Dear Friends, Colleagues and Elected Representatives,
Greetings! As we enter the Festive Season, some of us may wish to take five minutes to have a read of the attached said pamphlet. It is not aiming to be an exercise in fact and figure gathering nor a final word, but our contribution to an on-going debate. It aims to give new-comers - yes they exist! - a basic introduction and add a flavour of the ERTA take on the matters pertaining. We do stalls and it is aimed to give out to people as often we get questions and demands for updates on matters around East-West and whilst there can be the straight through Bedford or website address references, we feel it is more complicated than that.
Our take is that we do need more-than one east-west rail link. There's currently the North London Line, the Peterborough-Leicester-
It is ironic that the A421 and A428 have and are being progressively dualled and bypasses installed, but no equivalent railway has been progressed in a similar fashion. This despite growing volumes of traffic, filling urban roads to gridlock, the pollution from static exhausts and waste in time, cost and energy when we have much ado around COP26 and respective environmental, efficiency and cost productive ratio matters. Getting rail-based transport right is crucial, giving things like modal shift, choice and traffic reduction a chance to happen whilst keeping the economic wheels turning.
Our view is simple, by reinstating the St John's triangle and going east of Bedford via the old line, studying challenges and blockages with a view to overcome until east of Willington and thence north of built Blunham to approach the Tempsford Plains from the south-west with physical rail connections for Peterborough and south, Stevenage and East Bedfordshire as well as a Cambridge/East Anglia link to have full and direct access to Bedford County Town and beyond beit north or west of Bedford. Route E and the current tabled suggestions does not offer that even as it is cross-referenced in some other documentation for example. Passenger trains could come into and reverse out of Bedford Midland if extra bays are provided on where the old Focus DIY Warehouse used to be, now extra parking. Bedford is long overdue for a new station concourse and complex on the site; nothing new hardly since around 1977, whereas Oxford has had about 2 or 3 refurbishments since that.
The 1960's Bedford Committee recommended linkage with Bedford Midland via reversal and with an upgraded line between Bedford St Johns and Bedford Midland, the timings could be negligible overall, compared to anything road-based offers.
Happy to discuss further and a perusal of our Facebook Page is recommended:
Seasons Greetings to all and thanks for listening!
Yours sincerely,
Richard Pill
ERTA Chairman
For copied (pdf colour) please send email requets to richard.erta@gmail.com or scroll down our Publicity Page: https://ertarail.co.uk/publicity/
No comments:
Post a Comment