East West rail, Bletchley to oxford line

[Nearholmer]

I thought that only had one ‘L’.

[Arun Sharma]

Nearholmer

You are correct - Holywood Co Down does only have one 'l'.

[melmerby]

We could do with some more news on the E-W Rail line to stop this thrad drift😃

[rodent279]

On 22/07/2022 at 16:18, KingEdwardII said:

The problem in the UK is that we never addressed the need for a proper set of trunk roads - all dual carriageway with graded junctions.

 

Generally, the road network is a mess, with things done piecemeal and fitting together very poorly. Only quite late did we get routes like the A34 and A14 - which are essential and high volume. Meanwhile the A27 along the south coast is a monumental mess to this day. The route across the country from Cambridge to Oxford likewise.

 

Interestingly, I suppose the equivalent railway routes are just as messy. Mainly, only the routes to/from London were built for speed and volume. The A34 equivalent is still a tortuous patchwork via Basingstoke, Reading and Oxford. The A27 equivalent from Southampton via Brighton, Eastbourne to Ashford is a complete dogs dinner. It's a real inditement that the quickest way from Southampton to Ashford is via London. (true of both rail & road)

 

Yours,  Mike.

Another that would make sense to me is upgrading the A303 to full motorway standard, from where it leaves the M3 to joining the M5 at or near Taunton. That would take a lot of traffic from the M4 & M5 via Bristol, and possibly relieve the A34 a little as well.

Edited August 22, 2022 by rodent279
M5, not M4!

[lmsforever]

Any ideas about possible timetable between Oxford Bletchley  and possibly Bedford and who will operate it could it be Chiltern , GWR, or someone else ?

[Mike Storey]

32 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

Any ideas about possible timetable between Oxford Bletchley  and possibly Bedford and who will operate it could it be Chiltern , GWR, or someone else ?

 

It is not at all clear. EWR are buying/leasing the rolling stock, and, as of 2016, the DfT were said to be considering a "new" franchise to operate the line. Since then, nothing about operations. Just the Shapps announcement that he is considering curtailment of the whole shebang, for reasons unstated other than the usual "costs", but surmised to be about losing votes in south Cambs. (and possibly elsewhere). An absolutely brilliant way to conduct strategic transport policy.

 

Nonetheless, DfT were still advocating a way forward with the ORR, for operators of the line, in July 2021, suggesting that EWR would be the shadow operator until a company could be selected:

 

https://www.orr.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2021-09/2021-07-20-east-west-rail-phase-2-letter-from-dft.pdf

 

 

Edited August 22, 2022 by Mike Storey

[KingEdwardII]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

upgrading the A303

Yes, I agree.

 

In some strange way this parallels the history of the railways. The first line in 1844 to the south west was the GWR + Bristol & Exeter via Bristol - equivalent to the M4/M5 today - the "Great Way Round". Then the LSWR created its direct route via Salisbury and Yeovil in 1860, roughly equivalent to the A303. The GWR eventually created its "direct" route only in 1906 - but the bypasses at Frome and Westbury were only built in 1933!

 

So the south west has been something of a Cinderella.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[Nearholmer]

Maybe there should be a separate thread within which railway enthusiasts could discuss which roads they would like to see built.

[rodent279]

25 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Maybe there should be a separate thread within which railway enthusiasts could discuss which roads they would like to see built.

I take your point, and I see the irony, but the truth is we need both quality roads and quality rail. Done properly, the two are complementary.

[seahorse]

Roads - there is a whole site - Sabre-roads.org.uk (Society for all British Road enthusiasts)

[Mike Storey]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

I take your point, and I see the irony, but the truth is we need both quality roads and quality rail. Done properly, the two are complementary.

 

What does that actually mean???

 

What we are seeing, on here at least, are proposals for roads that would be detrimental to the attractiveness of train travel. If you mean the creation of better roads feeding into public transport hubs, then maybe I would see your point. But that is not the case, both for the propositions on here and the general direction of Highways Agency (for which read government policy) - they are primarily vote-catchers in a very localised way.

 

This thread is about the (re-)development of an East West rail route - it should not be about anything else, however attractive that might be to those who wish it otherwise, or as well as.

 

[cctransuk]

30 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

What does that actually mean???

