Help Save Northampton from a road folly and protect a rail solution corridor

Help Save Northampton from a road folly and protect a rail solution corridor

The great town of Northampton deserves better. Like Bedford, despite growth over many years the town centres suffer from a problem of rising rents and mediocre footfall and spend sufficient to sustain small to medium sized business'. Congestion has informed bypasses get a string of out of town development and the congestion has just proliferated with added issue of land-use and parking conflicts facing every town like ours. 

Given both the A45-M1 clogs up and Victoria Parade clogs up and London Road also clogs up, how will adding more traffic from St James' alleviate the situation? Moreover, that traffic queuing back from the junction lights emitting fumes and noise in a now, largely residential area with thinner walls to what solid brick houses withstood? 

Consider this: A rail link from Northampton-Bedford is not 'pie in the sky' it is within our grasp if we act now. Already this very month we have £110 million for early completion of Oxford-Milton Keynes and Bedford with £10 million from the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) for Bedford-Sandy-Cambridge rebuild/new build project, estimated to be delivered by 2030, some 18 years ahead, may seem a long way off, but in planning and strategic terms within Planning terms cordons of acceptability. Where do we wish Northampton to be in relation to these developments by then? 

Train paths are already at a premium on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) through and south of Rugby to Bletchley. This limits scope on new flows of passenger and freight services the line can take. These constraints affect Northampton going forward. It is therefore in our view, imperative that Northampton keeps it's options open and whereas for Oxford a change of train at Milton Keynes Central may seem reasonable, to go south to come back up to Bedford before setting off East would seem less-than ideal. 

A Northampton-Bedford rail link would enable direct modern, fast seamless train access to Bedford, Luton, Luton Airport Parkway as well as joining for on-wards Eastern bound services for Cambridge, Stansted and beyond and vice-versa - inward flows of footfall and spend to the town centre, sustaining it, minus the traffic and checking the impact of development and growth in a sustainable fashion. 

Already an embryonic consortium was being formed to bring players together to advance the Northampton-Bedford interest and this piecemeal road link puts a block on the reopening when so much potential benefit is at stake for Northampton. The University will be a major traffic generator, it could have a station for it's students and cohortic intakes, plan-train-campus, no-nonsense, just one change, one train, one ticket and door to door seamless interfaces. All that is put at stake by this road which severs the railway corridor, is the cost really worth it? 

May I ask you to think again and invest in studying the credentials of what's in it for Northampton if you put the railway idea first? You have nothing to lose at such a critical juncture or face a concoction of congestion locked-in and unsustainability for many years to come, compounding all the old niggles which the Chronicle portrays every week locked in.

Please support and work with us for nurturing this rail link and help Northampton have more options. If you want to be kept informed more please let me know. But this road link is bad for Northampton's well being and should be put on hold pending further research of what the rail link may offer please. Thank you. 

Contact erta.rails6@yahoo.co.uk if you wish to support more and get involved.

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Northampton Depots and the Roads Agenda v Rail

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Another rail depot, measuring five million square feet, planned near Northampton... metres from original eight million square feet scheme

Another rail depot, measuring five million square feet, planned near Northa... A second rail depot plan that would place five million square feet of warehouses in countryside just outside Nor...

These new developments face the conundrum of what capacity there is on the West Coast Main Line. Facing media blackout in Northampton currently. However Northampton-Bedford-Bletchley loop would offer capacity for non-time-critical and empty movements for example and that would free some paths through Milton Keynes and Northampton. NIMBYS don't want these depots citing loss of countryside, but more road expansion is not opposed - strange coincidence! Likewise the Government reigns over austerity but has loads of money to splash on big projects like Hinckley, HS2, Trident, road schemes and Heathrow.

More road widening and yet 30 year old units on Marston Vale keep breaking down and a new generation needs to be commissioned - yet we are told no money, take recycled underground stock instead or go bust. There is a role for campaigning on these things and one way or other, it is indispensable albeit we need new blood to come forward to take on front line and active parts to foster a new wave of support. So rare, per chance between a hard rock and hot place with pushes to work, lack of slack with welfare cuts and workaholism being lauded as morally right when balance is more nearer to what wisdom would counsel, not least if you lose your health through over work and tarrying, you're in a worse state than a steady pace. Meanwhile Northampton is worth us working on and directing new team players to wade into. New buildings at the Olney Industrial Estate I observe. 

It is a fragile stay of execution, but if frivolously thrown away or dismissed or not pursued with equal vigor to Oxford-Bedford, Bedford-Cambridge, it must be pursued now not as some later addendum 2050! Yet that is the fob off we're getting one way or another. My report will be published in March and will put down a marker that opportunity to move the railway forward exists now, 5 years hence, may not be the case. By that time we'll be reaching gridlock saturate in our town centres and politicians need to realise you can't build your way out of it, rather re-balance the logistical apparatus to give people a fighting chance. Clean Air is not just about what sort of engine one has in ones car, but on fostering the rail alternative. Chicken and egg, no wagons equals can't do when someone asks about freight by rail, to have wagons a demand is required and so it goes on, lorry is cheaper, more versatile and easier to get hold of. But even that is reaching saturation point, so containers stack up, the system slows down and costs rise - enter inflation pittied on diminutives. ERTA may fold, but I as an individual will keep on with producing reports as a rader until we lose our route, then all is lost but for a turning off of the oil supply and making people pick up their bags and walk more. 

