Category: news

2024 Non Stat Consultation on EWR- HS2’s Badly-Behaved little Brother whose Parents have learnt no Lessons for his Upbringing.

Chapel Hill Site of Lord Scales’ 14th Century Chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary and pilgrimage site is on tree line.

Chapel Hill chalk ridge between photographs above and below.

Chapel Hill Near proposed Eastern Tunnel Entrance and deep cutting, destroying 3,000 year old remains of ancient Britain’s in Bronze Aged Cemetery

The position of Cambridge Approaches on EWR is set out here and has not changed. With the release of the NSC on 14 November we have an opportunity to point out problems for our local communities – and there are many. More people formally asking for something probably increases the chances of it happening. There has been movement on the proposal since the 2021 consultation and our “Great Wall of South Cambridgeshire” campaign, but nothing like enough. For many people it would still be hideous and we would all be affected by the years of construction. I try not to look at this video of Calvert too often and definitely not the section starting around 8:50. It shows what haul roads, construction compounds and balancing ponds actually look like. Something you will never find in EWR documentation. I then imagine the view from Chapel Hill across the Bourn Valley described in one of the most famous poems ever written about Cambridge. Then (in 1912), as now, a sea of wheat fields and one of the defining views of Cambridge that the architects of our green belt wanted to preserve in the mid 20th century.¹ They would be turning in their graves. Anyway, here is the section of Rupert Brooke’s poem.

“Is dawn a secret shy and cold
Anadyomene², silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea
From Haslingfield to Madingley?
And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?”

Here are some people who care about that view being interviewed by ITV Anglia as the consultation came out.

There is a story in government about how building this railway will create some sort of economic miracle around the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and they are not letting mere facts get in the way of a good story, but remember this chart.

To quote a recent article about the dire water situation in our area. “You can send your legions to war with reality, but eventually we all lose.” The East West Rail Company are one of those legions, who think there are building a Net Zero Railway.

Bizarrely the Transport User Update which also came out with the NSC only seems to refer to the local plans for housing. Without large amounts of EWR dependent housing we are on £14.88million per Cambridge Commuter and no new Cambridge jobs supported. But hey, it’s only taxpayers money being poured down the drain. Who cares? They don’t seem to.

Well, I feel a bit better after that polemic, so back to the purpose of this article: how to fill in the NSC feedback form. If you care about our area (and I know you do), please have your say.

Key Consultation Documents Cambourne to Cambridge

Detailed maps
Description (Technical Document)
- §11 Croxton to Toft
- §12 Comberton to Shelford
- §13 Cambridge
Online Consultation Questions in Online Feedback Form. The online form allows much more space for answers than the downloadable form.
- Croxton to Toft (Question 16)
- Comberton to Shelford (Questions 17 to 20)
- Cambridge (Question 21)
- Route-wide matters (Question 22)
- About our consultation (Questions 23 to 25)

I suggest having a look at your relevant map note: there are plans and elevations; read the relevant section or subsection of the Technical Document and start writing in your favourite word processor. When you are ready, go through the dialogue for the online feedback form.³

We have until 23:59 on Friday 24 January 2025.

Some Issues Identified So Far (last updated 8 Dec 2024)

[We hope to update this as we go on but here is a starter for 10.]

