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Kent rail depot plan 'doesn't make sense'
Page 6
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Residents are petitioning against plans for a rail-freight depot in rural Kent
— and the parish counci isn't happy either. Roanna Avison reports.
PLANS TO BUILD a rail-linked distribution park near Maidstone have aroused fierce opposition, Kent International Gateway (Kb) plans to build a 382,000m2 road-to-rail depot on a greenfield site at Bearsted near M20/.18.
KIG says the development would take thousands of truck movements off the roads, creating up to 3,000 jobs. But local residents are furious with the plan and have set up a petition against it on the 10 Downing Street website.
A spokesman for Bearsted Parish Council says: "Nobody in the area has any time for it. It's in the wrong location and it's just too big. It doesn't make sense because we're a long way from Dover.
"It would make more sense to put the freight on the rails at Ashford," he adds.
However, Geoff Dossetter, external affairs director at the Freight Transport Association, says the FTA welcomes the interest in the development of such a significant road-rail site.
"There have been some suggestions that it should be sited closer to Dover — whether it will work in [Bearsted] remains to be seen," Dossetter concludes. • The Rail Freight Operators' Association (RFOA) has listed 16 proposals that it believes are the most important projects to help develop the rail-freight sector.
They indude increasing capacity and gauge width between Felixstowe and the West Coast Main Line at Nuneaton; similar improvements between Southampton and the West Coast Main Line; increasing the gauge from the Churmel to London and beyond to allow more Continental traffic; and improving the lines between linnthigham and Doncaster, and Newcastle and Carlisle.
RFOA chairman Graham Smith explains: "If we wish to reduce the size of transport's carbon footprint, the fast route is by increasing rail freight "With 50% growth in rail freight by 2014, these 16 schemes provide the capacity to meet that growth and reduce the size of transport's carbon footprint"