Road v Rail Event - It is time for a national plan of modal shift from road to rail and that means local rail reopenings and nurture.

This event is free apparently and 'open to all': https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/roads-vs-rail-reducing-emissions-by-2030-tickets-135985449139?ref=esli&utm_campaign=201308&utm_source=LinkedInenivtefor001

Roads v Rail is a polemic, whereas what we may need to see is more nurture and integration as follows:

1. a rolling programme of local, conventional rail reopenings/rebuilds/realignment lands and select new pieces of rail to enable rail to do more, court new markets and nurture modal shift by default of rails going where flows go. Thus north-south capacity - our call to re-rail/new-build a Great Central Link between Calvert/Banbury and Rugby/Lutterworth/Narborough (for East Midlands), Northampton-Market Harborough another. Default capacity creation is a nice idea, but passenger demand post covid may go up but in any case if the rail gaps exist, rail cannot be an answer. East-West Oxbridge rail link, but a new dedicated rail alongside A14 from Felixstowe to the West Coast Main Line with radial links in between would also seem logical, as 100 mile gap between North London Line (which takes a lion's share) and Peterborough-Leicester-Nuneaton rail link.

2. A plan for every line for rail-born nurture of freight by rail. Like Green Energy we tend to be presented with a big is beautiful or bust and trade reports on costs and locations, when small and plentiful can also reduce carbon.

3. A plan for formal protection of routes/lands to keep re-railing open. The new edition of Rail Issue 922, page 16 'Regional News' today has a bit about a canal threat to the Guildford-Horsham line, saying it will not stop a rail reopening. Personally having walked the line I think it is less clear cut, especially adjacent to line edge development and issues of double track and cycle/footpath access - can it really sustain it all?

4. A national plan for modal shift from road to rail, but also more combining road and rail interim like intermodal swap-body wagons, a dedicated Piggyback rail route from Channel Tunnel to Heart of England, an inland roll-on, roll-off rail network, bring back motor-rail and every train able to carry small loads of freight by rail like parcels, pallets, bikes, luggage, and dedicated freight again wagon loads to mixed goods to Speedlink style to full block trains. If we don't have the infrastructure, can't be done, but needs to be nurtured. One planning rule could be that warehouse complexes must be rail connected and have a percentage by rail from day one, not an after-thought of retrospective nice idea without inclusion of rail.

Hope these thoughts are of interest. I am sure you may have some of your own too.

Help Save Northampton from a road folly and protect a rail solution corridor

Help Save Northampton from a road folly and protect a rail solution corridor

The great town of Northampton deserves better. Like Bedford, despite growth over many years the town centres suffer from a problem of rising rents and mediocre footfall and spend sufficient to sustain small to medium sized business'. Congestion has informed bypasses get a string of out of town development and the congestion has just proliferated with added issue of land-use and parking conflicts facing every town like ours. 

Given both the A45-M1 clogs up and Victoria Parade clogs up and London Road also clogs up, how will adding more traffic from St James' alleviate the situation? Moreover, that traffic queuing back from the junction lights emitting fumes and noise in a now, largely residential area with thinner walls to what solid brick houses withstood? 

Consider this: A rail link from Northampton-Bedford is not 'pie in the sky' it is within our grasp if we act now. Already this very month we have £110 million for early completion of Oxford-Milton Keynes and Bedford with £10 million from the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) for Bedford-Sandy-Cambridge rebuild/new build project, estimated to be delivered by 2030, some 18 years ahead, may seem a long way off, but in planning and strategic terms within Planning terms cordons of acceptability. Where do we wish Northampton to be in relation to these developments by then? 

Train paths are already at a premium on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) through and south of Rugby to Bletchley. This limits scope on new flows of passenger and freight services the line can take. These constraints affect Northampton going forward. It is therefore in our view, imperative that Northampton keeps it's options open and whereas for Oxford a change of train at Milton Keynes Central may seem reasonable, to go south to come back up to Bedford before setting off East would seem less-than ideal. 

A Northampton-Bedford rail link would enable direct modern, fast seamless train access to Bedford, Luton, Luton Airport Parkway as well as joining for on-wards Eastern bound services for Cambridge, Stansted and beyond and vice-versa - inward flows of footfall and spend to the town centre, sustaining it, minus the traffic and checking the impact of development and growth in a sustainable fashion. 

