This article is a bit gloomy. For many years there was a government/whitehall denial that railway reopenings were credible. Bedford-Sandy in Bedfordshire, part of Bedford - Cambridge was one such dismissed. On the one hand power said there was no case, then blockages meant could not be done and so not worth studying and as no study, there could be no support.
Round and round we went from 1987-1995 when the East-West Consortium got going, then once professionals were in the driving seat, everything changed.
They had the resources to pool together and invest an a study and Steer Davis Gleave 1997 showed Bedford-Sandy as part of a wider Oxford-Cambridge rail link was perfectly do-able, realignments south of Blunham and north of Sandy just as we said; but that good news was dented by the fact the two councils in Bedford, the Planning Authority and the Transport Authority could not agree on an 'Inner Route' or an 'Outer Route' (bypassing the town centre) and these routing issues plus the new-route of East-West Rail Company, is still the big issue today.
Then add to the matter that the government should be following a policy of switching from road to rail to reduce emissions, reduce pollution, save public health and cut NHS waiting lists, save land and speed up end-to-end timings - lots of benefits for choosing local rail solutions. New money not-so-much the issue, switch of priority and spend from road to rail is what is required.
A sense of direction and lead, rail first. Taking tonnages off roads and pothole costs would be less as well as maintenance costs generally on the highways. Trouble is since the 1950's we've directed everything to road reliance and dependency and that has now come home to roost as endless congestion means delays and that is inflationary.
Those 'costs' translate to all our pockets.
Therefore, Government, for whatever reason is playing the field, trying to be all things to various demands without raising Tax from those with broader shoulders and so on the one hand plays 'make the case' knowing it is avarice expensive and time consuming, then turns even when cases are made robustly, to say "there's no money". Weird how they held a meeting in Eynsham in Oxfordshire touting support for Oxford-Bedford-Cambridge rail new-build, but very next day said "no money" for Witney and Carterton to get its local railway back despite a good case, and even Oxford-Milton Keynes has no passenger service start date as yet... glacial is the state of affairs and ultimately the public will lose faith and where that takes us is probably more chaos and uncertainty, for want of a pragmatic lead of where transport, people, places and the environment joined-up should be going - the rail-way.
HS2 is an expensive fiasco unravelling and much ado posthumously in the media, which could not be overly critical in earlier stages of concept and design and campaigners dissenting from the plans, were hard pushed to get a word in edge-ways and sidelined in relation to wall-to-wall coverage in some Rail Magazines and other "HS2 can do no wrong" media espousals.
BRTA has had its own debates and neutral episodes. But our view is that HS2 is not enough, capacity improvements on existing rails and reopenings are also needed on a nationwide on-going basis region-by-region. It is the spits and splurts of government which is disconcerting and whilst Portishead is good news, Colne-Skipton is equally deserving, but blighted in funding by government finding £9 billion for the Lower Thames Crossing Road scheme, which really, if it were leading right, should be rail-based.
Any government of any shade may have had to make difficult decisions, but environmentally, you put rail first, not pluralism of road and rail with little coherence. M1 is 50% juggernaut lorries, A14/M6 likewise, we need the rail alternative and BRTA is a contributor to that narrative.
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