This plan could have waited until lock down if lifted. We have one chance to get on/off rail capacity right for the Bedford Midland area.
More thoughts - please respond to the plans and support our calls:
Somehow I feel that this type of thing could have waited until lock-down is over to let more people be included in the decision making process. I am not a NIMBY nor opposed to social housing per se or one of those people who think status quo or a bygone age needs harking back to. On the otherhand the ravages of destruction of heritage especially in the 1960's of which the original closures of local radial rail links was a contextual landscape part and not without impacts. Seeming piecemeal gains and developments must be put in a context. Yes, we need social housing and understandable rare urban landscape brown field does not come lightly and is opportune to help people in need and tick box stats.
However, I feel the following:
1. Bedford Midland and surrounds. With East-West Rail and surrounding areas, we are likely to see increasing numbers wanting to visit our town and centre and accessibility on and off the rails is a key aspect to consider. We need more capacity on numerous fronts:
a. Better Buses: Contracted services like all Grant Palmer Buses should be mandated to serve both the rail and bus station as an overall part of their routes. This would feed into and out of Bedford Midland Station hub and could also have a more orbital distributor network window of opportunity, meeting people with frequency from the station and delivering dollops of footfall and spend around the road system of the town centre ending up at the Bus Station or enabling people to ride on from the Bus Station on one ticket to wherever. Get this sorted with GP and Stagecoach may blink also.
b. More parking. Land around the station is needed for a variety of purposes. Infilling for housing only is short sighted here. Long established Town Planning sees that you have mixed developments of all pockets and none housing with adequate facilities built into the new community including cycle network extensions off road too (see MK Redways as one example). Alas, like Biddenham, we have masses of semi and detatched upwards of £300k housing, few social housing if any and poor facilities except those around the bypass more likely than not necessitating a drive - more traffic and pollution! The former loco shed in Ford End Road should be turned into a second booking office with parking and a bus turn around/coach park down to the river. You could take Dallas Road off Kempston Road and have a southern direct one-way road feed to it with new single lane road and cycle/pedestrian access over the river cutting the loop via Prebend Street with delays aplenty. This could be for station users only and/or a through minor road one-way to Ford End Road. You could have station access walk/cycle path shared under spare railway arch to link with Platform 4. St Albans have an exit only one side - we can do more here. Hurst Grove could be made one-way towards Winifred Road (buses excepted contraflow with cycle access) to help commuters get a quick get-away to Bromham Road, west side of A4280 Bridge for bypass and diaspora. If this ideas was a success, you could expand the parking from old loco site to former Gas Works flat land site. This in turn alleviates Prebend Street/Ashburnham Road, which will be more used than ever given growth of demand and supply of more trains accessing the station interfaces?
c. Station North of Bedford. Some have mooted Lower Farm Road Bromham for development and a location for a possible station. This seems short sighted. Despite the Bypass, we in normal times, still see loads of vehicles going through the village to and from Oakley and Stevington and vice versa from (presumably) off the M1-A6 span? It would be far better to locate a station either north of Lovell Road Oakley with access off the A6 Bypass or at Sharnbrook or both. I think Bromham is big enough as a self contained unit and any expansion should consider elsewhere.
2. The old Bedford St John's Station site: Proposed for housing, but wait a minute. Whilst the new route goes north of Bedford to Tempsford and Cambridge, the corridor from St John's Station to Cardington Road should be reclaimed as a urban recreational centre for locked-in local streets and children/families to have a play area. Nearest is Jubilee Park, across busy roads. You could as a part of this conservation cum park area have a cycle cum footpath from the southern end of the current St John's Halt around the corner to this park and onwards to link with Cardington Road for Tesco and the Sustrans Route to Sandy for example as well as the wider Embankment interface. In return this 'off road' safe green corridor to the halt for trains and wider travel. If you destroy this option for a quick-gain stats and social housing agenda - laudable as intrinsic that is, we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater and once done, cannot be undone, locking in poverty and dysfunctionality and throwing away part of our heritage/a green corridor option. Rope Walk had its cycle share sign removed a few years ago, it is a dangerous crossing at St John's Roundabout coming from/going to Ampthill Road for example and so a safer cycling option is required and we have a route for it potentially. I am sure an accommodation could be done with Stagecoach and also ground level access to the London Road shopping mall accessible only by road principally off opposite Elstow Road where B&M and Dunelm were to be found.
