Best option for Barnstaple

So Network Rail is surveying local residents about the future of the Exeter-Barnstaple branch line - the Tarka Line ( RAIL 819). That is good news - not least because the views of people who don’t use the service are being sought, alongside the views of those who do.

If it stops here, however, then the work of the North Devon Line Strategy Group, which the survey should inform, will replicate past mistakes. Two are principal: the implicit assumption that the railway is the only public transport mode in the area that needs attention; and the insistence that the pattern of station provision constructed for it in the 19th century be retained in the 21st.

With regard to the first, the key point is that the area the line runs through is heavily populated at its northern extremity (even more so in the holiday season), but sparsely populated elsewhere (except at Crediton). Rail is well suited to serve the more populous areas, but beyond them are large areas it scarcely touches. Most of the stations that purport to serve them are lightly used - indeed, 11 of the 12 least used stations on the rail routes around Exeter are on the Barnstaple line.

To its credit, Devon County Council financially supports many bus routes that serve parts rail cannot reach. But in this age of centrally directed austerity and far less statutory protection for bus services than for rail, provision grows ever more precarious. The situation is made no better where trains and buses compete, as in the final dozen miles into Exeter.

As well as considering its survey results, NR should consider some of the analytical work carried out by North Devon Public Transport Users. This indicates that just four of the line’s 12 stations (Barnstaple, Umberleigh, Eggesford and Crediton) account for 91% of its footfall and an estimated 93% of its farebox revenue. Moreover, the same four account for 94% of the increase in the line’s usage over the past ten years. Of the other eight, not one exceeds two footfalls per train on average.

The case for concentrating the rail service on its four busiest stations, while enhancing bus services to cater for the others and to reach communities who are poorly served or lack public transport altogether, is overwhelming.

One might also ask whether the Barnstaple line is alone in this. John Gulliver, Barnstaple