Category: news

Here is a guest post from railway enthusiast and long time friend of Cambridge Approaches Steve Edmondson.

In a recent press release East West Railway Company’s chief executive officer Beth West makes direct comparison of the East West Rail project with a recently re-opened line on the English Scottish border.  This line was also discussed during the Transport Select Committee oral evidence sessions on 6 March 2024, which formed part of the committee’s inquiry into Strategic Transport Objectives and featured East West Rail.

The line referred to is the ‘Borders Railway’ that started operating in 2015. It offers a half hourly service between Edinburgh Waverly station and the small town of Tweedbank Monday to Saturday, with an hourly service on Sundays.

Beth West compares the Borders Railway with East West Rail, specifically the Bedford/Cambridge section. In her release she correctly says that passenger numbers on the Borders Railway have exceeded expectations, from a projected 600,000 passengers a year, to 1,789,467 (4,900/day)

Unfortunately for her, such a simple comparison is misplaced.

The new Borders Railway is predominantly  single track, 35 miles long, with three passing loops. There are ten stations including the termini. All but one serve substantial communities directly, with park and ride facilities for Edinburgh at two of them.  This helps to explain the attraction to passengers, especially tourists, who take advantage of the numerous stations.  The full journey takes about one hour. Most importantly, it is a partial reopening of a rail line between Edinburgh and Carlisle which was closed in 1969 and the track lifted. Consequently the amount of new earthworks required was relatively small. In parts, a maximum line speed of 90mph is possible for short sections, but 60mph is the normal maximum. It is essentially what is known as a ‘branch line’ and is neither freight train friendly nor electrified.

By contrast the proposed EWR Bedford to Cambridge section is slightly longer. It is being planned as a strategically important ‘main line’; it would be twin track suitable for 100mph running throughout. It does not follow any part of the earlier Varsity line between Bedford and Cambridge and serves none of the communities along the original route. It would be an entirely new alignment built through unspoiled countryside and have food security implications as it would damage a great deal of Britain’s best and most versatile agricultural land. The major earthworks that would be required for the new line are set to forever change the visual amenity of South Cambridgeshire. Between  Cambridge and Bedford, there would be just three stations so it would not serve any of the outlying village communities for whom it would be of little use. 

When the Borders Railway was proposed in the early 2000’s and a full business case published (take note Beth West), it was partly linked to construction of 1800 houses, and caused local opposition. The final cost was £353 million at 2012 prices. Compare this to EWR Bedford/Cambridge which is linked to the construction of houses for 213,300 new residents and an up front cost of £8 billion in today’s money.

There is an EWRCo. projection of only 2,090 regular Cambridge commuters derived from reported local rail commuting in the 2011 census, so less than 1% these new residents would use the railway. The rest would instead presumably exacerbate the road traffic congestion in and around Cambridge. This in turn negates the strategic objective of taking the railway to Cambridge which is about unlocking obstacles to growth.

Finally, consider the cost per daily passage, for the Borders railway it is £365million /4900 = £74,500 (comparable with the Elizabeth line) while for EWR it is £8,000million /2090 = £3.83 million which is not.

Yesterday I attended an event in Portcullis House Westminster. The Transport Select Committee (TSC) has chosen to use East West Rail as a case study for interdepartmental working on major infrastructure projects. Of course, this is because the collaboration has been shambolic as exposed by the NAO investigation report last December. They talked a lot about Cambridge, and I had some side conversations with DfT officials as well. Rail Minister Huw Merriman said that the housing between Bedford and Cambridge would be built anyway so we might as well take some cars off the road by building EWR. Nice spin, but, if the houses are going to be built anyway then what exactly is the financial case for this £8billion railway? Dr. Andy Williams of the Oxford Cambridge Supercluster board was unconcerned about the £4million capital cost per Cambridge Commuter for EWR (£8billion/2000 commuters) and told me it was irrelevant. I guess that’s because it’s the taxpayer funding it not business. Similar reaction from Jon Shortland planning officer in Bedford. He said EWR would bring £15million/year to the Bedford economy. I told him the railway would cost £80million/year just to operate, never mind the cost of capital (£8billion at 5%/year is £400million/year). He told me Bedford does not have to pay so who cares? I do.