If you feel I am making any sense, please intervene and give support. We need to see tracks between St John's/Danfoss and Bedford Midland straightened and capacity of double track fostered to alleviate more trains than can be accommodated at Bedford Midland Platform interfaces. Yes, remodel the station by all means. Could we learn from Northampton where they have a corner entrance and booking hall off street level with links to over the rails footbridges/lifts (and possible escalators?) to platforms or could do in our case? Such a booking hall could be close to Ford End Road Bridge, looking down Midland Road to and from the Town Centre. Think if you will, someone disabled, elderly, frail or unfamiliar - presented currently with just 2 buses and hour (NO. 41) and/or a 10 minute walk to the Bus Station (all weathers and time of year) and to get to Nat West/High Street a 15+ each way walk. It is not encouraging, it is unacceptable and we need also to see Midland Road as a East-West High Street/Gateway/Showpiece 'welcome to Bedford' luring to wider town proliferation, discovery and search. I suggest we make it pedestrianised more with wider pavements and cycle lanes with buses only and deliveries confined to certain times with trees and benches to brighten it up. Footfall and spend can sustain businesses and they in turn can forge their own investment plans/make a wider contribution.
Finally, could we think about the former iron railings of former Allens Ford End Road Bridge-Hurst Grove area. They need ivy and trees pruned back, a wire brush, under coat and painting to look smart. Our industrial heritage, we have a wealth of iron railing styles around the town and could inform an information board as well as a town centre industrial landscape walk possibly. Another attraction with associated footfall, spend and visitorship/learning curves and greater appreciation of our industrial past. Not a big spend, but a quick gain, with links from both the bus and rail station. Thank you.
planningpolicy@bedford.gov.uk on the plans and richard.erta@gmail.com ERTA related.
The old St John's site and corridor needs to be protected to keep options open, not built on with housing estates. Please support this if you wish.
If we lose the access and the northern route from Bedford-Tempsford proves too expensive or problematic for other reasons, with the traditional route, apart from 2 level crossings and a raising of the bypass (A421) from whence slightly to the left going east, crossing the river twice, following Great Ouse corridor north of Blunham Grange to Tempsford, you could have the junction arrangement not another station for reasons already given.
After that fine whatever but we do need to evaluate the southern route above as a fall-back, not scupper it like at Sandy has been done, a folly!
Richard,
Thank you for your comments and for your interest in the development briefs. As you may already know we now have a website hosted by our consultants HTA specifically for the development briefs and the link to the website is below.
The presentations given at the virtual presentations held on 5th and 6th May are included on the site and the write up of comments and questions will be published shortly. https://bedfordspd.htadesign.co.uk
Please also find below links to survey monkey questionnaires which have been developed for both sites. The surveys will be available until May 29th.
Ford End Road
South of the River
If you have any further comments relating to the project, please email
Carolyn Barnes
Senior Planner
Planning Policy
Bedford Borough Council
Borough Hall
Cauldwell Street
Bedford Borough Council
MK42 9AP
Tel 01234 718568
Ext 47568
Dear Carolyn Barnes,
Thank you for your email dated 7th May with its connections and details. I deeply regret that the old St John's area is under threat of development whilst I have sympathy that the Borough is under pressure to provide social housing and use any available brown field sites for redevelopment where lands are scarce in an urban context.
I believe that whilst I empathise with the demand for using brown field sites for infill social housing, I suggest that these railways lands should be better deployed for rail purposes and thus protected from encroaching development. As per my original emails:
1. Land North of Bedford River Ouse/West of Bedford Midland should be a second booking hall and parking with walk-way cum cycle way to access the main station via Platform 4.
2. St John's Station site and down to Cardington Road, should be turned into a rail 12 coach siding maybe with a washer facility as current only caters for 8 coaches contrast 12 formations now in operation. Tailor development and keep the eastern rail corridor approach open as a fall-back in case the northern east-west rail route does stall for whatever reason and indeed will have new objections and obstacles to over come which with gradients may be as costly than origional route with deviation east of A421 Bypass around Willington and to the north of Blunham to Tempsford on the flat on raised embankment.
