18 April 2018
Councillor Phélim Mac Cafferty has spoken in support of a Brighton and Hove Friends of the Earth call for Network Rail to review the decision.
“Brighton Festival and Brighton Fringe are key dates in the city’s vibrant events calendar and a real boost for arts, culture and the local economy. Engineering works on such a crucial weekend will massively inconvenience visitors to the city. We cannot underplay the importance of such visitors in growing our local economy on one of our key weekends. But the timing of the works also won’t help to encourage the shift to lower carbon transport that we urgently need in order to tackle poor air quality in the city and do our part to stop climate change. Given the sorry state of the city’s coach station and the abysmal train service, it’s sadly no surprise the city is struggling to tackle congestion caused by visitor road traffic.”
“It’s high time the Labour Council challenged Network Rail and Govia Thameslink over their abysmal decision and their utter lack of community engagement. As we support the call from Friends of the Earth, Greens in the last year have lobbied for cheaper train fares to the city from London and are pushing for the coach station to be upgraded. We will continue to push for greater accountability from the cartel of private rail companies too.”