We had the opportunity to set out our latest views on East West Rail on Huntingdon Community Radio on Friday 26 July 2024
Many thanks to the interviewer Norman Knapper, the producer Linda Oliver and Alan James of CPRE Cambridgeshire for getting us the slot at short notice.
Rachel Reeves statement to parliament on 29 July 2024 made clear that major transport projects are under careful scrutiny at the moment and it’s quite possible that taking EWR to Cambridge will not make it to the 30 October 2024 budget. If (hopefully after listening to the interview) you have a view on whether the project should proceed, now might be a good time to write to the contacts at the department for transport listed here. You might also consider writing the the Mayor, Dr. Nik Johnson who we recently met on this subject.
If you prefer a two page written summary of our position on EWR that you can share see here.
5 replies on “EWR – our latest views.”
Hi there. Your facts and figures are really excellent work, thank you. But I feel they can be added to further, such as calculating the amount of homes, villages and farms that will be affected by this route. I calculate roughly 12,000 homes; and by ‘affected’ I think you could highlight the ‘softer’, but still highly damaging issues, such as noise stress and noise harassment including the physiological affects of noise such as lack of sleep, loss of value to people’s homes, loss of countryside identity (living in a quiet countryside location is why most people have chosen to live in these countryside villages, and that will be taken away from them), loss of countryside views, loss of countryside walks plus of course loss of natural habitats. Another huge issue that no-one seems to be shouting about loudly enough is the brutal hacking into and carnage of tunnelling into Barrington Hill with 2 x huge, deep cuttings right next to Haslingfield village homes and back gardens. This is vandalism to the ancient Cambridge landscape on a massive scale by the government and cannot go ahead. Speaking of tunnels, there are currently 3 x tunnels in the EWR plan; I am confident another route could eliminate these massive earthwork expenses, along with other engineering complexities by choosing a simpler route. A simpler and more sympathetic route could save the government tens of millions of pounds and save disturbing people’s homes and lives.
I couldn’t agree more. EWR are pursuing the wrong route and not getting local communities on board for reasons set out above. Without that endorsement, the project will be an expensive failure.
I also couldn’t agree more, being a resident of Harston. Like Barrington Hill, Harston will have noise, pollution and destruction from the huge bend over the A10 and around station rd to join the main line is enormous. EWRs plan looks to be cutting into Rowley Hill another chalk hill will be lost. We are one of the ‘softer affected’ as we will be backing onto it. It’ll be a white elephant if it goes ahead.
Could someone please explain why anyone would travel to Cambridge
by highly expensive and erratic rail,when there are many thousand
‘house’s planned to be built there?.
Whilst agreeing wholeheartedly with your assessment of the non-existence of an economic case for EWR, I do believe that there is a danger of the new reality with a change of government. Labour may well view the whole scheme in a positive light.
1. EWR have a project ‘ready to go’, while other schemes have already been shelved 2. It would rebuild the business case for the Oxford/Cambridge Arc of social and industrial development and include the release of a lot of land for house building. 3. Labour is keen to promote New towns/Garden Cities and might see Tempsford as one of them. 4. If that were to happen what are the positives for them and of the site? a. Excellent N/S rail connection. b. Provision of good E/W rail links possibly as far as the E coast container ports. c. Good road communications both E/W and N/S.
Maybe this is the right time to relaunch the petition and to try to nail down the coffin lid of the whole project