YOUR VIEWS: Frustration over bus and rail connections in the strath
I read in a national newspaper earlier this week that Avanti West Coast have agreed a plan in the Lake District to encourage tourists to travel car-free.
Passengers can buy a single ticket covering by train and bus removing the need for multiple transactions.
This got me thinking about the lack of joined up thinking in our local transport.
We live on the bus route through Boat of Garten and I see buses (nice modern ones) passing our house every day with hardly any passengers on board.
We have friends in Nethy Bridge who regularly catch the 08.32 Highland Chieftain (Inverness to London train) to travel to Edinburgh.
The only bus that gets them to Aviemore in time is the 37 at 06.34 which involves a 90 minute wait in Aviemore!
On their return journey the Highland Chieftain gets into Aviemore at 19.26 but the 37 bus to Boat of Garten , Nethy Bridge and Grantown leaves at 19.25!
This is a busy train with good numbers of people travelling to and from Aviemore.
If we are to be persuaded to cut down on our car usage we need to have public transport systems which work together to encourage us to do so.
These smart new buses which run regularly but with few passengers must surely run at a loss.
It is time for joined up thinking.
Anne Goodall
Coire Riach
Boat of Garten.
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Answers needed from Highland Council on energy motion
Highland Council blocking Councillor Helen Crawford’s motion for transparency, including real time online mapping of proposed big energy developments, demands a public explanation from council convener Bill Lobban.
This motion is backed by nine community councils and local groups.
How can Highland Council make decisions on individual but interlinked planning applications without seeing the actual scale of them as a whole, and fully assessing the implications?
The collective outcome of these applications will affect everyone living in the region for generations to come. Refusing to put this urgent issue on the agenda for discussion at the next full Highland Council meeting is inexcusable.
The growing tsunami of applications across the North for 60m high pylons, battery storage facilities, substations and windfarms has one purpose only, to line the pockets of multinational shareholders whilst touting an empty ‘net zero’ promise.
Government subsidy of idle company turbines and stockpiling energy when the Grid can’t accept it, effectively paying the company twice, simply lines the pockets of fat CEOs and their shareholders.
No wonder there is a green greed driven goldrush on.Highland Council, Inverness Chamber of Commerce, self-appointed developers Highland Tourism CIC and Highland Renewables need to wake up.
This is simply a Thames Water scenario that will destroy our environment, homes and livelihoods for 30 pieces of silver.
That our council would aid and abet this betrayal by not even being willing to discuss the issue is grossly negligent.
We need clarity, transparency and accountability right now and we need all our elected councillors to step up.
Georgina Coburn
Beauly.
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‘SNP and Tories are under the same skin’
Amongst the election recycling, which landed today, two are remarkably similar. Both show bar charts in yellow and blue, or blue and yellow.
One says ‘Only your vote for the Scottish Conservatives can beat the SNP’. The other says ‘Only the SNP can stop the Tories here’. What a joy it must be for enthusiastic Tories and vigorous Nationalists to know, that when it comes to chasing votes, they are the same under the skin.
Don't tell me you cannot publish this at election time... you print under cover SNP propaganda every week.
Gregor Rimell
Newtonmore.
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‘No Tory policies’
I have just been checking the five election leaflets delivered in the last few days. Four of them have party pledges which electors may agree with or not, and which we may believe or not!
The only exception is the leaflet from Kathleen Robertson, standing for the Conservatives in Moray West, Nairn, and Strathspey. It pleads for support to beat the SNP, but provides not a single policy to attract us.
Ms Robertson's obsession with the Union would be more understandable were she to provide some evidence of its benefits - evidence which has been in short supply in recent years.
Jim MacEwan
Nethy Bridge.
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Some ways to keep our families safe on the A9
We very much applaud the work of Kincraig’s Laura Hansler in her efforts for a safer A9.
As a family we are increasingly concerned about the almost daily carnage on the A9 and other Highland roads, and the impact on our communities here in Badenoch and Strathspey.
When our children were young, my husband, an orthopaedic surgeon spent many nights in the 1980s, 1990s and millennium in the theatres of Raigmore Hospital in Inverness with colleagues operating on victims of road accidents (and hill accidents) trying to save their lives.
What has changed ? Our children are now in their forties and fifties - and recently it seems worse.
We can blame the Scottish Government for being too centrally based. But we need to push hard our proposed new MP and our current MSPs to help solve some of the problems - living here we know what some of them are:
The many junctions in Badenoch and Strathspey, Slochd and Highland Perthshire .
Sudden changes from double to single carriageway.
Motorists in left-handed driver vehicles who instinctively turn or move the wrong way especially in an emergency.
Speed - some drivers are impatient with others. Some are in a great hurry. Some are young, old or inexperienced. Some are just incompetent bad drivers.
So back to the old chestnuts.
We need vigorous education in our schools for teenagers.
There should be more liaising with car and camper van hiring companies.
Experienced elderly people can have difficulty hiring them, so why are foreigners given the keys when they have no experience at all of driving on our roads nevermind single track roads?
We need more speed cameras, more police presence; much more prominent signs at the junctions and perhaps even a lower speed limit? We need to slow down .
Going by bus or train or pushbike is not the answer for rural communities
Yes, the dualling of Moy to Tomatin will help, Mr Swinney, but we need a lot more before we can be confident our families will be safe.
Dr Hazel Campbell
Insh House
Glenfeshie.
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Good to see the return of an old favourite loco to Strathspey line
It was great to see the locomotive 46464 once more back on the Strathspey Railway again.
In 1976 my late father (who had been a wagon-repairer all his working life with the North British Railway, LNER and British Railways, based at St Margaret's depot in Edinburgh) and I became involved in the relatively fledgling Strathspey Railway.
In my own case, I was mainly involved in the construction of the then Speyside station to enable public services to commence and recall scraping the old paint of the Ivatt loco's tender.
Prior to the engine performing the first public service between Boat of Garten and Aviemore it was tested out in un-lined fashion as my picture shows shortly after repainting.
I left the area in 1978 to head south of the Border to take up my appointment as the first Duke of Edinburgh's Award Officer for the City of Manchester education authority for three years before heading south to London to take on a similar role for 15 years with Harrow education authority.
My parents required to go into nursing care in 1995 so rather than leave my house empty I took 10 years early retirement to return home permanently to Grantown which gave me time once more to support the local heritage railway, as well as writing articles and books on such matters, as I do now.
Ian Lamb
Strathspey Road
Grantown.
