To help us develop the Business Case for theTravelWEST project we invited various stakeholder and business representatives to give us thier ideas and input. 

From the business representatives we gathered very useful input for three theme areas - widening access to the talent pool, reducing peak hour congestion and boosting economic activity.  These will be investigated by the project team and where possible developed into workable ideas to include in the bid.

We also asked the business representatives for a commitment to the TravelWEST project that we could explore as ideas that may be suitable for inclusion as part of this project and will be following these up with the companies.

There was a lot of discussion about improving local rail servcies but it was explained that the timescale required to deliver increased servcies or introduce new rail projects meant that they were generally outside the scope of the LSTF TravelWEST bid that required projects to be delivered by the end of 2014/15. 

The West of England councils are working with many partners and stakeholders on ensuring that the opportunity that electrification of the Great Western mainline and the refranchising of the Great Western franchise bring translate into genuine local benefits to rail servcies locally.  The councils are also working through the Network Rail process for the redevelopment and opening of the Portishead Rail Line.