Rail Reopenings - a trickle now, but a long queue behind

Here is the article which may be of interest. Obviously East-West Rail is a lead example - local councils and organisations working together to make the case and take it to corridors of Government which has responded. I'm not like some railway journalists who set themselves up as adjudicators on what could be in or out, but select ones I believe deserve more support including the inter-linking Northampton-Bedford rail link. The March-Cleethorpes 'East Lincs Line' may need as many bypasses and deviations as Central Section of East-West Rail, but I believe it could well be worth looking at, studying and like East-West, Councils getting organised and forming consortia. Other councils can learn from East-West Rail and "go therefore and do likewise". We welcome people to join/donate time and money to ERTA to help us continue our work, planting ideas and challenging arm chair critics - action can make a difference and many hands make light of hard work. Please click this link for our membership page on our website and encourage others to support us too please https://ertarail.com/membership/

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/axed-beeching-rail-lines-re-opened-102057347.html

ERTA Welcomes rail reopenings announcement

See link for more news: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42157853#_=_

Initial Response: https://www.facebook.com/RichardPill24c

"This is welcome but I hope they will reveal the fine detail of which particular railways they have in mind. Ideally a few for each region with devolved areas having their own lists and budgets. England is lagging behind and there should be start up incentive grants to Local Authorities to incentivise them to be galvanised in the national interest. So much talk about money, so much swank about the modern railway with it's nose coned train fronts and sardine can ride experience being lauded as 'success'. We do need to re-rail Britain - conventional not #HS2 and #EastWestRail needs to have curves or redesign to ensure Bedford and East Bedfordshire have physical rail links onto the East-West physical rail and are not bypassed for Wixams or expediency on end to end fast transits for example. Personally I'd like to see Bedford-Northampton - Northampton has tripled since the early 1960's cuts and has a raw deal in network diversity terms. Others include Great Central south of Leicester-Nuneaton to Calvert linking with existing lines and #EastWestRail and Calvert-Grendon for access from Leicester to Old Oak Common/OCC for Crossrail linkage and a new line from OCC-Heathrow direct -the Woking-Guildford lines and Guildford-Shoreham informing a Leicester-Brighton 'not via London' option. London the Dudding Hill Lines could inform a Luton Airport Parkway (build a bay)-Reading 'South Chilterns Link' or Windsor and Eton (tourism). Likewise Cambridge-Haverhill and maybe even Colchester would help with #EastWestRail for more capacity if we're to have Felixstowe-West Midlands freight 'not via London' saving milage and time making rail transit more tempting contrast #A14 haulage. As more freight and logistics gets pumped into East Anglia, the March-Spalding and whole of East Lincs including Mablethorpe need regeneration and re-railing would certainly help them, Peak Rail and Woodhead for East Midlands-Manchester and North West and Hull-Liverpool land bridge connectives - Europe to the rest of the world - we need to re-rail our ports including Plymouth. No dreams if it were roads, it would be assumed as 'must have' and I declare to Lincolnshire Councils and any associated LEP type set ups "Go back to your constituencies, get organised, make a case, protect a corridor and prepare for shoe-horning railway reopening." Members of the public can join ERTA and volunteer to help us with our work like becoming an area rep and recruiting more members and support please: https://ertarail.com/membership/"

Inclusive Railways Please!

Dear Colleagues,

With these drawings I try to illustrate how we can ensure the East-West Rail, good as it may be does not bypass Bedford. Moreover that it enables a variety of services to use the rail infrastructure and diversity is the name of the game here. Freight must come from Felixstowe to the Midland Main Line for the West Midlands. Here we have had the Mayor of Bedford involved in campaigning to retain fast services for Bedford Midland but the East-West Rail will be at Wixams Interchange 4 miles south of Bedford Midland.  Won't East Midlands Trains not see potential in calling at Wixams for Oxbridge connectivity and so stagger their services as per Luton and Luton Parkway? Yes people will drive to Wixams, yes new development will enable it to serve those new audiences - the Marston Vale etc, but for poor ordinary people who use public transport, who do not drive, they and the regenerative footfall and spend minus the car are in Bedford and East Bedfordshire's case disenfranchised currently with the design of the laudable Oxbridge link. If you support these curves/make the case - remembering Northampton, Milton Keynes Central and rails into, across and out of London stand to gain if we redirect this freight via Bedford, so in their interest to cooperate. Likewise Northampton, if a Northampton-Bedford line is rebuilt, it brings footfall and spend minus the car but also Northampton-Cambridge with just one change of train at Wixams calling at Bedford en route. The perfect combination one would have thought. 

Please make these suggestions in your offices and help support an inclusive railway for all our sakes including Bedford. Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Pill

ERTA Chairman.