Purple construction fields are way too close to houses they should be at least 150m away.
The railway should go under the A603 not over it, and the same is true of the Bourn Brook.
There is no evidence that Green Bridges, and Bat Underpasses work for Barbastelles. The proposed route crosses the Core Sustenance Zone of the Eversden and Wimpole Woods SAC, which is a maternity roost.
Why is the route so close to southern Harston – why not push it a few hundred metres further south? (Hoffer’s Brook permitting)
Having identified the Bronze Aged Cemetery on Money/Chapel Hill, and that it doesn’t even cost more to save it, why is your preferred option to wipe it out? Those people’s remains have been lying in the chalk for 3,000 years, and its one of the most beautiful places in South Cambs (ask Rupert Brooke).
Why was there a mined tunnel through Bourn Airfield in the Feedback Report, but a more destructive cut and cover in the current proposals? You have not withdrawn your ridiculous claim that associates EWR with £163billion GVA increase by 2050 so there can’t be a cost problem, surely?
Why not do a 16km bored tunnel from north of the A428 to the southern entrance to Cambridge? (Same length as the Chiltern Tunnel on HS2 so the precedent is there). The net cost increase would not be that much (see (6) above), it’s 3km shorter (so all those scientists can get to Oxford more quickly). It would reduce local objections considerably, save a lot of farmland and the Wimpole SAC. It would also reduce congestion on the Royston Line.
Given that you have chosen a route that is ill suited to rail freight why not save money and remove support for it?

As we all work on our consultation responses do add your ideas and issues in the comments so other people can see. The more this project gets the criticism it deserves the better. Don’t feel you can only give feedback on the defined questions, you can use Question 22 or even Question 24 to give general feedback like, why on earth are you still working on this project?

https://www.cambridge.gov.uk/media/2538/green-belt-study-2002.pdf p.48 ↩︎
*I had to look it up, it means rising from the sea. ↩︎
If you want to look at the downloadable, non extensible feedback form it’s here. The downloadable form might still be useful to look at the questions and prepare the answers in advance ↩︎

Business Case news

EWR CS3 and the Borders Railway myth

Post author By william
Post date April 5, 2024
13 Comments on EWR CS3 and the Borders Railway myth

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.

Business Case news Route Alignments

EWR Briefing and Discussion – Recordings

Post author By william
Post date March 27, 2024
2 Comments on EWR Briefing and Discussion – Recordings

Thanks to everyone who attended the presentations and discussion on the 26th March 2024 we had around 180 people register for the event. For those of you that could not make it, or those who want to review the material here are the recordings.

There was also a presentation from Cambridge Approaches at the Harston EWR meeting held on the 14th January 2024. Here is a recording of that.

EWR Business Case

news

EWR Briefing and Discussion

Post author By william
Post date March 10, 2024
1 Comment on EWR Briefing and Discussion

Date: 26th March 2024
Time: 20:00-21:30
Online (see below for how to register)

As we lead up to the planned EWR statutory consultation in June, the CA Working Group will be holding an online Zoom meeting on the 26th March 2024 from 20:00, consisting of several short presentations (see agenda topics below) followed by a discussion. This meeting is targeted at local residents along the proposed route from Highfields Caldecote to Trumpington and others concerned about the justification and construction of this railway, green field housing and loss of green belt land etc. The more the merrier. It is not intended for employees of EWRCo. lovely though they are.

Here is the current agenda (we might tweak it bit before the meeting).

Timing	Who	What
2000-2005	William Harrold	Introductions
2005-2015	Leigh Carter	History
2015-2025	William Harrold	Economics
2025-2035	Annabel Sykes	Cambridge Biomedical Campus
2035-2045	David Revell	Construction Impact
2045-2055	Frank Mahon	Experience in Buckinghamshire
2055-2130	All	Discussion

Current Agenda

Leigh has been following the EWR story for years and will give an introduction to the history for people not familiar with the topic starting in 2021.

I (William) have been trying to understand the economic justification for building the Bedford to Cambridge section of the railway and some of the wider implications of the project. I also attended the Transport Select Committee oral hearing on EWR on the 6th March 2024 and wrote about my reflections on that here. Its fair to say that I am not entirely convinced about the case for building it.

Annabel has been closely involved in discussions on the proposed development of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and it’s further expansion into the Cambridge green belt. This turns out to be very relevant to the case for EWR (such as it is). Unfortunately, she cannot attend live, but we hope to record her presentation beforehand.

David is a civil engineer and will give a talk about what we could expect during the construction of the railway and on the great wall of South Cambridgeshire. See our previous posts (here and here) on this from 2021. These were before we had really thought about what it would look like during construction.

