It's surely good to adopt this approach, then, for infrastructure, if redundant structures are involved, evaluate them to identify them as assets to the cause (or otherwise).

Even with a train service axed in, say, the last decade, one can ask 'How has its market changed?' (And for the one I'm thinking of, the answer to that would be 'There's been strong further growth in travel not related to the daily commute to work, we axed a service that supported leisure and education-related travel. As a transport provider, we need to strengthen our hand here.)

 
The text below is shared from a Facebook post I have just got carried away answering - from Two Girls and a Mop apologising to customers for late arrivals due to congestion.  I have - I hope - brought together a reminder of what we are doing and why we are doing it - for the quality of life and for people moving around the area in their business and personal day to day, and occasional, journeys, and for the people and businesses they interact with before / after / during their journeys.

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A reminder of how our road network in West Wiltshire is congested towards breaking point and how that impacts businesses and our economy.  How is this going to work, looking forward, as our area grows in population and mobility of both people and goods needs expand?  And how does our region cope with the freight and people passing through here located, as we are, in the heart of England?

The last two evenings I have been at meetings - very different ones (and three on two nights!) where we have been looking forward, and I have found them informative and inspirational;  we need to be planning for the future, and working to get effective plans actually implemented.

As a campaigner, and not an expert in anything (or perhaps I am through experience, observation, listening and osmosis), I wonder how effective my and other inputs are to those educated and trained to be experts and to actually do the job.  But yet I am encouraged by discussions  / chats / questions at these meetings to keep on at it. 

Last night, I asked (point blank) and in public about how we (West Wiltshire Rail User Group) should best engage with [whoever] in order to help ensure that the experts and do-ers can best fulfil their roles.   And the answers - keep making inputs. Make them positive as far as practical. Think them through.  And in the other direction, feed back and help inform / explain back to people some of the issues involved, the hard decisions, and why things are going forward as they are, but yet helping tune them.

I have learned over the years that even the people on "the other side" of campaigns who may appear to be "adversaries:" are rarely that.  They may be seeing things from a different perspective - working with them, understanding that perspective makes such a difference in what can develop into partnering to move forward best for everyone.

And I  am reminded not to look back with a view to RE-opening or RE-creating something, but rather to look back to learn from experience and the past to help inform us as to what we need for the future.

Thank you, Peter West OBE, for talking last night, sharing updates on some highly technical rail industry management issues that have been grappled with for decades and are still being grappled with, and in helping to confirm or direct our flows of inputs, directions and suggestions to those who are helping those things flow forward, even though it's not totally clear who those people are going to be and how that flow will work.

I have know Peter as a "work" contact - though my work has been mostly voluntary - with at times very different objectives set down. And yet here we are, 20 years later, affable in a common love and friendship for better outcomes, and with an ability on both sides to listen, explain and reach common good.   My goodness - how things have changed over the the years.
 
I WILL look back in history and point out how much things have been changed for the better in shared view. At times it has been frustrating and feeling that nothing has happened or we have stepped back, and yet comparing 2006 to 2026 there is no comparison, and perhaps by 2036 or 2046 there will be no comparison to today,  I look forward to continuing, for a handful of years more anyway, to doing so.  And, thank you, Peter, for your informed update and inspiration.