Train travel is very much a minority interest down here. Bridgwater, which is 3 times bigger than Wellington only gets 350k passengers per year. This isn't helped by the locations of the stations in Taunton, Bristol and Exeter (St Davids). Obviously for long distance travel especially to London, rail is a very popular option, and the comparative locations of the stations less of an issue. But for local travel it is a bigger problem. Any new station in Wellington will also not be very conveniently located for the town, it will be nearly 1 mile from the town centre, and most of the housing and new development is even further away.
As I said previously, Taunton station is not located at all well for the town centre, or for the major employers, colleges and the hospital. I would guess that at least 75% of all journeys out from Wellington are to Taunton, it's the local centre for pretty much everything. I would of course prefer a rail option, I wouldn't be on this forum if I didn't like trains... but being absolutely pragmatic about it, is spending ~£15m of very limited funding the best public transport outcome for Wellington? Rail won't ever be a sensible solution for the vast majority of local journeys, just because of the geography and the capacity limits of the line. How good a bus service does £15m buy? And would 10 electric buses running every 10 minutes all day be a better outcome for most people than an hourly knackered HST that doesn't take them anywhere near where they want to go?
