East-West Rail Turbulence: ERTA points the way for rail and save some money!

Bedford Midland Station Designs: https://sacuksprodnrdigital0001.blob.core.windows.net/regional-long-term-planning/Eastern/Bedford%20Area%20Strategic%20Advice%202022.pdf is the latest installment in the saga. Good news intrinsically, although we want a rail route going east of Bedford via St Johns, not Northern Route E which in our view is costly and engineeringly problematic, let alone environmentally more questionable than going along an established former rail corridor for some of the way?

re: https://www.bedfordindependent.co.uk/east-west-rail-has-hit-the-buffers-says-local-mp/ and https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/local-news/grant-shapps-rail-project-cancelled-24481614

This is a failure of tiers of Government as well as anyone else. On the one hand, ERTA takes a view the route between Bedford-Tempsford area-Cambridge was unworkable beit engineering, steep gradients and lack of things like east-north from east-west rail to Midland Main Line which the design did not incorporate. On the other, taking prior support and with reworking for the taking into account development creep has curtained off the Sandy area for accessing the north-south main line (East Coast Main Line/ECML) and that such a physical linkage was not inherent in the 2019 consultation, means the wider range of market potential inclusive of north of Stevenage, south of Peterborough and East Bedfordshire is written off, but no-way are people to be expected to come to Bedford from one of these areas changing trains at middle-of-nowhere even with 300 new houses Tempsford to come to Bedford when they can drive or bus in less waiting time? 

ERTA believes we do need an east-west rail link and discerns that freight should be an important element in such a design. However, a passenger line serving Cambridge as one main market and a new passenger and freight line to link with radial lines at Ely: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/our-routes/anglia/improving-the-railway-in-anglia/ely-area-capacity-enhancement/ which is being pushed for a rail upgrade but being stalled by... government! Who is the Secretary of State for Transport? Is it not one Rt Hon Grant Shapps? Again, as with the strikes, he is unwilling to consult with us and consider a Plan B option, it is do or bust and that is sadly, unworkable.

As for Richard Fuller MP's rhetoric, we should note A1 and A421 roads are being flooded by unadulterated growth of traffic in a context of no east-west rail comparative choice in 100 miles north of London. Black Cat Roundabout and dualling to Caxton (near Cambridge) will at best buy time, but the development rate and overflow straight onto the roads, means that gridlock congestion, urban, rural and at junctions is at best delayed, but when it comes, what then? A1 motorway-isation has been on the cards for decades and where to put bypasses of built Biggleswade and Sandy bring their own issues, to the east of Sandy you have growing Potton, to the west growing Beeston and Blunham/Ivel Valley course of river. To tunnel under Sandy Heath would conflict with RSPB HQ (birds!).

There's no easy answers. 

ERTA appeals to Councils, MP's, DfT, East West Rail Company and others to talk with us, reason with us, invest in studying our proposals and do a comparative assessment contrast the cost, upheaval and other issues including getting through Black Cat Roundabout area which does not make passive provision, and see our suggestion could make a whole lot of sense. Currently we feel marginalised and ignored by the media and the various parties and we wonder why? Suffice to say "the stone the builders rejected, turned out to be the capstone!" So we are in good company!

Please stay with us. Join our loop via email richard.erta@gmail.com and for the pdf - but the situation is changing all the time. Page 18 of the current Modern Railways Magazine* apparently has a new story of a new platform at Bedford Midland. This sounds like what we have suggested for catering for Oxford trains calling at Bedford. Two bays are needed. But it is made in such a way as to keep open going north of Bedford. That means station booking hall rebuild, that means 2 new arches under A4280 Bromham Road and knocking down 40+ houses with 6 tracking; so bays seem more sensible, reversing and out from the southern link. However, for freight going north of Bedford, better access to the existing twin slow lines is needed, so a complete redesign/revolution is required. If, when and what we await with excited anticipation and of course the upheaval it will inevitably bring on and off the rails. There's always more and rationale can lead to conspiracy theories rather than to put it baldly 'cock-up'! Jury is out, but a roundtable could bring representatives together including ERTA Reps, and together we could work at making a rail link a success, rather than an embarrassment. Realism wrongly predicated on pollution, large land-take and environmental degradation, is unsustainability by design (more roads only answers) and a false premised economy. We need a sustainable railway and our suggestion could reduce costs, speed up end-to-end journeys and rebalance road-rail usage. If Dr Beeching could see the strategic potential of retaining the Bedford-Cambridge rail link, x3 over 6 decades of growth on and off the roads and rails, then so should we. Location, location, location! *From text, now corrected, it is to be on the west side of the existing station. That will cause its own issues and is mega disappointing.