Folly to build housing at Tempsford on a flood plain around a station blocking the land which could be used for physical junctioning informing a Peterborough/Stevenage/Cambridge through route to Bedford and the whole Oxfordbridge Arc.
If we throw it away, we lock out and lock in at one and the same time. Likewise the need to straighten and raise speeds of a twin track solution to approaches to Bedford Midland configurated station platform interfaces from the Bedford-Bletchley railway, currently 10 mph and very curvey/single track - will mean a bottleneck of about 1 mile when the wider railway and service diversity opens it up.
We need to plan and phase redesign now going forward, not wait until 2024 and then realise retrospective issues unaddressed. Once lost, like Sandy there is no going back and if the northern route fails, then orbitals of Bedford is the only fall-back option.
Meanwhile, I would ask the Borough to re-study the Retail Park, Kempston for a new station to put Kempston Town on the Bedford-Oxford line reach and range as well as linking it and the town centre by rail. Studies 20 years ago suggested such a station could generate an extra 100 off-peak users per day to the local rail service, when it runs and that I would have thought would be a gain? Likewise, if people spend time of some 20 minutes queueing to get across Prebend Street to pay to park to then await a train to Cambridge, might they not be tempted to drive direct via the bypass and other upgraded roads the Borough has also campaigned for? A Retail Park Station could have some expanded parking and a footbridge off of Southfields Road Kempston and that would reduce congestion into Bedford in all cases. The new station would also allow visitorship and employment vacancies to be filled more in the Kempston and surrounds areas as well as part of a leisure package centred on the local rail link and services.
If you want any more information, engagement or exploration with me please do contact me.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Pill
ERTA Chairman
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
May be of interest to some of you (photo of site attached) and for more on it please click this link and scroll down to
for more details including objections where to send, developers and council planning officer details. You can object, you can comment, you can take the surveys and give us and the site support to be kept and explored for use as and for a railway purpose not built on and lost forever!
Even with a new rail link to Tempsford and Cambridge north of Bedford, is still a long way off, will face it's own blockages and oppositions and is not plain sailing by any means. We therefore think we need to keep options open and look at contingency here.
The old St John’s Station site in Bedford, taken amazingly from a moving train in the 1980’s.
It is even more amazing (and sad) that the site was not considered for other railway purposes before demise in 1984 when Bedford-Bletchley services moved into Bedford Midland or in the 36 years interim, even with an east-west consortium!
Now we have 12 coach Thameslink trains and an 8-coach length washer siding, could a 12-coach washer facility be put on the old site down to Cardington Road? Off through tracks, plenty of space and by default keeps this eastern access corridor open. Given the old route was double track, could a fenced off second half be used as a pedestrian cum cycle way from the 1984 St John’s Halt to Cardington Road to join the Sustrans old trackbed route to/from Sandy? Indeed, given 2024 we have Oxford-Bedford rails restored with services, could you not reinstate the old triangle using auto points and have a run-around for steam and other ‘specials’ south of Leicester or east from Didcot or Quainton Road for example based on Bedford as ‘leisure line’?
Alas, none of these possibilities have been realised or flagged up or considered. Rail industry shows no leadership or vision, council wants every bit of urban brown field for development and that it seems is the way this rail corridor and piece of land will go – lost forever to rail purposes, more cars on the road and a very poor deal for cyclists trying to get from the cycle path in Ampthill/Victoria Road to the Embankment via Ampthill Road Bridge and Rope Walk for example. It is a nightmare with busy roads and plenty of pollution. No green spaces. Could the St John’s site have been a conservation cum parkland with the cycle-walk way facility integrated? Alas, none of this seems in the minds of our industry, developers or leaders and we are poorer for it as development without sustainable infrastructure and green spaces is a recipe for locked-in dysfunctionality.
Please get engaged and write, email and take a look-in, as this could be our last chance here and need to keep options open.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Pill
ERTA Chairman
Below, some diagrams to assist with what we would welcome as a Plan B/contingency to keep 'open' if other options fall down or prove too costly or protracted.