East-West Rail to bypass Bedford???

Now that the East-West Rail route is settled i.e. avoiding Bedford and serving a Wixams Interchange one draws a line in the sand concluding Oxford sees Cambridge and vice versa and what is Bedford that they should be mindful of it? I will continue to use the X5 as out of town anything is anathema to me. I accept a load will use it but the lack of a curve from the railway towards Bedford in any shape or form throws away freight and path creation capacity and the lack of physical links with the East Coast Main Line/ECML means the benefits of Stevenage/East Beds and Peterborough/St Neots-Bedford and beyond is scuppered and disenfranchised. I hope I am proved wrong, but that is how it looks currently. If Thameslink was extended to serve Northampton a 30 minute transit to change at Wixams for Cambridge is competitive contrast 1.5 hour No. 41 bus duration and 1 hour X5 and driving with congestion and parking would be slower too. ERTA will continue to press for Bedford-Northampton rail link to give local non London centric options. It would deliver footfall and spend minus the cars to both traditional town centres contrast bypasses to out of town draining town centres. Seems a weird logic to a layman that there has been all this clamour for saving fast trains at Bedford Midland yet silence from the Borough in the media about Bedford being bypassed by East-West Rail and the fact the two links will not be linked except by protracted means - a change and cost of two trains. Will East Midlands not be tempted as with Luton and Luton Parkway not be tempted to stagger some trains to link at Wixams as the growth interchange? One presumes the Borough is content to let it be, but if I were the mayor I'd be campaigning for better joined up thinking and for Bedford town centre not to be bypassed by East-West Rail.

See here: https://www.nic.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/5thStudio-FinalReport.pdf

Oxbridge Arc Fact, Fiction or Farce?

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Government's response to the National Infrastructure's Report revealed in the Budget today and our concerns are that:
1. The rail link bypasses Bedford town centre/report misses Bedford off in the title and intent
2. There's no provision for an east-north rail access allowing trains (passenger and freight) to enter Bedford Midland from the east - vital for taking current 150 mile freights via London to West Midlands off existing lines creating more paths and capacity for more trains - affects Bedford, Milton Keynes and Northampton respectively
3. Light Rail part of Marston Vale seems detrimental when it would be more cost effective to retain it as it is, improve reliability, timetable and rolling stock and open a halt to serve the Kempston Retail Park - also truncating the line at Wixams could sever the town centre-Bletchley link of the current shuttle of Marston Vale operations, seems counter-intuitive.
ERTA will monitor progress and interject as and when and where as may.

Hope of interest, we very much want a Bedford-Northampton link included, sadly Northampton is left out, change at Bletchley is time consuming. So Bedford and Northampton are marginalised.

On other news, we're still seeking 3 more speakers for our conference next April and 28 delegates, likewise we need a new volunteer webmaster to update our word press website for us. Kind, able and patient are ideal qualities. All offers and enquiries to my colleague Mr Simon Barber: Simon Barber T. 0208 940 4399/E. simon4barber@gmail.com

Yours sincerely,

Richard Pill
ERTA Chairman.

Example of Government pandering development without adequate infrastructure

Example of Government pandering development without adequate infrastructure

Example of Government pandering development without adequate infrastructure: They have no or adequate infrastructure. 250 houses at 2.5 cars per house is potentially 750 extra vehicles on the road per day, a proportion of which will have a good 10 mile drive to Bedford or Milton Keynes Rail Stations for commuting. The No. 41 bus offers hourly services via Yardley Road but that is all public transport wise and depends on subsidy from MK Council. Contrast a rail link which seat provides from walking/cycling distance of where they live and frees up pressure of road, parking and costs. Clearly we need bigger fry to bring this home and efforts to acquire it is welcome on all fronts. It may be presented as a piecemeal, isolated development, but x 18, 000 homes quoted for Bedford Borough, similar or more for MK and Northamptonshire, the impact is unsustainable without new and more infrastructure which includes parking management, not cost management, but adequate land use to accommodate it, rather than clogging up streets.

We don't need another quango, what we need is a force which can intercept these patterns and say think again, used to be Public Inquiry, now... there doesn't appear to be anything. We need more support for the railway and as far as ERTA goes it is steady as she goes into the new year and our plan, inadequate as may be is still a tabling of the rail link, which people can rally with or face the outcomes of their refusal to collaborate with, a mess accumulating and normalised as 'daily life'! We must beg to disagree. The railway can bypass Olney but like East-West Rail greater or lesser we're talking cost but time is clearly running out as development pressure mounts. Join our free no obligation loop richard.erta@gmail.com and support our call for reopening the local railway and join ERTA: https://ertarail.com/membership/

Support welcome for putting Northampton-Bedford back on the map!