So, then we get to “the miracle at Tempsford” (and presumably similar places like Cambourne North.) and its interaction with the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC). The CBC has 20,000 employees. EWR supporters at the TSC think there could be another 20,000 with EWR connecting to the south of Cambridge. That of course would mean expansion into the green belt towards Great Shelford – a plan rejected by our local planning people so far due to its high harm to our green belt. The problem is that the analysis presented in the EWRCo. Economic and Technical report only predicts 2000 EWR commuters per day to Cambridge, not 20,000 or anything link it. The site at Tempsford is in the flood plain of the Great Ouse and what has to happen is that the three planning authorities that control the area all agree to sign off the new town and that the “rail mode share” at Tempsford is much higher than seen in say Ely or Royston in the 2011 census. They also have to be happy to sign off a dormitory for Cambridge and sort out the environmental consequences.

If Tempsford were built it would also connect to Cambridge via the new A428/A421 Black Cat – Caxton Gibbet dual carriageway and of course it is also on a main line railway line to London. Why exactly is everyone going to commute by rail to the CBC? However, the DfT official I spoke to was undaunted. Tempsford will be “transformational” for some reason he could not explain and DfT economists could not analyse. Yeah, right. He also said that the trend to work at home more since the pandemic will double the number of jobs supported because two people go to different jobs. One for say the first half of the week and the other for the second half. My experience is that Cambridge roads are much quieter on a Friday because everyone chooses to work from home. I recall a recent presentation from Stagecoach on their bus passenger numbers saying that “Thursday is the new Friday”. 

Dame Bernadette Kelly the Department for Transport Permanent Secretary was asked by the Transport Select Committee why it was that the new HM Treasury led EWR growth board was only now exploring how to deliver the benefits of the railway (she had talked about the 6 new streams of work etc). Why ,they asked, was this not worked out long before the project was inflicted on the general public? She said it was very hard to work out such a business case up front. Evidently much better for local residents to be tortured with years of uncertainty while the DfT use the experience to work out their business case.

Good grief!

The East West Railway Company’s web site claims that “71% of people support an east-west public transport connection”. 

Given that EWRCo. have persistently refused to publish a business case for their project, it’s hard to see how anyone that cares about good use of public money can make an informed judgement about it. What information we have indicates that it will have a high capital cost and thereafter make operational losses considerably higher than the national average for UK railways. The logic^[1] for central government support for the project is around a step change in housing growth in the OxCam Arc.

When looking at survey results it’s good to know

a) what was the question
b) who was asked the question and
c) who funded the study.

These questions are hard to tell from the EWRCo. website, but a recent response to a freedom of information request to them kindly gives us more detail. This is in the form of a presentation from a company called Savanta who performed the survey and reports on the main results to EWRCo.

This new information allows us to better address the questions a) to c) above.

What was the question?

There were several questions in the survey. The one referred to by the statistic on the EWRCo. website was this (presumably because EWRCo. liked the answer):

“Do you think a new east-west public transport link, which connects communities between Oxford, Bicester, Milton Keynes, Bedford and Cambridge, is a good idea?“

To say yes to this question requires no commitment to use it and the question could be referring to a bus route. A more challenging question for EWRCo. would have been whether people would regularly use their railway service.

One of the justifications for the OxCam Arc / EWR has been to solve problems related to the affordability of housing in cities. In this Savanta survey 45% of people said there would be a negative impact on affordability against only 17% who thought it would be positive. Why didn’t EWRCo. publish that?

Who was asked the question?

The summary provided by Savanta says that they conducted 1,000 interviews with individuals living within the East West Rail catchment area. 700 interviews were over the phone and 300 were face to face in Oxford, Cambridge, Milton Keynes/ Bletchley, Bedford, Sandy, Cambourne, Aylesbury and Bicester. 

