New website
October 1st 2005
The website is now up at http://www.platform11.org and whereas we've still lots of work to do, it's a solid foundation and it means we can now really turn up our campaigns a notch. I encourage everyone
(a) to make suggestions, especially on the content side, to make things clearer and more relevant to anyone who has an interest in better rail services.
(b) Tell your friends, workmates, etc, especially to report their issues to us here!
Now our website is up we're going to be very busy! The broad priorities for the next month will be:
We hope that the above, together with consistent media activity, will help us raise our profile and give us more clout to influence politicians to deliver better rail transport, especially in the context of the 10-year plan.
As for engaging with other groups, the big one coming up in October will be Navan. You've all seen the report on the site -- but a report isn't enough, we need to get out there, on the radio and in the papers, showing how the people of Navan are basically being cheated out of a rail link.
We're also going to engage with local groups in Galway and Limerick to explain our vision for commuter rail services in both cities that can offer value for money, and offer a way out of the current gridlock in both cities.
We'll also be seeking to inform and engage politicians, first at a national level and then at a local level, about what we stand for and what we believe should be included for public transport in the 10-year plan.
Later, we're also going to try and improve what we offer members, which will mean a restructure of the message board (to seperate out infrastructure/planning discussions and operational matters), make some bits members-only (it's frustrating that we have to be careful of what we say on these boards as they are basically accessible by everyone), and very soon (you're tired, I'm sure, of being told this!) we will have Paypal up and running on the site.
We'll be keeping up the PR pressure throughout, hammering the muppetry of both IE and the RPA at regular intervals. We won't be going mad with Sligo however until January, as has been explained before. To repeat, we need to handle this very carefully as P11 isn't very popular that end of the country, and everyone in Sligo is very enthusiastic about the 29000s. They'll discover differently in January, and we have the letter from IE dismissing our concerns, and we will waste no time in highlighting what went wrong.
We've also got something a bit different planned for the launch of the Ryanair Dublin-Cork service at the end of November, we'll keep you posted.
Please remember that feedback from members is extremely important, anything you want to know, do shout.