East West Rail should have been built by now so what's the hold-up?

Is anyone out there serious about building a better railway?

Is anyone out there serious about building a better railway? I ask because it seems that there are so many hoops to jump through to get anything done on railway projects that even when they have been successfully traversed, new ones are put in the way.

It is the East-West rail project, the second biggest new railway scheme in the country which aims to reconnect Oxford and Cambridge with a direct line that has made me question the ability of the rail industry to get things done. The idea has been around for 30 years and the scheme was given the go ahead by Chris Grayling in 2017. Actually, Bicester – Oxford had reopened before that and consequently the project was to run through to Bletchley and Milton Keynes, and continue through Bedford to Cambridge.

The idea was undoubtedly a good one – reinstate the line between Oxford and Cambridge known as the Varsity Line and create a kind of Silicon Valley connected by rail. Oddly, the line had not been included in the original Beeching proposals but was closed by the Labour government in 1968 because they claimed it was poorly used, the sort of short term thinking customary of the time, not least because it passed through Milton Keynes, the new town that was about to massively expand. But sadly the project has suffered from all the same kinds of issues that has dogged HS2, albeit on a much smaller scale.

In line with Tory ideology, responsibility for running the project was given to a consortium separate from Network Rail which added another layer of complexity to the project. Richard Crane, a long time local rail activist, suggests this was a bad mistake ‘as they seem to view the project as quite separate from bringing Oxford-Milton Keynes-Bedford-Cambridge into part of a cohesive rail network’. There have been ‘endless consultation exercises which seem to change the proposed rail line every time’ and Crane has given up going to them, despite his keen interest in the project, because the decisions seem to get reversed all the time. One strange early was not to use the old alignment between Cambridge and Bedford because the project managers felt that it was more important to build a route nearer various existing and proposed settlements. The scheme is seen more as an economic generator than a pure railway reopening. Clearly, though, that decision has added to the cost of the scheme which is now in the region of £5.7bn to £6.6 bn but expected to go up. Incidentally, there is is now talk of bringing back East West rail in house as part of Network Rail to give it greater control over the scheme.

The hoops that these schemes have to go through are insane. The Treasury insists schemes like this go through a series of three different financial assessments – business and strategic cases – before giving the go ahead. In fact, this line has a benefit to cost ratio of just 0.3, far below the 1-1.5 that would normally be required to give the go ahead , but because the Treasury sees this as Britain’s Silicon Valley ripe for economic growth, it has ignored the fact that seemingly this is poor value for money. This simply demonstrates that the whole ‘business case’ methodology is a waste of time. If it is reckoned we need a line between the two varsity cities as part of a national strategic plan, then simply stop making the project team jump through endless hoops. It would save millions if not billions, and yes a few white elephants might be built but then what value is ‘a business case’ which has cost millions? Probably less than any old white elephant. The whole Spanish high speed network was built without having to pass be tested through a methodology that is all about stopping getting things done.

It is remarkable that nearly a decade after the announcement of the scheme, a final decision over how the line will be powered has not been made. There was a huge furore when it was suggested that the line would not be electrified, but now it seems that battery trains that take advantage of partial electrification may be introduced. Surely, a strategic decision should be made that an important new main line should by default be electrified? Nowhere else in Europe would that be questioned.

Construction of the 21 mile western section between Bicester and Bletchley started in 2020 and has been completed, allegedly ‘on time, on budget’ at £750m but while a few freight trains have used it – though they were not originally part of the business case - there are still no passenger services because of an industrial dispute.

Now I am with the comrades most of the time and they do a great job in protecting their members’ interests. But at times they take a view about this that is far too limited. The most important benefit for their members is that the rail industry is thriving and providing secure jobs for the foreseeable future. It is not about making life difficult for railway managers at every possible opportunity. The unions are blocking the start of services on the line because they do not want to see an extension of driver only operation on trains to cover East West Rail. They point to the incident on the LNER train at Huntingdon where a railway worker acted heroically to stop the knife attacker as a reason why there should be staff on trains.

However many trains across the network, notably on Thameslink are operated without an onboard guard and the amazing guy who intervened was, in fact, a ‘customer host’ and not a guard. His intervention was extremely fortuitous but such incidents are extremely rare and while I agree that it is good to have a non-driving staff member on trains to help passengers, on relatively short journeys such as Oxford – Milton Keynes it should not be mandatory. A bit of flexibility will not compromise safety which is being weaponised in this case. And it beggars belief that this was not sorted out before the line was completed. It is also remarkable that the completion date for the Cambridge section is not until the late 2030s by which time many of the scientists for whom the line would have been so useful will have long retired. That’s because of the endless consultation with discussion about whether the existing nine stations on the Marston Vale line between Bletchley and Bedford should be retained or four new stations be built. East West Rail boss David Hughes was quoted in Rail as saying it was taking a neutral stance over the issue. Surely that is a decision for railway planners to make, rather than creating yet more delay through consultation and dither.

We can only hope that Great British Railways will be able to drive through projects with greater efficiency and, crucially, with support from the unions. A strong GBR should be able to argue for schemes without having to demonstrate that there is a business case for every aspect of a scheme – we know in any case, that this was a methodology designed to compare schemes with one another, and was not supposed to be the decision making tool to assess whether they should go ahead. So I ask again, do we want a better railway or not or do we want endless discussions over power source, number of stations, routes and so on. Just build the damn things.

Fast track on track

My book Fast Track on high speed rail across the world is just being finalised by the editors at Penguin and will be published in June, in time for Father’ Day. Apart from amazing trips to China and Japan, I learnt much about how high speed rail came about and what makes a successful scheme.
Interestingly, there was a period in the 1970s when the future of high speed rail was in doubt. Despite the success of the Japanese Shinkansen, no other country had committed itself to building any dedicated high speed lines. The UK was heading down a different path with the Advanced Passenger Train which used tilt to enable it to use existing highly curved tracks faster than conventional trains. It was, as we all know, to be a sad failure, a sliding doors moment for the British rail industry which could easily, with a bit more money and time gone the other way. Meanwhile in both Germany and France (and later in China), there was considerable interest in alternatives to railways, notably maglev schemes called aérotrain in France and Transrapid in Germany. In the event, despite considerable sums being spent on both schemes and a test track built near Orleans which can still be seen rotting in a forest, it was realised that sticking with rail, a proven technology with widespread connections and far cheaper construction costs was the right decision. But it was a worrying time for railway supporters as without high speed rail, trains would have been seen as a old fashioned technology. Now with successful high speed lines in more than 20 and more to come, there is no turning back for railways.

Thanks for your support

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