I roasted gently at the shopping precinct on Saturday morning, helping out with the shopping fun day. We dispensed around 100 cups of tea, coffee, blackcurrant and orange juice (supplied by the traders). I also found a new home for a filing cabinet that nobody on Freecycle wanted.
I had a questionnaire about the putative Lewes to Uckfield railway line. It had two questions:
a)If there were a rail link from Lewes to Uckfield, and a station at Ringmer (probably other side of the A26), how likely would you be to use the station?
b) if that were the case, how much more would you use the railways in general than you do now
Both questions had a scale on 0 (not) to 10 (very).
The results for the station question were impressive: 29 out of 41 people gave a score between 8 and 10, meaning they would very likely use it. 5 gave a score between 0 and 2, meaning very unlikely.
For the general question 23 out of 40 gave between 8 and 10, suggesting they would use the railway a lot more than they do now. 7 out of the 40 gave scores between 0 and 2, meaning they would not use the railways more than now.
Some people made the proviso that they would use the station if there were decent parking there.
This is a completely unscientific, non-randomised, uncontrolled survey*, but I think the results are quite impressive all the same.
*so I expect it to be quoted authoritatively in the Daily Mail any day now
