The consortium of Councils who are building the new station to the East of Okehampton on the Exeter railway line have completely ignored the sensible and user focused suggestions that emanated from a meeting with the public and Councillors, a few weeks ago.

Okehampton Town Council have received response to their questions. The most glaring and disastrous ommission is that there will not be any toilet facilities at the new station. How passengers on buses from Bude are expected to manage after an hour long journey on a bus from Bude, is anyone's guess!

Also, the planners have completely missed the opportunity to provide suppport for a sustainable and future world. It has long been understood by economists, geographers, climatologists and railway buffs, that the main rail link that hugs the cliffs between the Exe estuary and Teignmouth is likely to disappear, almost overnight in bad storm. In practice it only a matter of fortune that this has not happened already. 

When this main rail link ceases to exist which is most likely by the middle of this century, the logical alternative is the old South West Railway link to Plymouth and Cornwall via Okehampton. Under those circumstance, the current track bed, which could always support dual track and was aligned by LSWR to support main-line operations with high speed services, will be the logical choice as the replacement for West coast route.

To ensure that this is a possibility, several people and Councillors asked questions in the meeting about support for twin tracks in the station and the overbridge. The response from the Planners on this matter has been completely negative and shortsighted. They will build the platform and overbridge in such a way that it will have to be dismantled and destroyed when the need to use the line for the West Coast replacement is upon us. What a waste of public funds!

Furthermore, the existence of a second platform and an appreciation of the significance of rail freight in the future, means that the opportunity to offload/onload from and to electric vehicles and cargo bikes (a vision aspired to by the Transition Town Movement in Okehampton) is completely negated.

All in all, the opportunity to demonstrate forward thinking, a committment to a sustainable economy and comprehension of the climate emergency, that is upon us, has been completely missed.