Frank is a councillor from Buckinghamshire who has experienced EWR construction over the last several years and he will share his thoughts. He met the CA working group recently and told us that “he would not wish it on his worst enemy”.

To take part in the meeting you will need to register in advance:

Sign up for a free Zoom account here.
Click this registration link and register for the meeting by providing your name and email address. We would appreciate it if you use your real name so that we know who is speaking in the discussion.
You should then receive a link to the meeting in an email sent to the email address that you registered. You can also join by phone on the phone numbers provided in your registration email.
What could possibly go wrong?! email info@cambridgeapproaches.org if you are stuck.

Meeting etiquette: The plan is to run through the presentations and then have a discussion at the end. Please stay on mute unless you are speaking. It’s a good idea to register early and arrive for the meeting on time because our zoom subscription limits the number of participants.

Recording: We plan to record the presentations so that you and others can see them later, but not the discussion.

Business Case news

Transport Select Committee Oral Hearing 6/3/2024

Post author By william
Post date March 7, 2024
21 Comments on Transport Select Committee Oral Hearing 6/3/2024

The “Case for Cambridge” and EWR – an aside on the environment.

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!

news

Reflections on the Eversdens and Harston EWR Drop-In Events June 22 & 26th 2023

Post author By william
Post date June 29, 2023
12 Comments on Reflections on the Eversdens and Harston EWR Drop-In Events June 22 & 26th 2023

There was a great turn out from local people to both these events. Good effort from EWRCo. for putting them on. Some of the staff were more knowledgeable / forthcoming than the low base of last year’s “no new information” event in Haslingfield. One thing I did notice was that EWRCo. staff never took any notes of what had been said to them, either they have good memories or perhaps the input is filed in the bin. Tick box exercise or consultation with the public? You decide.

Figure 1 Cambridge Approaches Protest in the Eversdens 22nd June 2023

Figure 2 Cambridge Approaches Protest in Harston 26th June 2023 (front page on the Cambridge News and the Independent)

Noisy Protest at the EWR Drop-in Event Harston 26/6/2023

There was also a good turnout from local politicians. We even had the Lib Dem MP candidate for the next General Election acknowledge the poor business case that the railway has in a tweet shortly after the event. Her opposite number also appeared in a puff of blue smoke and told the assembled crowds that “personally, he was against the railway” to great applause. Democracy in action for the politicians.

In contrast, EWRCo. continued like the Titanic, completely unsinkable.

Figure 3 Is EWR Unsinkable?

As always there were interesting conversations with EWRCo. staff inside the hall. Here are some of them. Do add more in the comments. I have changed the names to protect the innocent! (with apologies to Douglas Adams).

“I spoke to a business case guy, Marvin, who had been at EWR a year. He said he had never worked on a project with a lower BCR than this one. He also encouraged me to keep fighting the project(!) and didn’t make it sound like the northern approach was off the table.”

There was a recorded video of Beth West at the end of the room. It seems that someone had been sick over the video screen. Afterwards Trillian explained “Sorry, but my son vomited over the Beth West video screen”. I suspect it was at the point where Ms West was explaining that Tempsford is a brown-field site, even though RAF Tempsford is outside the 2km catchment for the station. Unfortunate, but understandable – the vomiting that is.

“I spoke to Zaphod on the business case side. He did not know that the local plan was held up by the water infrastructure. ‘Yeah, someone else told me that, just now’” I mean EWRCo. has only spent £150 million over the past two years studying the problem, you can’t expect them to know about our water infrastructure problems can you?

Zaphod also said, ‘we’re going to have to work hard on the business case because we have chosen the most expensive route. Yes, we also need to look at the local plan. I asked about there being only 20% of Cambridge commuters from Cambourne using the railway and would that not make the roads busier. He said ‘yes, rail is not a dominant mode [of transport]’. He also said, ‘it’s about houses, it’s always been about houses’.”