Leeds University Institute for Transport Studies define the catchment area for a railway station as being within 800 metres^[2] . This gives an indication where the people interviewed in the Savanta study were in the towns and cities indicated.  In all the surveyed towns, the proposed EWR station already exists except in the case of the small town of Cambourne where it is proposed to be next to an existing dual carriageway.

In general, the people surveyed will be expecting little disruption to their lives from the construction of the railway since there are existing tracks and some new options to travel to places that they currently cannot get to so quickly by rail. These people are a tiny fraction of the overall population of the area between Oxford and Cambridge and are likely to be those with the most to gain and the least to lose. The location of the people surveyed perhaps also explains why so many thought that house prices would go up – not a bad thing if you already own a house in the catchment area. To make the point another way by reducing it to the absurd: if you were asked whether you would like a publicly funded green helicopter service to wherever you want to go on demand from the end of your street – what would you say?

Who funded the study?

Of course, Savanta were funded by the EWRCo.  Both parties would therefore be motivated to find a valid but positive result for the EWR project. EWRCo. must know where the support for the railway lies based on their extensive but unpublished consultation results, so they would know where to conduct the survey. Not mentioning the fact that the survey was conducted in the catchment areas for their existing stations in their publicity seems misleading on the part of EWRCo.

Please ignore this flawed study. 

^[1] such as it is, given the unsolved first and last mile problem.

^[2] https://www.its.leeds.ac.uk/projects/konsult/private/level2/instruments/instrument004/l2_004b.htm

In response to an open letter from Cambridge Approaches, EWRCo. tackled the important issue of the economic justification for the railway. They made the following statement.

“By providing reliable, affordable and sustainable transport for people in and around Cambridge, businesses will thrive and grow, igniting an exciting ecosystem of business and academia that The Economist recently reported could contribute up to £274bn per year for the UK in gross added value. Seen in that context, the value driven by EWR is clear. More than that, it’s a catalyst for economic growth that will support the wider UK recovery.” East West Rail Co. Article in Cambridge Independent 16/8/2022

Implication – build EWR and you will get £274bn/year just from the Cambridge economy. Let’s fact check this claim.

The article they refer to in the Economist actually says:

“A study prepared by the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership in 2020 found that the region between Oxford and Cambridge contributed £111bn in gross value added to the economy every year; the government reckoned that could rise to between £191bn and £274bn a year if a programme of building created new homes and linked up towns by rail and motorway.” The Economist 20/7/2022

So the figure is actually £274bn -£111bn = £163bn for the whole area between Oxford and Cambridge inclusive, not just Cambridge. Which just happens to be the same figure as is quoted in the “Transformational” scenario of the National Infrastructure Commissions (NIC) report “Partnering for Prosperity” on the subject of the OxCam Arc.

Whoever wrote the article in The Economist clearly does not want to mention the OxCam Arc because they know that the government side-lined that project in favour of levelling up back in February 2022.

This NIC report is in turn based on work from Cambridge Econometrics which was analysed by Oxford Professor David Rogers as shown:

The part of the £163bn GVA attributable to transport and agglomeration is only 9.2% of the total. EWR Co. need to tell us what tiny fraction of that they think EWR will contribute – if the OxCam Arc Transformational scenario were adopted and they can entice a significant number of people to actually use their EWR.

EWRCo.’s article is probably overstating the benefit of building the railway by at least two orders of magnitude. Even that assumes that the OxCam Arc transformational scenario is actually built.

The same article from EWRCo. goes on, implicitly accepting that car owners may prefer not to use their EWR. “More broadly, there are a variety of reasons why owning a car is not an option for many people. Perhaps the purchase, maintenance and running costs of a car are just too much, their homes do not have access to parking, they have physical limitations which don’t allow them to drive, or they are prioritising sustainability for themselves and their families.”

One question – how many of these highly-paid transformational scenario biotech workers are not going to be able to afford to run a car?

If you are reading this from EWRCo. and you can understand the issues pointed out, then I suggest you need to submit a correction to the Cambridge Independent or risk losing credibility.