Monday 2 October 2023

ERTA Northampton Public Meeting 30th September 2023 Success!


 

Public Meeting reflects both interest and concern over potential rail enhancements and how best to do them incorporating the Brampton Way ‘Green Corridor’

ERTA gathered people at a public meeting to discuss and explore public transport issues in and around Northampton Saturday 30th September. Despite the set-backs of strikes and disarray of buses, we were pleased locals turned out for us.

ERTA is aware that Northampton like many towns has a congestion and air pollution problem and as development goes in, so that will exacerbate, impacting the quality of local peoples lives.

 

It is our view that national and local policy should be geared to fostering local rail reopenings and rail-based solutions. We have unearthed under Freedom of Information (FOI) a study into rebuilding a Northampton-Market Harborough (N2MH) railway, which could offer rail alternative transits between Northampton and Leicester of just 35 minutes competitive to lure people out of their cars.

The Interim 2020 Network Rail study into N2MH reopening needs to be updated and completed. ERTA calls for this. Rail Magazine Edn. 991 6 September-19 September pages 8 and 9 state clearly Network Rail’s West Coast South Strategic Advice (WCSSA) says “HS2 won’t fully resolve WCML capacity issues.” This should be a springboard for ’spades in the ground’ now including extra tracks along the Northampton Loop and new addition through rails and platforms at Northampton Station. Precise details need studying, but ERTA’s call is to embrace potential, not throw it away.

Speakers included Mr Andrew Meaney of Oxera on financing and business cases, Peter Doveston from Northampton Streets Campaign and Professor Andrew N. Williams on the study for reopening the rail link.



ERTA held a public meeting at Northampton on 30th September 2023 at the Northampton Quakers in Wellington Street, Northampton. Despite a nationwide rail strike and bus networks overcrowded and, in some disarray, (fragmented privatised industries means a lack of joined-up-consideration with extra buses laid on for example), so people had to use what is available. Some 17 people came and heard presentations from Mr Andrew Meaney from Oxera on business cases and the funding of rail schemes and his illustrated talk was an interesting contrast between the state of the financing of the railways in the Beeching era and that of today and subsidies. However, we wish to avoid the comparison whereby closures were thought to save money, there being no money for investment to modernise and save medium long term. Now, government dithers and tilts between a roads only future and a fragmented rail landscape with part private and part public involvement and virtually leaderless whereby a single voice speaks and champions rails and rail users market share. Moreover, the business models of maths, engineering and science are all very well, but surely other values and evaluations like people before profit, arts and humanising what we do. Closure of ticket offices, disenfranchising swathes of users, in the name of modernisation and ‘efficiency’ in accountancy terms, must be balanced with the moral value of ‘the right to travel’ and what environmentally is best?  
There then followed and the meeting was chaired admirably by Mr Peter Doveston who leads the Northampton Streets Campaign which arcs walking, cycling, buses and rails from a grassroots level upwards for a better deal for the people of Northampton. Peter was able to ameliorate concerns of impact such a new railway between Northampton and Market Harborough may inform like whether relocation or realigning in a widened ‘green corridor’ the Brampton Way (public footpath and cycle way) and keeping the preserved Northampton and Lamport Railway as well as single bore tunnels and much more.
Professor Andrew N. Williams then spoke eloquently of the study he had unearthed following a Freedom of Information enquiry and the 2020 study showed the benefits of reopening like a 35-minute Northampton-Leicester rail transit for passenger services and how a link at the Market Harborough end could be done. The new Northampton Rail Freight Depot and DIRFT at near Rugby could both be beneficiaries removing more lorries from local and regional roads like the M1 and A508 for example. If we do not embrace the railway option, more development going in now, will exacerbate some of the highest congestion and air pollution in the country and likewise, if we do not embrace more tracks for more trains on the West Coast Main Line inclusive of the Northampton Loop, then true modal shift, let alone current growth of existing lines, will be stifled with roads being widened, where does this traffic end up? At urban interfaces! You cannot build your way our of congestion, but you can inform more rail choice, if we all support and act now to retain that option. No reopening is trouble free, but examples like Ebbw Value in Wales and Borders Rail in Scotland shows reopenings have exceeded expectations and forecasts and Northampton-Market Harborough (N2MH) is no exception. On the one hand you have Oxford-Milton Keynes Central inform potential consideration for more tracks between Bletchley and Milton Keynes Central, but to be able to commute between Oxford-Milton Keynes-Northampton-Leicester and vice versa, local and regional options currently only road served.
ERTA will continue to build a team and chip by chip engage as we may and yes, the pinch points like the Northampton Northern Link Road which crosses the trackbed at Boughton, how the preserved railway can be retained and how the width of the corridor can be widened to incorporate ‘interests’ as much as reasonably possible. In Lewes, East Sussex, they put their cycle-walk-way alongside the A27, which is really where such alternatives belong x every motorway and trunk road surely? See https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/23445960.a27-work-complete-cycle-path-built-east-lewes-scheme/ You can have a route alongside a widened railway, or alongside A508, but the idea that you can only walk on old trackbed, is a belief too far, sharing is an investment in all of us and the railway would protect land which otherwise will be developed with widened roads and congestion proliferation the end result.
The meeting went well and we hope to build on it. ERTA needs more willing volunteers to help with organising meetings and practical considerations like light refreshments, lifts from stations and ensuring the smooth running as much as possible. On a personal front, I do not rule out more meetings in Market Harborough and Leicester, but it depends on more willing volunteers, costs-income and translating to the Working Group to be self-sustaining, self-perpetuating, and able to stand on its own feet.
On Air Pollution in Northampton see: https://www.northantslive.news/news/northamptonshire-news/northampton-people-indirectly-smoke-189-8168681 This is just a law of averages, other towns like Bedford and elsewhere have their fair share too. Only re-railing can offer the modal choice to people and goods, even a 10 % shift nationwide would make substantial benefits and savings (preventative health for example) and yet Government seems in complete denial of this. Let us hope before, during and after a General Election, let alone the Climate Emergency, our elected leaders start to level up towards cleaner air, less congestion and getting UK PLC back on track!

Suffice to say I note Roade has got its bypass (A508), Parish Council dismissed the idea of a railway station… as the area grows, so the need becomes ever greater and we call for a. let the people decide in a vote and b. think again… think rail!


 

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Location: Northampton, UK

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