I've been trying to put some sense of proportion on Wiltshire County Council's budget plans for 2008 / 2009 to give myself an idea of just how much of an impact the provision of an appropriate train service - i.e. a service every couple of hours including a sensible peak commuter provision - would actually cost the typical council taxpayer.

The budget for the year looks like it's 63 million pounds.  It include big increases in areas like support for special needs education / care (up to 314 places at 50,000 each - an increase in the year of about 20 places, i.e. an increase ofone million pounds over last year's expenditure), and an increase of 2.8 million pounds on landfill tax expenditure - that's money that the county will be paying back to central government because (basically) they dump too much rubbish into the ground.

The 63 million pounds comes from a council tax that's going to average just over 1000 pounds per household, I understand; however, there's also other income that comes from central government (that's up by over 1 million pounds) and from services that are charged for. From figures I've seen in the local paper - but not been able to recalculate from source data - if the council spends an extra 900,000 pounds a year, that equates to about an extra pound for each person living in a taxpaying household.

In other words - our council is suggesting that it's going to be so "dirty" it will spend over 3 pounds extra for each of us in landfill tax next year (I wonder what that's on top of in this year - I dread to think) but all the indications I have been given is that they are NOT proposing to spend 7 pence on providing that little bit of funding that would provide a decent public transport link across the county, staring in December '08

((In a full year of service - 2009-2010 we would be looking at 30p per person, but then dropping off in very much the way the FGW / DfT franchise does, acknowledging grown in traffic)). 

What would a TransWilts train running at the time YOU wanted to travel mean?

Journey time from Chippenham to Salisbury ... down from over 2 hours by bus, or 90 minutes with a dogleg via Bath on the train, to 55 minutes by direct train.

Journey time from Trowbridge to Swindon ... down from 95 minutes by direct bus, or 60 minutes with a dogleg via Bath on the train, to 35 minutes by direct train.

Journey time from Melksham to Salisbury ... down from over 2 hours by bus (and no train option after 06:43 in the morning!) to 45 minutes.

Please - Mrs Scott, Dr Robinson, Miss de Rhe-Philipe (Council leader, Council Chief executive, County Council Cabinet member responsible for environment and transport) - can't you cut just 10% of the extra dumping, and provide us with a service that would do so much good for the economy of the area? Thanking you in anticipation of your full, financial, support!

Note - I am already in contact with these people, and have put the case to them. If you want to put the case too, please email them - they are Keith Robinson, Jane Scott and Fleur de Rhe-Philipe. And please feel free to quote the information in this post and on this site.