While we good residents of Luton await the emergency budget, and then live with the fall out of such, the DART is looking increasingly like a luxury we can ill afford at the moment and with the DCO being kicked into a corner have no real demand for.
What we don't know is how deep the council has gone down the financing route. Whether it is being borrowed in stages and contracts let in phases or if we are up to our neck in it. Answers of any kind are hard to come by. Direct face to face questions to LBC members are brushed aside, council meetings concerning the airport exclude the public (as they have been for years now) and the considerable section of the local population who rely on the airport directly or indirectly for their income are left in limbo.
The council must now swallow their pride. Suspend as far as possible any further development of the DART, put it into a care and maintenance state and concentrate on getting the airport back where it was before the current situation. When the numbers demand it, get it finished.