Making better use of a rural railway

Prof Paul Salveson

The Heart of Wales Line120 Miles Shrewsbury – Llandrindod - Swansea

Making better use of a rural railway

Leopold Kohr

A great Welshman...and European

Spent his last years in Wales and was a man very much ahead of his time

“Is there no one ..who ventures to get excited at the thought of those elegant carriages smoothly running on gleaming rails between villages and towns without being obstructed by the gluey jams of highway traffic?” - 1970

Making better use of a rural railway

• The Usedomer Bäderbahn

• A People’s Railway

Making better use of a rural railway

• By end Jan 2016 o 100% owned by Deutsche Bahn

o Local management structure, staff, headquarters and workshops

o Significant investment to infrastructure and fleet

Making better use of a rural railway

• Proposals for ratification by Forum Sept 2015

• In parallel, work to start developing regeneration projects / bring revenue in to the Network

o In 1992 the Usedom branch carried 260,000 passengers per year.

o By 2001 passenger totals exceeded 2 million

o Much of the success of UBB lies in the fact that its activities are so clearly linked to local initiative and enterprise

Vision for the Heart of Wales Line

• a catalyst for sustainable development in Mid-Wales - bringing in wider social, economic and environmental benefits

• respecting and celebrating the distinctiveness of the area: landscape and history, language, tradition

• but also modern: encouraging small, mutual, creative and sustainable approaches to life

• harness that creativity – see the railway as an energising spine

Vision for the Heart of Wales Line

• A great place to live, work and visit

• A dynamic mix of private and socially-owned enterprises

• Stations as hubs for community activity

• A vibrant tourism industry

• Appropriate infrastructure/better connections.

• Where young people with ideas and energy are attracted

• Working together and sharing ideas and resources

• With affordable housing and workspace

• Inc digital industries, culture, food, farming and small-scale manufacturing

• The railway at the centre of this, with a complementary network of bus services

Vision for the Heart of Wales Line

• The railway has a huge contribution to make to Mid Wales

• the way to ‘unlock’ that contribution isn’t to try and run the railway but think of it in a different way, that is...

• a wholly new way of focusing linked, sustainable, development along the railway corridor.

• HoWLEN – step up to the footplate!