Bedford to Cambridge Railway line consultation

CamBedRailRoad is a community based, voluntary, think tank led by two distinguished transport infrastructure Civil Engineers, with extensive experience in the UK and the Far East, and our Chairman, County Councillor Sebastian Kindersley. Click here for more about ‘Our People

You may be aware the East West Rail Co has started a non-statutory public consultation seeking views on their five different Route Options (A to E) for the Bedford to Cambridge railway line. We are writing to you to highlight that some of those Route Options include your Parish within their hatched areas of search or lie very close to it, as we have shown on the two more detailed traced maps attached (with our Alternative).

Options-ACD’

Options-BE+CBRRw-1

None of them demonstrate any real compatibility with the recommendations of the National Infrastructure Commission (as accepted by Government) which very clearly set down a principle that the trainline should share the East West Expressway (A428) ‘transport spine’, where it could connect both the current and the many already approved future centres of population.

CamBedRailRoad has promoted an alternative routing from Bedford South through new stations at St Neots South, Cambourne, Northstowe and Cambridge South, via Cambridge North and Cambridge Central, reinforced by our Arguments for Northern Approach into Cambridge.  Our route provides transport for almost 54,000 more residents than EWR Co’s Options B & E and over 100,000 more than Options A, C and D.  It has been supported by residents, Parish Councils (including Cambourne), Town Councils (including St Neots) and many of our local MPS and Councillors.

Our further major concern is that the consultation makes no reference to the level of housing development that will come with any railroad. EWR Co considers that Bassingbourn could deliver up to 30,000 new homes (about 5 times the size of Royston) and Tempsford up to 50,000 (about 10 times the size of Sandy).  The remaining infrastructure could not cope with a new development of such a size in our vicinity.

We want to ensure that parishioners are aware of this consultation and exercise their right to respond, by the deadline of 11 March 2019.

Please consult Guidance on completing EWR Co’s Feedback Form . We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to deliver major infrastructure in a sensible and coherent way combining road, rail and housing: the Options currently promoted by EWR Co fail to do that.

There is a great deal more at www.cambedrailroad.org with further maps and links to a wide range of resources.