The Train Now Standing at Platform 3 is a Co-op?

Summary

Rob Hopkins spoke with Alex Lawrie about Go-op, a highly ambitious attempt to create the first co-operatively owned train operating company in the U.K.:

I come to this really as a frustrated rail traveller. As someone who is a regular user of the railways, but who always seems to end up in places that the rail network, radiating as it does out from London, fails to serve. I found myself in Somerset and I was just endlessly frustrated that I could see that train lines went from A to B, but no trains appeared to operate on them, unless, as I say, I wanted to go to London. Which sometimes I do, but often I do not.

I thought, “What is needed is for a train operating company that is a co-operative to start bringing ideas forward that meet the needs of people at the grassroots, and meet the needs of communities that have been isolated and forgotten about.” We were able to get a little team together and we got a small grant from the Co-operative Group, bless them, and we started doing some early feasibility studies.