A NEW transport consultation for the Westcountry has been dismissed by local MP Ian Liddell-Grainger as ‘an organised waste of time’.

Mr Liddell-Grainger said the region did not need further consultations because deficiencies in its transport network were already ‘painfully obvious’.

The exercise has been launched by Peninsula Transport, the sub-national transport body for Cornwall, Devon, Plymouth, Somerset, and Torbay councils, which intends to draw up transport policies for the next 25 years.

In the short term, it wants to make getting around without a car easier, and ‘encourage affordable, zero-emission transport through a reliable electric vehicle charging network’.

But Mr Liddell-Grainger, who represents West Somerset and will be the Conservative candidate for the new Tiverton and Minehead constituency taking in much of the area around Wellington and the Culm Valley, dismissed its aims as ‘aspirational waffle’.

He said: “This consultation has all the hallmarks of a local Government exercise in looking busy in the hope that people will believe some kind of progress is being made, while the reality is that all it is doing is talking about progress.

“We do not need a consultation to tell us what the region needs in transport terms, it wants trains that run on time and rural buses that simply run.

“The reason that it is currently so difficult for thousands of people in rural areas to get around is because the rural bus network has been slashed to ribbons over the last 40 years and is now a pitiful skeleton of what it used to be, with hundreds of communities totally isolated.

“Even as I speak there are renewed questions hanging over two of the most strategic routes in Somerset - the 28 service from Taunton to Minehead and the 25 from Taunton to Dulverton.”

Mr Liddell-Grainger said Peninsula Transport had its eyes fixed firmly on the horizon while ignoring what was happening on the road in front of it.

“If it purports to be looking after the transport needs of the region then it should be banging the drum for the restoration and financing of dozens of rural bus routes, which will cut carbon emissions and congestion levels at a stroke,” he said.

“It has no business talking about increased provision for electric cars if the actual cost of them is beyond the reach of thousands of rural families.

“And it is patronising nonsense to talk in terms of ‘integrating walking and wheeling with the bus network’ when there is hardly any network left to integrate with.

“If Peninsula Transport had any real grasp of the current, pressing issues facing public transport provision in the region, and was working on solutions for them, I might have some respect for it.

“But for a talking shop indulging in long-winded aspirational waffle, I have absolutely none.”