October’s group meeting was principally about reviewing progress and making any necessary revisions to the 2016/17 plan. The following summarises the current picture –
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The first half of the year saw good progress in a number of ways.
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The GRIP 1 and GRIP 2 reports had been reviewed and set a foundation to move on to the GRIP 3 stage (“option selection through to approval in principle”).
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Additional service demand data had been gathered from a survey of Magor and Undy residents
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Mott MacDonald – had agreed to carry out the GRIP 3 work and reports.
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An Integrated Transport report (based on Magor and Undy) was completed by the UWE post-grad student, Chris Waller.
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MAGOR gained representation on the Three Field Community Trust consortium.
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Some slippages at mid-year.
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Although we had gained great support from Assembly Members and MPs, we had not made the engagement with the relevant departments in Welsh Government.
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Only partial funding for the GRIP 3 stage had been identified.
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2016/17 Plan revision (Click here).
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We have pushed the engagement with Welsh Government back towards the end of November.
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We hope to have sufficient funding identified to start GRIP 3 (first 2 phases) by the end of December.
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We expect GRIP 3 to be fully completed by the summer of 2017 but to have completed “The Initial Economic Appraisal and Demand Forecast” and the “Option Selection Report” by April 2017.
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The “Strategic Outline Business Case and Approval in Principle”, the third phase, will be planned for 2017/18.
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LATEST NEWS
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We now have a meeting set up with Welsh Government officials. Ted Hand and I will be meeting the Rail Programme Director, Regional Transport Manager, Head of Infrastructure and one other on November 16th to present our case.
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We will be submitting, jointly with Monmouthshire County Council, a revised application to Network Rail’s ‘New Station Fund’ in the next few weeks. This fund can contribute up to 75% of the build cost of a new station.
Paul
