A great deal of contradictory, verbose and spurious material contained therein.

 

An update on the planning application made [allegedly] by one of the landowners for 160 houses in Bexhill which generated a lot of objections. This was discussed by the full Rother Council and has now been referred back to the planning committee. Evidently this follows a further submission from one of the Objection groups. The Bexhill Observer website states that this will not be discussed at the March planning meeting but is more likely to be the April or May meeting. The May meeting takes place after the local elections.

 

As another contributor said, it also says dialogue is ongoing. Whilst significant, all the Highways England objections are on engineering grounds - for which there can be engineering solutions (this is a glass half-full response

 

Bearing in mind that one of the people involved is the engineer that was responsible for putting a railway in Porthmadog High Street, which many said couldn't be done, I think the RVR will get this right. The council have been looking for an excuse to lower the speed limit on that section anyway.

 

This road safety thing is a huge red herring, anyway.
Anyone travelling South at that point will just be coming off Northbridge Street roundabout at no more than 20mph, whilst anyone travelling North will be able to see the crossing from several hundred metres away. The sightlines are are very good at that point.

 

There are errors and ommisions in the submissions to the Inquiery. It is sugested that KESR and RVR have no experience of operating crossings across major roads. Whilst the A28 may not be as busy it is a major link between Ashford and Hasting. The KESR crosses it twice, at Rolvenden and at Northiam. Both these crossings use manually operated conventional steel gates often operated by the train crews themselves. I believe KESR, who will be the train operator for RVR, have sufficient experience operating crossings on A roads

 

Is the A21 an Strategic road ? plans to upgrade it to full duel carriageway were shelved years ago, its not even a trunk road now, The protesters will jump at any reason to not see the line rebuilt, pure nimbyism, As regards the road layout, there is a pedestrian crossing that is more of a problem than any level crossing as its just before the roundabout on a bend if my memory is right, north bound, you can see the site of the level crossing well in advance and south bound, you are just coming off the roundabout so the impact will be very limited , if any at all as even north bound, you are slowing down ready for the roundabout , so I'm very interested what exactly is the problem highway's England have?

 

Agree with what you say, but just to point out the A21 is definitely a "strategic" trunk road : https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/roads-managed-by-highways-england

 

Highways England’s objections are spelled out in some detail in their letter posted on the inquiry website, linked above. Just like, for example, Network Rail, HE have a duty to ensure that works affecting their assets, and affecting traffic upon their network, are designed and carried out to an acceptable standard. That’s it basically.

 

Might not be even an objection to whats to be built, but a lack of detail/ project planning for the building of it.
Must demonstrate how the works will proceed/and resources be allocated, to ensure a minimum disruption in terms of road and / or lane closures ?

 

Yes. All the above and more.

 

Mmmmm...... Now where else have we seen sommat like that within the past couple of years?

Partick? Nope .... Par? .... Closer .... Oh, aye ....... Parracombe

 

It seems that a large number of the objections centre on the proposed A21 level crossing. From some of the comments on social media it seems that a large number of people thought that the level crossing would be a manually opererated crossing such as at Rolvenden or Northiam. They also forget that these level crossing are next to stations so the train will be travelling much slower than at the A21 crossing. Bodiam was also cited - someone had timed the closure time - since the locomotive has to cross the road whilst running round the train obviously there are multiple closures.

There was a comment on the planning application which mentioned the Beddingham level crossing near Lewes. Recent road improvements resulted in a road bridge over the railway. The objector claimed that the railway went over the road - obviously they had never been there.

Incidentally one of the landowners has posted a link to Social Media for a petition to stop HS2.

 

is that because they've formed the impression it's coming through the Rother Valley?

 

Received an official notification letter today, with the news that the RVR have requested a 12 month delay on the public enquiry .
Apparently, this is in order that they may have time to gather more information to address the objections of the Environment Agency and Highways England.
Also attached was a letter from the DfT, which gave the date of the public enquiry as June of last year, which doesn't exactly inspire much confidence in their abilities.
On a separate, but related theme, I noticed that an automated traffic census is currently in operation just south of Northbridge Street roundabout, which can surely only be for one purpose.

 

I received mine yesterday. Lets hope this leads to a positive outcome. It must be frustrating dealing with these bodies who give the appearance of moving the goalposts. There is now a post on Social Media from one of the formal objectors - I dare say this will result in a lot more comments from the 'Usual Suspects'.

There is also an automatic traffic census in North Bridge Street.

I have had a more detailed look at the landowners objection. There objection is based on (1) Safety Risks at the level crossing - particularly the A21 (2) The effect on traffic flows (3) It will jeopardise the dualling of the A21 (4) Increased risk of flooding (5) Destroy an habitat for rare flora and fauna (6) Removal of hundreds of trees (7) Estimated costs inadequate (8) Documents out of date (9) Lack of socio-economic benefits (10) Detrimental effect on two long-standing farming businesses.

 

Comment on facebook post "so much for RVR having everything they needed" - they thought they had.

 

Looking at a few of the tab choices on the RVR web site seems to show much is pretty old news. Maybe F/Book is up to date, but I don't read it.

 

There was a comment on the blog which said that the person who did the website was unwell which might explain the lack of comments. The most recent facebook post was a link to the 'Railway Heritage Routes' blog which contains pictures of the land at Junction Road which is in RVR ownership. Here is a link https://railwayheritageroutes.blogspot.com/

The problem with facebook is that opposers post comments which are less than helpful. So maybe keeping quiet is a better option. I think that the discussions with Highways and ORR are sensitive and it would not be helpful if these came into the Public domain.

I suspect that more information will be given to members of the supporters association in their magazine but again it would be unhelpful if these were made public.

 

A Facebook page can be a bit of a two-edged sword for projects like the RVR where there is some local opposition as it can give the objectors a public platform for their complaints. I think the RVR are very wise to keep their heads down and maintain a low profile at the present time.