East-West Rail – the doom, gloom and truth!

East-West Rail – the doom, gloom and truth!

Things are taking a turn for the worse on East-West Rail even as tracks are progressively being laid in and around the Bletchley flyover and Winslow areas. Divide as ever, there’s Oxford/Aylesbury-Milton Keynes Central and Bedford and then the Central Section of Bedford-Cambridge.

Starting Oxford-Milton Keynes, the conundrum of whether HS2 should go over or under the east-west formation remains to be resolved and we get conflicting stories. Someone said “as long as they get built, I don’t care”. But if the east-west rail is to haul more freight from road to rail, it needs the benefits a straight and flat railway course can provide, not humps. Likewise, Aylesbury-east-west rail has had tracks removed in the Calvert area and the land-take of HS2 means a new alignment east of former formation and a new ‘Claydon Junction’ east of the old one. ERTA has long called for a Claydon Station to serve a growing catchment and relief to Winslow in a context of growth north of the arc. These issues are remaining to be resolved and delay, conundrum and a need for fixing is palpable.

Meanwhile, ERTA calls for the same approach to the former Great Central corridor, for a new junction off the new Claydon Junction going northwards to serve a new course of railway serving East of Brackley ‘Brackley Parkway’ – the Brackley area being one of the largest towns in England without a local, accessible railway station and HS2, because of its nature will not provide stations between Solihull and Old Oak Common, so plenty of scope for a local, domestic rail line as well.

On Bedford-Cambridge – Central Section, we have a vehement lobby against the railway, against the Oxbridge Arc concept and to be fair the bate was given in the perverse 2019 East-West Rail Consultation whereby the original route via St John’s Bedford was not included, and either bypass Bedford to the south or go through Bedford Midland and head north-east up a grand hill and yet more hills and scant detail as to how it would negotiate Black Cat Roundabout (A1) being expanded with more road space. Politicians have made the northern Route ‘E’ a do or bust in their support for an east-west rail and have also discounted the former old route with counter proposals to block it with infill housing. This is again a wrong approach and lacks both creativity, imagination and realism.

The former Bedford-Cambridge route ERTA has called for as a lone voice in the wilderness, requires:

·                    No housing in Bedford urban cordon and as yet opponents have failed to identify what housing specifically is at risk.

·                    The old formation is flat land on embankment, following the Great River Ouse.

·                    Two level crossings and a raising of the A421 Bypass is required and a realignment around Willington and new alignment north of Blunham to approach the Tempsford plains from the south-westerly direction.

·                    ERTA has long called for direct east-west and north-south rail links to be physically linked at Tempsford, not segregated as the 2019 Consultation purported.

Although diagram below should have the GC Route Re-alignment proposal going off the east-west rail further east than it displays, none-the-less this ‘map of intent’ is a fine effort from our friend Mr Harry Burr:

Useful Summary:

Old Route Comparison/ERTA Notes	Objections, fallacy and/or extras
ERTA prefers the old route via old St John’s. Whether that means reversing into and out of Bedford Midland and new south-facing bays, should be studied as a part of new station design.	Argument, we must focus all links on Bedford Midland, you can’t have two viable stations. Yet, Bicester on east-west rail has two stations with connecting bus links and does adequately well.
If you made the old St John’s an 8-coach long station, you would not be able to divert tracks from east to north, it would be a straight east-west and north-south divide. However, if you come from west-north via the Route E option, you discount any east-north direct running anyway as you abandon that route completely!	That may be true, as we state, 2 stations co-existed for best part of 100 years and ability to get a connecting bus link going, maybe part of a new orbital serving new stations, Tavistock Street and the refurbished High Street (footfall and spend) should be looked at. Using the Hitchin arches and a diamond crossing rail, you may still be able to do a direct east-north movement.
It can be argued the old route east of St John’s causes no housing to be demolished.	Route E demands housing in Poets and Ravensden to be demolished or tunnelled under.
The old route east of St John’s requires 2 controversial level crossings and raising the A421 Bypass.	Route E requires a steep inclined flyover over A428 and A6 trunk road bypasses to ascend the hills and descent via Black Cat Roundabout to a flood plain.
ERTA proposes using the former formation until west of Willington and a deviation around built Willington to head north of built Blunham. We reject the can’t, won’t and don’t brigade psychology as head-in-the-sand. Yes, you can is the answer, it requires studies making the case, it requires lobbying including the Office of Road and Rail (ORR).	You can’t get levels crossings these days! You can’t raise dual carriageway bypasses for a local railway these days! You can’t slew cycle/footpaths for railways nor a bird sanctuary at Willington. Reality is, had studies been done to address and call-for these instead of getting north of Bedford Midland, we would not be in the pickle and conundrum today. Can we learn lessons? A thousand miles begins with a single step!
ERTA believes, get Bedford-East Coast Main Line (Tempsford) built and then look again at options to Cambridge and Ely respectively for wider East Anglia disseminations to and from.	The northern route e, fails to deliver, needs huge expense for a design of a switchback! Useless for freight and at huge cost to residential housing and much else. It can be avoided via St John’s with or without a second station.
Richard Pill has been associated with calls for East-West Rails East of Bedford since 1987. A basic railway can always be upgraded.	The East-West Consortium was founded from 1994. The old route was removed 1967 and built on from mid-1970’s starting with Sandy.

Addendum:

We are making progress, but need the Government to play its part, recognise the environmental and land-use stewardship issues require local rail not road building and inform more measures for affordable, accessible, comprehensive rail alternatives to just roads which create more congestion and associated parking demand. Please help us and write to your local MP and media outlets about these and similar issues. 

https://members.parliament.uk/member/4598/contact and

https://members.parliament.uk/member/3912/contact

To reject one rail link in a 100 mile desert of dearth of east-west rail links makes no sense when east-west roads are being progressively dualled such is east-west travel demand. On the other hand, if blight can be avoided via the St John's route we have mooted, then why not shape the footpaths, cycleways and fauna and flora accordingly? Thank you.