Steaming back into Ryde?

but what would be the impact on the island , more cars on already bad roads, more buss journeys , going through the very restricted Brading roads, Gridlock entering ryde? add extra commutor traffic to the school run, and something has to give, be no point in jumping in the car if you get there just as your ferry, or hovercraft disappears into the distance.So whats this MP's next move, to press for a road Tunnel under the solent ? paid by tolls of course, with a motorway extension of the A3M to Newport ?

 

The unfortunate truth is that this system loses a considerable amount of money but needs a large amount of very expensive work carried out which will have the effect of increasing the losses. The condition of the equipment was emphasised to me this morning by the sight of a rust streaked roof of a train from my arriving hovercraft. Gricers and politicians (much the same sort of person IMHO) have lots of facile, easy answers to this sort of conundrum. There are no easy answers.

PH

 

Well the rust streaked roof may just be the age of the stock, most of the 38 units went to scrap a long time ago, and you can only patch up so many times.
Iagree with you as far as there is no easy answer, if the line is to remain then the money has to be found, if not then the full cost of closure has to be born also, so i would imagine that IOW CC will be needing extra funding for road improvement schemes and other measures, that could very well end up more expensive to the community charge payers of the island, than the 40 million over the next timeline of the franchise , of course there could be scope to make savings in the cost of renewing the islands lines if the IOWSR has the wagons needed to re lay and re ballast then they coud be hired locally when the two lines get conected ,assuming that mainlind sized stock replaces the tube stock,

 

I'm sure they aren't trying to close it, that would imply they know what they are doing!

Incompetence seems far more likely, driven by ideology, naivety and a desire to 'play trains' - to lobby for Island Line's removal from the franchise without fully understanding how it currently operates, let alone what they'd like instead, is utterly reckless.

Chris