 

What we are seeing, on here at least, are proposals for roads that would be detrimental to the attractiveness of train travel. If you mean the creation of better roads feeding into public transport hubs, then maybe I would see your point. But that is not the case, both for the propositions on here and the general direction of Highways Agency (for which read government policy) - they are primarily vote-catchers in a very localised way.

 

This thread is about the (re-)development of an East West rail route - it should not be about anything else, however attractive that might be to those who wish it otherwise, or as well as.

 

 

The (re-)development of the East West rail route is one option for East West transport.

 

Whatever one's views on the respective merits of the various options, it would seem to be reasonable to discuss these in the context of a thread in which the possible curtailment of the rail route is under active consideration.

 

CJI.

[Nearholmer]

I’ve seen road (notably bus), cycleways, and rail done in a complementary way in Denmark, and the truly sad thing is that the Ox-Cam arc could have been developed in a Danish sort of way, housing, workplaces, and transport as an integrated whole, but we live in England, not Denmark, so it has to be done as an anarchic, ill-thought-out, bngger’s muddle, with housing miles from jobs, crappy little housing estate roads that don’t work, half an arterial road, and half an arterial railway, and shambolic bus services, and cycleways that peter-out in the middle of nowhere (I can show you those), buckets of NIMBYism, and a host of other messes.

Take control of our borders? We’re incapable of taking care of a whelk stall!

 

(Sorry, just that having this unfolding embarrassment on the doorstep rather gets to me, Huge opportunity completely bungled.)

 

[Andy Kirkham]

And near Dumfries

 

 

[ess1uk]

On track to open Bletchley to Bicester for July 2024 start?

 

[KingEdwardII]

Yes, British inability to plan - plus myopic London-centricity.

 

It is quite clear that the arc Oxford - Milton Keynes - Bedford - Cambridge is one of major development and economic success outside London. Good transport across that arc is essential and will boost economic activity. For me, that includes both rail and road. How is it so hard for both government and for the locals on the ground to grasp this. Everyone seems to be myopic and parochial beyond belief.

 

Let's hope Bletchley to Oxford opens ASAP - that can only help boost things. Just a real shame that it will not be electrified.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[Pete the Elaner]

15 hours ago, rodent279 said:

I take your point, and I see the irony, but the truth is we need both quality roads and quality rail. Done properly, the two are complementary.

 

For political reasons, complimentary road & rail are unlikely to happen.

[Pete the Elaner]

2 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

Yes, British inability to plan - plus myopic London-centricity.

 

It is quite clear that the arc Oxford - Milton Keynes - Bedford - Cambridge is one of major development and economic success outside London. Good transport across that arc is essential and will boost economic activity. For me, that includes both rail and road. How is it so hard for both government and for the locals on the ground to grasp this. Everyone seems to be myopic and parochial beyond belief.

 

Let's hope Bletchley to Oxford opens ASAP - that can only help boost things. Just a real shame that it will not be electrified.

 

Yours,  Mike.

 

Bletchley - Oxford is the easier part. It was a relatively recent closure, being used for freight until the 80s, so the track bed still exists. Building it without wires is nothing short of criminal though. I jest about a line without OLE as being incomplete, but in our allegedly environmentally friendly age, a new railway really should be incomplete without it.

 

The extension is not without issues though. In order to make it useful we need faster trains between Oxford & Bedford, but they cannot be regular enough while the current Bletchley-Bedford service exists, so they either need to add extra tracks to this section to allow passing, or close some stations on the route to speed up the slower services. I understand they have chosen the latter option, but there are some stations along the route which are lightly used...but are they so because they have a poor service?

 

The route from Bedford to Cambridge is much more of a problem because some villages have been built along them. The residents in these want the railway "somewhere else", particularly those who will not gain a station they can use, so any politician putting the line near them will lose their votes. As above, more stations means a slower service, which is less useful for those travelling between the major destinations.

[KingEdwardII]

6 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

The route from Bedford to Cambridge

The route from Bedford to Cambridge has to deal with the realities of the 21st century and cannot and should not follow the route of the old line. Cambourne must be part of the plan - and the new line ideally needs to serve the future growth of Cambridge as well.  I know they favour a southern route, although to my eyes a northern one looks more in tune with Cambridge development.