I challenged the Will Gallagher on the point that the jobs target for Cambridge in the local plan is an independently assessed demand estimate and that the local plan already has the interventions necessary to support those jobs. 57,000 houses supported by GCP’s various transport schemes. Either the 28,200 jobs that EWR is trying to support is additional the local plan – in which case why was the independently assessed forecast wrong? Or it is part of the local plan numbers in which case which part of the local plan needs to be undone? After a bit of dancing around he said, “it’s a fair challenge” and followed up with “in the end the chancellor will decide”. Resistance is futile.

“I spoke to Ford Prefect on the business case side and explained that lack of water infrastructure was a serious risk to his business plan, he replied that this was an environmental problem and that I should speak to an environmental person. I explained the concept of “responsibility dispersion” in the context of a railway project which was 95% about housing but the transport organisation proposing it took no responsibility for signing off on that housing and nor so far did anyone else. He thanks me for teaching him a new term. Responsibility dispersion, he’ll probably find it useful.”

“So, I spoke to an environment person, Wowbagger, who gave a great explanation of how biodiversity net gain would work. After an assessment of the number of units of biodiversity lost (the unit for biodiversity is called the “unit”), they would acquire land, ideally alongside the railway and create replacement habitats. In some cases, ten times the land area would be needed for the replacement as was lost in the first place. I asked if that meant they needed 2x or 10x the land for the railway and the housing developments to achieve the object. Wowbagger didn’t have an estimate, but it would not be that much.”

“I spoke to one of the local farmers at the event and he confirmed that he had been asked to sell them more land than was strictly required for the railway. He told them where to go with that.”

If you have more feedback from the event do add it to the comments.

Business Case news

The Savanta study: do people support the East West Railway?

Post author By william
Post date January 21, 2023
11 Comments on The Savanta study: do people support the East West Railway?

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.

Savanta-Report-Feb-2022-EWR-Main-Report-Mar-2022 Download

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

news

Reflections on EWRCo.’s Haslingfield Drop-In Event 12th October 2022

Post author By william
Post date October 16, 2022
31 Comments on Reflections on EWRCo.’s Haslingfield Drop-In Event 12th October 2022

Interviewed in Radio Cambridgeshire, Nellie the pantomime white elephant welcomed EWR to the herd. She said, “Like all good white elephants, EWR is ridiculous and its costs greatly exceed its benefits.”

EWRCo. held their “no new information” drop-in event in Haslingfield, and they delivered as promised. There was indeed no new information about the proposed railway which has been blighting our communities since April Fool’s day last year.

Here at Cambridge Approaches we put in a lot of effort in to publicise their event (7,000 leaflets, 1,000 bin posters, social media campaign etc). We also invited the press along to see what was going on. This was the first chance most people have had to meet EWRCo. staff face to face. Why didn’t EWRCo. do any of that? The event was well attended and EWRCo., reported 550 attendees. Not bad on a working day for an event advertising no new information.

Illustration of the 10m high Embankments Proposed by EWRCo. for their Great Wall

Local farmer Edd also kindly parked his cherry picker outside the venue and set it to a height of 10m as specified in the latest Great Wall proposals from EWRCo., we also marked out the width of their proposed embankments to 70m. Seeing the height of it, the EWRCo. spokesperson was clearly in denial and was heard to say “it will never be that high”. We advise her to read her own consultation document.

In case they were in doubt about what we would like from them, hundreds of people had put out “Show Us the Business Case” on their bins along all the main roads through the surrounding villages and in Haslingfield.

Bin Posters “Show us the Business Case in Haslingfield and Surrounding Villages

And our request was answered. The business case appeared in the form of Nellie the pantomime EWR White Elephant with a price tag of £7.6billion. Interviewed in Radio Cambridgeshire, Nellie the pantomime white elephant welcomed EWR to the herd. She said, “Like all good white elephants, EWR is ridiculous and its costs greatly exceed its benefits.”

