A few weeks ago, a railway engineer put forward the idea of a new railway line in Cornwall running from Bodmin to Launceston, Okehampton and Exeter providing a faster route out of Cornwall to London. The idea was promptly seized upon by a couple of Liberal Democrat politicians (North Cornwall MP, Ben Maguire, and Cornwall Council Leader, Leigh Frost) and it was suggested that the Council would fund a feasibility study.
Cornwall Reports has now revealed through a response that it received to an FOI request it made that "Cornwall Council will now give £50,000 to Launceston Town Council to support initial investigations.”
The idea of a new railway line across Bodmin Moor is a complete fantasy. There are simply not enough people living in mid and west Cornwall that would justify a rail service direct from Bodmin to Exeter. Take the example of the long distance coach services that already operate in Cornwall: National Express runs 4 coaches per day from Penzance to London; Flixbus operates 2 per day from Penzance to London and one per day from Truro to London. All of those services call at Plymouth. They could save 1-2 hours on each journey by going directly from Bodmin to Exeter via the already built and good quality A30. But they choose not to. Why? Because there are not enough passengers to fill those coaches from mid and west Cornwall. They need the population of Plymouth to fill the coaches. Any new railway between Bodmin and Exeter would have the same issue – not enough passengers. Of course the residents of Launceston would love to have a new railway line to Exeter and I have no doubt that the £50,000 given to Launceston Town Council will go to a firm of “consultants” who will wax lyrical about the potential financial bonanza that such a railway would bring, probably the same consultants who tell us that Newquay Airport generates £100 million for the Cornish economy.
The chances of the government funding this multi-billion pound project are zero. It is a waste of council taxpayers' money to throw initially tens of thousands of pounds, and in due course maybe a lot more, at consultants.