 

You are right that there is always a tradeoff between fast services between major centres and serving comunities all along the line. The ideal is to allow for both but this requires siginificant infrastructure at the smaller stations to provide passing capability. No simple answer there.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[Nearholmer]

Yes, as I rambled on at length about before, the next two bites are actually genuinely difficult. They would be genuinely difficult even if we were capable of running a whelk stall, and bordering on the impossible given that we aren’t.

 

There was someone from The Economist on the radio this morning, talking again about how they see resolution of the challenges of what she called the ‘London, Oxford, Cambridge Triangle’ as vital to U.K. economic recovery, but that in itself raises immense questions: should money be pumped into enabling that area because it has the potential to be the ‘economic engine’ for the country, at the expense of already ‘left behind’ places? Spending yet more in an overheated part of the south wouldn’t exactly play well into a North-South (over simplification) Divide dialogue, even if it might be the right thing to do long-term.

[phil-b259]

On 20/08/2022 at 11:30, chris p bacon said:

 

Don’t blame the developers, they're just working to the system provided.

Except that the developers are regular donors and guests at party political events.

 

Over the past two decades they have been consistently chipping away at rules / procedures which throttle their ability to generate large profits (via house building) by getting tame ministers to bend over backwards under the guise of ‘cutting red tape’

 

Don’t want any pesky social housing - easy, inflate the costs of site preparation then claim you won’t make enough profit and the tame SOS will wave it through on appeal for example.

 

 

As such this ‘developers are just working to the system’ is nonsense - they BUILT the system in the first place via political interface at the highest levels of Government!

 

And that’s before we get to HM Treasury which views house building as a useful slush fund to provide things the state should provide while ‘keeping direct taxes low’ for party political reasons. 

[corneliuslundie]

Nothing new there. In the 1950s and 1960s plenty of builders were on local councils etc.

East Surrey for example.

Jonathan

[chris p bacon]

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

Except that the developers are regular donors and guests at party political events.

 

Over the past two decades they have been consistently chipping away at rules / procedures which throttle their ability to generate large profits (via house building) by getting tame ministers to bend over backwards under the guise of ‘cutting red tape’

 

Don’t want any pesky social housing - easy, inflate the costs of site preparation then claim you won’t make enough profit and the tame SOS will wave it through on appeal for example.

 

 

As such this ‘developers are just working to the system’ is nonsense - they BUILT the system in the first place via political interface at the highest levels of Government!

 

And that’s before we get to HM Treasury which views house building as a useful slush fund to provide things the state should provide while ‘keeping direct taxes low’ for party political reasons. 

Unfortunately your post isn’t  based on fact and shows a lack of understanding of how planning has developed under all governments irrespective of their colour.  
 

As a developer who has never attended any party political functions, but who has paid section 106 as well as CIL,I speak with some experience of the system, whereas your post  sounds like the usual ill informed diatribe. 

[phil-b259]

7 hours ago, chris p bacon said:

Unfortunately your post isn’t  based on fact and shows a lack of understanding of how planning has developed under all governments irrespective of their colour.  
 

As a developer who has never attended any party political functions, but who has paid section 106 as well as CIL,I speak with some experience of the system, whereas your post  sounds like the usual ill informed diatribe. 

There are developers and there are developers. Unless you happen to be a high up executive in Bellway, Redrow, Vistry Group, Crest Nicholson, etc I would suggest your experience of the ability to rig the planning system is very different.

 

https://neweconomics.org/2022/02/how-private-developers-get-out-of-building-affordable-housing

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/27/richard-desmond-housing-project-unlawfully-approved-robert-jenrick-isle-dogs-london-avoid-40m-hit

 

 

As for political interference…..

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homes_for_votes_scandal
 

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/comment/the-jenrick-scandal-will-raise-questions-about-the-governments-wider-planning-shake-up-66994

 

(Note that for purposes of political neutrality I’m sure there is similar ‘muck’ which can be flung at other parties).

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by phil-b259

[phil-b259]

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

Nothing new there. In the 1950s and 1960s plenty of builders were on local councils etc.

East Surrey for example.

Jonathan

Before my time but quite believable.

 

Its people trying to pretend it isn’t’ still happening which is the issue.

 

Yes in some respects planning regs might have got better with regards to developer contributions, other aspects such as planning density of developments (we have the smallest habitable space rules in Europe) or mechanisms which undermine social housing provision are still a damming indictment of a system which is rigged puts the profits of large players before people.