Steve also bought along a 3D map of the area so people could see what the effect of the railway would be locally. There was lots of interest from people attending the event.

Topographic map of the Haslingfield area with EWR proposals. This does not show what it would look like during the years of construction.

Meanwhile the Pantomime Continued in the Methodist Church

I didn’t meet anyone that was in favour of the proposed route, but maybe there were one or two. Many residents were pretty angry, but we did not get to the situation reached at the Wyboston Lakes EWR drop-in where residents of the Bedford Poets area were so angry that EWR Co. felt they had to call in the police to calm things down.

The drop-in meeting was bound to be difficult, since the interests of residents and the EWR Co. staff were clearly different and hard to reconcile. This was exacerbated by the policy of no new information sustained now for 18 months; the lack of briefing on predicable questions given to the EWRCo. staff and their generally low level of knowledge about the project. Staff turnover seems to be high and there were many new faces.

We had a de-brief session amongst some of the people from our campaign to exchange experiences we had had with the drop-in session. Here are some of the things we found.

Deflecting Questions

The job given to the poorly briefed EWRCo. staff was to stand talking to angry/upset residents for six hours while giving out no new information. Tough one that. Deflecting questions was therefore the core skill. Here are some of the techniques/answers that were reported on the day.

I can’t answer that, I just want to build things.
I’ve just been with EWR for 2 months, I’ll ask a colleague
I wasn’t with the project then
We are studying that
Big infrastructure projects all do it this way, we’re following standard procedures
Qu. Will you disclose the business case? Ans. The DfT owns the business case – Qu. but I asked DfT and they won’t disclose it because they don’t want to upset EWRCo. Ans. What was their exact wording?
We’d like to publish the business case, but we are still progressing it
We are looking at lowering the very high embankments
On the subject of the route: “it has to go somewhere”
You will need to speak to X, but they are not here today
Qu. Can you find this out for me? Answer: “You need to use the normal contact point”. Qu. “but I did two weeks ago and have not even received and acknowledgement. Answer “Silence.”

Patronise

I’ll talk to you when you have calmed down, I’m human and understand your concerns.
There’s no point me answering that, you’re not going to listen to what I say. She then walks away and follows up with “Are you ready to talk?”
‘It’s not like ‘the Apprentice’ you know, it’s not a quick thing…it’s really complicated.

More Deflection

We will compensate you if you have noise, vibration or mental distress. After [we build it] you will need to fill out a form to illustrate what is happening to your home and then we [will] evaluate it.
We have already lost 10-20% of the value of our homes, will there be any compensation for that? – silence.

Conflicting Information

On the question “Are you set on the southern approach to Cambridge? Answers included “yes”, “no” and “maybe”.

Waffle

These are best shown by example.

EWRCo. “We’ve made no decisions yet (route consideration). I wish I could tell you that but we don’t know. There’s business case with a capital B and C and business case with a small b and c. We don’t have passenger numbers but there are so many things to visit in the area we’re sure the railway will be used. Us: So the purpose of the line is tourism? EWRCo.: yes maybe..!”

On Radio Cambridgeshire the following morning, we were treated to the following.

Dotty McLeod: “And in what way Hannah was it [the drop-in event] useful for you?”

Hannah Staunton: “It’s always helpful to be able to talk to the public, and really dial into some of the key topics and things that they’re interested in, that they could be concerned about as well. In some cases, it’s really helpful for us to be able to explain to people why some of the things that they are concerned about perhaps aren’t as concerning as they could be, or maybe talk to them about some of the benefits of the scheme that they haven’t otherwise heard. So, it’s really useful to gauge how people are feeling and what people are thinking, and then the team can go away and consider that as we go through the design and planning scheme.”

To be fair, we did not hear so much of the standard line “we are still going through the X billion pieces of feedback we received in the 2021 consultation and considering how every piece should influence what we decide” – or words to that effect. I guess even that does wear a bit thin after 18 months. In reality we are all waiting for the government to decide if they want to buy his white elephant.