HEREFORDSHIRE’S new transport strategy should look at reopening the historic Hereford-Ross-on-Wye-Gloucester railway to boost travel to the rest of the country, a local councillor has urged.

As county councillors debated the overarching Local Transport Plan for the county up to 2041, member for Ross West Louis Stark said it seemed “a missed opportunity not to look beyond the rail infrastructure that we have.”

Cllr Stark outlined his proposals in deatil as part of his monthly column in the Ross Gazette’s November 12 edition, in which he asked, ‘Could Ross-on-Wye connect to the railway network again?”

But rather than just improving services from Hereford to London via Birmingham, as proposed in the plan, “it would be more natural for a railway line to head south through Ross to Gloucester, which would also open up all of Bristol and the south”, Cllr Stark told the council.

“This is the sort of vision the plan should have. We should at least commit to feasibility study. The British Rail Transport Association already supports reviving the service, Cllr Stark said.

The Local Transport Plan sets out one rail-specific policy, which includes “a new railway station to the south of Hereford” – though this is not elaborated on – as well as “investigating feasibility of further new railway stations linked to new development across Herefordshire”.

It also wants rail use to more than double over the plan period.

Council leader Jonathan Lester said rail and freight strategies will now be developed to sit under the over-arching transport plan, now approved, leading to an integrated, multi-modal transport system for Herefordshire.

The Hereford-Ross-Gloucester rail service operated from 1855 until axed under the Beeching cuts in the mid-1960s.

None of the former railway station buildings in Ross remain as the area now forms part of the Ashburton industrial estate.