TRANSPORT campaigners are celebrating a succesful year ahead of their annual open public meeting.

Dorchester Transport Action Group (DTAG) has successfully called for improvements to a pedestrian route between two train stations, disabled access at Dorchester South Station and re-routed a bus service to Martinstown.

The group is holding their annual Open Public Meeting on Wednesday, June 12 in the Corn Exchange, Dorchester.

The meeting starts at 7pm (bar open from 6.30pm). 

Included in the keynote speakers will be pupils from Damers First School eco group who will speak about their campaign to get a Dorchester to Poundbury cycle route.

Stewart Palmer, DTAG Chair, said: “The open meeting will start with a review of the work we have done during the last year working with our local community to find solutions to our local transport problems.  

"It has been a very busy year with a number of successes.

"Including the “Streets Alive” event in September as part of International Car-Free Day when we engaged and worked with all our local primary and middle schools.   

"We campaigned on improvements for pedestrians needing to go between our two train stations which resulted in the partial closure of Fairfield Road. 

"We’ve seen improvements at Dorchester South Station. 

"We’ve worked with Dorset Council on the proposed Dorchester to Poundbury cycle route and made a submission to the council’s active travel improvement plan. 

"The year couldn’t have ended better when the long campaign to get the X51 bus service re-routed to include Martinstown achieved success”.

Giles Watts, DTAG Secretary, added: “We will also have an open forum discussion session where people can ask questions of our panellists. 

"The panel will include Andrew Ardley, regional development manager for South Western Railway, Tim Christian, Dorset Community Transport, and Paul Knight from Damory buses”.

At the meeting, DTAG will also be launching their new website. 

The new website will build support for the group by reaching new audiences. 

It will be more interactive and keep people updated on latest news and forthcoming events.  

The open meeting will be an opportunity for people to come along and raise their transport concerns, share their ideas and visions for meeting future local transport needs and helping to generate ideas for things that the group could work on in the coming year.