Already an embryonic consortium was being formed to bring players together to advance the Northampton-Bedford interest and this piecemeal road link puts a block on the reopening when so much potential benefit is at stake for Northampton. The University will be a major traffic generator, it could have a station for it's students and cohortic intakes, plan-train-campus, no-nonsense, just one change, one train, one ticket and door to door seamless interfaces. All that is put at stake by this road which severs the railway corridor, is the cost really worth it? 

May I ask you to think again and invest in studying the credentials of what's in it for Northampton if you put the railway idea first? You have nothing to lose at such a critical juncture or face a concoction of congestion locked-in and unsustainability for many years to come, compounding all the old niggles which the Chronicle portrays every week locked in.

Please support and work with us for nurturing this rail link and help Northampton have more options. If you want to be kept informed more please let me know. But this road link is bad for Northampton's well being and should be put on hold pending further research of what the rail link may offer please. Thank you. 

Contact erta.rails6@yahoo.co.uk if you wish to support more and get involved.

Northampton Depots and the Roads Agenda v Rail

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Another rail depot, measuring five million square feet, planned near Northampton... metres from original eight million square feet scheme

Another rail depot, measuring five million square feet, planned near Northa... A second rail depot plan that would place five million square feet of warehouses in countryside just outside Nor...

These new developments face the conundrum of what capacity there is on the West Coast Main Line. Facing media blackout in Northampton currently. However Northampton-Bedford-Bletchley loop would offer capacity for non-time-critical and empty movements for example and that would free some paths through Milton Keynes and Northampton. NIMBYS don't want these depots citing loss of countryside, but more road expansion is not opposed - strange coincidence! Likewise the Government reigns over austerity but has loads of money to splash on big projects like Hinckley, HS2, Trident, road schemes and Heathrow.

More road widening and yet 30 year old units on Marston Vale keep breaking down and a new generation needs to be commissioned - yet we are told no money, take recycled underground stock instead or go bust. There is a role for campaigning on these things and one way or other, it is indispensable albeit we need new blood to come forward to take on front line and active parts to foster a new wave of support. So rare, per chance between a hard rock and hot place with pushes to work, lack of slack with welfare cuts and workaholism being lauded as morally right when balance is more nearer to what wisdom would counsel, not least if you lose your health through over work and tarrying, you're in a worse state than a steady pace. Meanwhile Northampton is worth us working on and directing new team players to wade into. New buildings at the Olney Industrial Estate I observe. 

It is a fragile stay of execution, but if frivolously thrown away or dismissed or not pursued with equal vigor to Oxford-Bedford, Bedford-Cambridge, it must be pursued now not as some later addendum 2050! Yet that is the fob off we're getting one way or another. My report will be published in March and will put down a marker that opportunity to move the railway forward exists now, 5 years hence, may not be the case. By that time we'll be reaching gridlock saturate in our town centres and politicians need to realise you can't build your way out of it, rather re-balance the logistical apparatus to give people a fighting chance. Clean Air is not just about what sort of engine one has in ones car, but on fostering the rail alternative. Chicken and egg, no wagons equals can't do when someone asks about freight by rail, to have wagons a demand is required and so it goes on, lorry is cheaper, more versatile and easier to get hold of. But even that is reaching saturation point, so containers stack up, the system slows down and costs rise - enter inflation pittied on diminutives. ERTA may fold, but I as an individual will keep on with producing reports as a rader until we lose our route, then all is lost but for a turning off of the oil supply and making people pick up their bags and walk more. 

That is not fantasy but we should plan to prevent it by nurturing the sensible rail choices. It is cynical devils who bemoan and yet won't hire/pay me by the hour to work on this and then say "hey, we're volunteers who work, we don't have any spare time" - so nothing happens x generations relative to the road lobby who have an all encompassing in-built system whereby everyone has cars, everyone wants roads, every user demands cheap fuel and the politics and votes work their way out to lock-in recycling of the pattern. Rail has no mechanism to do likewise as it is fragmented to introverted parts caged by the contract/franchise and reps do not speak freely, they represent the particular interests of their members which is a fix point for xtown and a new pipe for ybox. Cracking the Northampton nut is pivotal to whether we grasp the nettle or concede defeat. Feedback: e. erta.rails6@yahoo.co.uk

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/another-rail-depot-measuring-five-million-square-feet-planned-near-northampton-metres-from-original-eight-million-square-feet-scheme-1-7655713