East-West Rail Turbulence: ERTA points the way for rail and save some money!

For reflections on the past, please refer to reference (1) below and scroll down and click! But the announcement that Grants Shapps may cancel east-west rail (2), surely does not mean Oxford-Bedford which is a rebuild job, but the new construction ‘gaps’ between Bedford and East Anglia. On the one hand the problems were inherent with the whole project from the start. Disunity amongst the rail fraternity and on the other a post-rail culture developing where roads are the way for freedom. Carefully ignoring congestion blight, but seeing more roads as the answer to congestion, not rebuilding rail links.

Caption Left: Bedford-Sandy trackbed at Goldington looking west 1985. Why build brand new with up-hill/down-hill, when this flat land commends itself and you can always slew a cycle/footpath alongside in such an open-land context surely?

In 1985 that was very much the emergent case and in 1987 when the first organised effort to formally suggest the rail link east of Bedford should be supported, met with incredulity. Interim, bypass building has been done and the volume of traffic has grown to fill the new vacuum of capacity created. Despite the views expounded and reified by media that bypasses offer relief from congestion, in fact, Bedford is very much congested today despite those bypasses. With the growth of development, that congestion will grow and be exacerbated and with roads everywhere, there will come a day when nowhere else to go transport-wise. In short, a rail link east of Bedford is essential to counter-balance the growth of traffic and bring some choice to the market of business on offer. ERTA has long argued that whilst we need them, buses are no good at luggage conveyance, bikes or freight. Only the rail alternative can cater for this, to reduce the juggernaut volumes and give car owners a decent alternative to make them think public transport as a realistic and viable option. Where things went wrong, apart from disunity at the start and counter-objections to a bridging of the former Bedford-Sandy trackbed east of Bedford with the A421 in 1993, the 1997 Steer Davis Gleave Consultants report made the case for a Bedford-Cambridge Railway, but Bedford Councils could not make up their minds! Some touted an inner route serving Bedford and faithful to the old route, others wanted a new-build outer railway avoiding Bedford. They wanted cake and eat it, the darn cheek being they had spent a decade saying things like “there’s no case or demand for a railway” and “blockages prohibit rebuilding” I paraphrase from letters I used to receive from them. They knew we lacked the resources to challenge their bigoted views. Then, here, 1997, the report of consultants, trained and experienced in such matter are saying “it can be done” and “benefits if done to…Bedford!” – again I paraphrase. All we had been saying was shown as ‘do-able’ being getting east of Bedford via the old route, realignment south of Blunham and a new route north (then) of Sandy with connectivity to the main north-south main line and new links to Cambridge via the Ickleford Curve. Alas it floundered, alas the disunity meant government following a post Iraq financial deficit, took its money elsewhere and just turned the question back to focusing on the then ‘western section’ Oxford/Aylesbury-Milton Keynes/Bedford. East was abandoned, Central Beds Council as it became developed over the north of Sandy lands blocking off access for a new railway. So, we come to the 2019 consultation whereby it comes up out-of-the-blue, with a new route east of Bedford. Our lay assessments showed that it was engineeringly challenging to put it mildly and ill-judged. On engineering, environment impact (knocking down houses) and fit for purpose criterion, it was dismissed by us in utter disbelief and disappointment and we counter suggested a new-build using the old route instead with realignments at Willington and instead of south of Blunham, to go north of Blunham. Their meeting point was ‘south of St Neots and north of Sandy’, which by my map means the Tempsford area, north or south of Station Road. But despite our efforts to warn the EWRCO that their new route north of Bedford would court a lot of opposition, they ploughed on and now it hits the buffers. That means we get the Oxford-Bedford link, but no rail link to East Anglia. 