That is not fantasy but we should plan to prevent it by nurturing the sensible rail choices. It is cynical devils who bemoan and yet won't hire/pay me by the hour to work on this and then say "hey, we're volunteers who work, we don't have any spare time" - so nothing happens x generations relative to the road lobby who have an all encompassing in-built system whereby everyone has cars, everyone wants roads, every user demands cheap fuel and the politics and votes work their way out to lock-in recycling of the pattern. Rail has no mechanism to do likewise as it is fragmented to introverted parts caged by the contract/franchise and reps do not speak freely, they represent the particular interests of their members which is a fix point for xtown and a new pipe for ybox. Cracking the Northampton nut is pivotal to whether we grasp the nettle or concede defeat. Feedback: e. erta.rails6@yahoo.co.uk

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/another-rail-depot-measuring-five-million-square-feet-planned-near-northampton-metres-from-original-eight-million-square-feet-scheme-1-7655713

Transport Policy and Practise in Ground Level Outworking

Transport Policy and Practise in Ground Level Outworking

Re. Covenanta Waste Disposal Site, Rookery Pit, Marston Vale, Bedfordshire: This is daft surely as the first pre-planning consideration and stipulation should be that all fuel and waste and liquids are brought in by rail and taken out by rail? The Marston Vale Railway runs alongside Rookery Pit and laying a siding on a slow line off main lines would not be too much of a deal for something with a 20 year life-span. If not, what you get is regional influxes of wastes and fuels by lorry and exacting amounts out by lorry adding to congestion and carnage on the A421 and associated radial roads including cross-country roads. I think this failure to include and make a case for rail is a fundamental weakness of both the Metagg Campaign and Planning Authorities powers/use there of or regional LEP intervention as to the 'basis of operations going forward'. It is a carry on as has been before with or without a railway, which assumes road as a mainstay, when we should be looking at modal shift. Things like aggregates would be able to go by water if the canal used the extended navigation along the river Great Ouse course to link with Wolverton via Clapham, Pavenham, new tunnel coming out near Carlton/Chellington to turn towards Turvey, Olney and Wolverton where it would meet the Grand Union Canal. Instead the Canal Campaigners want to have a hoist up brogborough hill, which would be sufficient for boats, but not tonnages of freight except lighter stuff like recycling plastic for example. In any case non time critical may rule water out contrast the fact the railway is there and has capacity. From East-West Rail to Northampton-Bedford-Cambridge and more, the question is asked "who'se going to pay for it?" but the same question can be asked "who'se paying for the absence of it now going forward?" My belief, backed up by independent studies hitherto is to suggest the transfer to rail based operations for projects like this Covenanta episode would bring savings to the environment, road wear and tear, accidents and much more.

On another track, I am told by a colleague that the No. 40 bus service between Bedford and Milton Keynes via Bromham, A422 and Newport Pagnell is being withdrawn, hence the wish to divert the No. 41 Bedford-Northampton bus via the village loop roads and deny Bedford Road, Bromham of a bus service? I have suggested that a Grant Palmer Village loop could serve Bromham-Bedford - a mainstay of both buses and/or a No 11 recently started could do Biddenham, Bromham, Great Denham and back via Queen's Park/Bromham Road/Railway Station loop.

The No. 40 was scantily used between Bromham and Milton Keynes, although students used it to get to Bedford from Newport Pagnell - a town in it's own right. One suggestion was that it could have gone from Chichley to loop Olney before heading south to Sherrington and Newport Pagnell, cut out the Coachway (X5 serves it) and allow bus passes before 09.30 am to use it and usher day trippers to it rather than the X5 which commuters need and often leaves people behind on the am Bedford-Milton Keynes leg due to demand and capacity issues. Common interface between No. 40 and X5 could have been to reinstate the stop for X5 (request) at Chichley - which is where the Royal Society has a base. UNO C10 does Newport Pagnell and Crawley to Cranfield, it could do the Sherrington-Chichley-Crawley leg possibly to compensate if the No. 40 is withdrawn. Poor old Astwood of course. The No. 41 could then cut out Olney and provide a speeded up end to end service, but people at Yardley Hastings want a bus link to Olney as their nearest town. Maybe a very few, but one possibility could be for the 21 from Milton Keynes to arc from Lavendon-new stop Warrington Roundabout (development potential and interchange with any reinstated Milton Keynes-Olney-Wellingborough A509 bus link?) - turn at Yardley-Olney and back to MK Central.

Clearly coordination seems to be lack lustre, inclusivity like telling us and engaging with us as a representative group of 30 people would be nice from our Local Councils, let alone the media. Alas, we are tryers who seek to advocate an inclusive and coordinated transport system. Can't please everyone, but these cuts and revisions will surely displease and disenfranchise swathes of our society the old, the young, the frail, men and women. There's been a push to put society on a scientific basis and science has given values of cliniciality, reductionism, seeing people as pieces of meat, statistics and commodity value objects, than humanity and Biblical Creationism which sees all creation and every human being as made in God's image, as of eternal worth and significance and worthy of equality and consideration. As Susan Jeffers in her book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway says these differential values are not static but rather people and societies move between the polemics and it is the point of transition which informs the average. John Bunyan of Bedford was imprisoned for 12 years for preaching without a license and sadly, the law is progressively criminalizing communications like this today. Our website: https://ertarail.com/campaigns/ on the right hand side, scroll down says anyone can join this email and where requested can be removed. We're also running a Mailchimp news-output which enables people to subscribe and unsubscribe themselves. This will be hopefully happening in the New Year. richard.erta@gmail.com Join us and help make our voice stronger!