MPs join forces to campaign for transport improvements

Tory and Labour MPs support £13 million bid for bus and rail stations

Exeter's Labour MP Ben Bradshaw has teamed up with neighbouring Conservatives Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) and Mel Stride (Central Devon) to campaign for £13 million of government funding to improve transport links in the Greater Exeter area.

In a joint letter to transport minister Jesse Norman, they highlight how two key projects - a proposed railway station at Marsh Barton and Exeter City Centre's bus station - already have matched funding to go ahead. Both have been subject to delays. But both are considered to be critical to Exeter's stated ambition to be congestion-free by 2025.

Right now, as Devon County Council admits in its request for funding submitted at the beginning of June, Exeter is the UK's second-most congested city. It's asked for nearly £7 million to plug the gap in funding for Marsh Barton station, just under £5 million for the bus station and a further £1.5 million to improve Exe Bridges. 

If it's approved, the money will come from the government's Transforming Cities Fund. The transport minister holds the key to those funds.

In their letter, the three Devon MPs explain that about half of Exeter's workforce travels from outside the city and that the county council's bid should be "an attractive proposition" for government, with the proposed projects being at an advanced stage of development."

Work could begin on Marsh Barton station, which has been stop-start for five years, provided the funding gap is plugged. But they warn that unless it is completed by March 2021, other funding, from a pot called the Growth Deal, will disappear, and with it, any hope of a station serving Exeter's largest industrial estate on which 8,000 people are employed. "With just a modest level of funding, this vital project could proceed," they say.

They also suggest that work on the bus station could begin in the 2019/20 financial year, but that too depends on more money being found. Four million pounds is already in the bag for a "modern facility on a smaller footprint" than the existing bus station. The project is due to go out to tender in the next few months.

Mr Bradshaw, Ms Morris and Mr Stride say they'd be pleased to meet with the minister and they hope he'll support "these worthwhile projects."