If we wait 10 years, rate of development means all options will be lost. A421 is growing like M1 with about 50% juggernaut lorries, so any new railway must cater for freight from day one, ideally in roll-on, roll-off/Piggyback terms, we must have vision for this and build accordingly. But the proposed new route had steep gradients, was circuitous and lacked connectivity with the East Coast Main Line (ECML) in the Tempsford area (Peterborough, East Beds and Stevenage for example in scope) and as for the new route to Cambridge, because and weaving between development, avoiding compulsory purchase and re-build, it weaves to join the Royston-Hitchin line from Cambourne on new trajectory and against the grain of the landscape meaning new embankments of some size. It is a circuitous route, a controversial route and costly.Our route to ECML from Bedford uses the old route to just west of Willington. A realignment is possible, but speed need not be the main consideration. Our route then goes north of Blunham to approach the Tempsford plains from the south-westerly direction with physical connectivity with the north-south main line for optimum passenger and freight reaches to the Bedford-Oxford corridor and vice versa. Our route is shorter and probably cheaper than Northern Route E and despite some councillors claiming to the contrary have yet to specific exactly what houses would need demolishing if any, whereas 40+ in the Poets area of Bedford would be required for the Northern Route E, which our route would be hard pressed to equal! Yet for all that, the Mayor, for all his attributes, has failed to grasp these merits and lead from the front in asking our route to be assessed with a view to overcoming challenges, not building new housing on the old St John’s Station site which would scupper any rail link east of Bedford forever. Caption below: Simon Barber captured the old St John’s ‘green site’ in urban Bedford circa 2019. Why block an amenity for housing, when a railway + a green corridor could really add something in the urban context, including traffic reduction?

On east of Tempsford, we believe there is merit in connectivity to Cambridge principally for passenger requirements. However, if the link to the Royston-Cambridge line proves too much, we believe a new look at a new rail rebuild to link with Norwich, Ipswich/Felixstowe and Cambridge/Stansted lines from a new multiple linkage at the Ely area from the west. If we act now, lands can be acquired and the new link pushed through. A key objection from Cambridge is that loads of freight through the urban centre would be counter-intuitive and given the capacity constraints both there and Newmarket Tunnel, I can see their point. If all goes via a new link across to Ely and the Ely bypass being mooted but stalled by… government, whose Secretary of State for Transport as at 23-08-22 is still Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP despite Government agreement we are in a Climate Emergency, is pursuing roads and counter intuitive policies to any environmental/land-use stewardship cares. It presides over ever-more uncertainty and seems to be wobbling like a jelly, rather than a bull-by-the-horns and leadership, direction and cascading money from road to rail and an investment for a better future and lowering our emissions footprint at one and the same time. When win, win stares you in the face and you ignore it, begs the question as to whether it has an objective and honest evaluation of the needs and situations this country faces. Suffice to say Government finds money for roads more easily than rail projects of an exact similar nature. If our route suggestion is less than Northern Route E, why not evaluate, compare and contrast and go for it to give hope of some traffic reduction relief to urban areas and land savings for rural ones? The £950 million Black Cat Roundabout (3) remodelling and dualling to Cambridge will, like A421 M1-A1 only full with more traffic which then backs up at junctions and once capacity filled to gridlock, has no Plan B. Urban areas cannot accommodate it and so, unless we make the rail link a priority, we are in a dire situation of false premises. The railway is the right way to go, our route, not Northern Route E, which even lay people with some local knowledge could work out was not going to succeed except as some kind of vanity project which does not serve rail well. We welcome all parties to round-table with us and crack on with a rail link east of Bedford. 

References:

1.       https://ertarail.co.uk/publicity/

2.       https://cambridgeapproaches.org/secretary-of-state-for-transport-wants-to-cut-ewr-tranches-2-and-3/

3.       https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/planning-milestone-hit-for-national-highways-950m-black-cat-roundabout-upgrade-22-02-2022

Route for rails east of Bedford ERTA supports: 

1. 

 2.