The good news is that we now have Oxford-Bicester of East-West Rail and now that end may wish to push for Oxford-Thame-Princes Risborough to inform a loop through Oxford to London with new deviations where blockages exist such as Wheatley where a Park and Ride with the M40 could lure more footfall to Oxford minus the horrendous congestion which bedevils every main town and city these days. Witney should also be considered as if you can put the A40 through surely you can rebuild a new rail link alongside? Light Rail through Oxford linking Kidlington with Cowley may also be something to entertain.
Likewise in Buckinghamshire, we need 'spades on the ground' for speeding up delivery of Bicester-Bletchley/Milton Keynes Central and Bedford. It is essential that it is hurried up and delivered with local passenger and freight 'new born to rail' planned and implemented 'new' now going forwards. A new station to serve Calvert as a Park and Ride and Claydon - all growth areas would seem prudent, Winslow taken as a given already.
The line towards Cambridge goes as far as Bedford and enters the main Bedford Midland Station via St John's. However the new-build so called 'Central Section' whilst consensus came down on a Bedford-Sandy-Cambridge route, the exact definition is still to be set before the public. 2035 seems a very long time for just 30 miles of rebuild when before that (2026) we have HS2 scheduled and a Super Highway costing £3.5 billion. I say ditch the road and put the money into speeding up delivery of the full Oxbridge Railway, give the railway a chance and see what difference it makes before eating up and brownfielding lands which otherwise would be green belt, countryside, food growing and conservation lands - to create more ribbon development with hoards of cars turning up to existing rail outlets and urban centres - parking/land use demand allocation conflicts - is a recipe against cleaner air and ambiance, rather carnage and chaos.
This brings me to the weird view emergent in some quarters of a separate Bedford-Cambridge railway whereby it goes cross country bypassing Bedford to the south of Sandy and links somewhere undefined in Cambridge. This would be ludicrous! The railway must come into Bedford and go out via St John's (reinstate the triangle of track) and head eastwards towards Cambridge on the old alignment. Yes, realignments at Willington are probably required, yes north of around Blunham is a costly business but the line must physically link with the East Coast Main Line at Sandy and interchange properly for St Neots, Huntingdon and Peterborough for example and East Bedfordshire and Stevenage from the south with East-West Rail. Otherwise you loose critical links. New build has blockages too, so some weaving around is essential, may as well use the old alignment and bypass where built up and share a new station such as Potton and Gamlingay which has doubled in size since closure and surrounding villages. Linking at Shepreth is one possibility into Cambridge or tunneling under the M11 and coming up and utilising the current single lane Guided Busway which assumes the old trackbed to enter Cambridge at Trumpington Junction would avoid conflicts of paths at Shepreth Junction.
Freight from Felixstowe must be able to turn at Bedford from east to north for onwards to the West Midlands and thus must be able to get through Bedford Midland Station. There is no east-north access at Bletchley, Bicester, Oxford, so if we want the benefit of freeing up train paths through Milton Keynes we must consider these things at the design stage surely? Milton Keynes Central is just under 3 miles along the West Coast Main Line north of Bletchley and lacks adequate baying capacity. Trains want to link with Milton Keynes Central plethora - from Oxford, Aylesbury, West London (Southern) and Bedford (Marston Vale Railway). They cannot all bay or access MK Central without new infrastructure. Bedford-Northampton rebuilt would keep freight off existing tracks and allow a Bletchley-Bedford-Northampton loop. East-West Rail should welcome this and incorporate it as a Phase 2-3 scoping aspiration at very least. It would also clear trains which currently idle at Bedford off through tracks allowing more services to serve Bedford. It is hard for lay people to ascertain how well this is appreciated as silence is the order of the day here.
ERTA applauds the study into Wycombe - Bourne End, which could integrate with the Windsor link, which is being taken seriously.
I welcome you to support our stance and aims and hold those running the show on these matters to account and scrutiny and demand they stick to a direct Bedford-Cambridge route with quicker delivery dates. We ideally need these rail links now. HS2 will apparently have no station between Old Oak Common and Birmingham Curzon Street, so all brownfield developments from that which a new railway creates will flood existing roads and rails. ERTA believes a study should be done jointly to explore a Leicester-Aylesbury reopening of the old Great Central as a capacity creation corridor which, coming off the Leicester-Nuneaton line would serve P&R Lutterworth, Daventry, Brackley and Calvert P&R. It could run on a new link to Grendon for Old Oak Common link up and a new link direct to Heathrow and the Woking - Guildford lines.
I hope this is not too over-whelming, but it is strange how some councils can entertain multiple roads and yet only one rail reopening per time? Bedfordshire has had lots of dualling and bypassification but it has attracted ever more volumes of traffic and congestion with accidents. We cannot go on blindly following this pattern, the Treasury must be told we need a more balanced transport budgeting programme which switches more freight from road to rail. We cannot do that without these central rail links and that should be our focus in my humble opinion. Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Pill
ERTA Chairman
