*** Health Warning: These drawings date from January 2022 and may not represent the final proposal. ***
On the 10th of May 2021 our lawyers Leigh Day sent a Freedom of Information request to EWRCo. After nearly 3 years of legal and other pressure we received some answers. One of the questions was this. “EWR is asked to provide any report or other analyses it holds which caused it to conclude that embankments and viaducts will be required between Cambourne and Hauxton Junction on the southern approach.“
The response was a series of detailed plans and vertical sections as follows:
(The plans are in PDF format, they can also be downloaded as high resolution PNG images – see at the bottom of the webpage).
These plans date from January 2022 and so may be out of date. Notice the fields marked in purple which will be needed for construction work. If you don’t know what that looks like have a look at this video of EWR CS1 under construction at Calvert.
We also asked about the vertical alignment for the northern approach to Cambridge and the following section diagrams were provided.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
I am grateful again to Annabel Sykes for this guest postassessing recent claims from EWRCo.as they continue to their increasingly desperate search to find a compelling use for completing EWR to Cambridge.
I feel reasonably well-qualified to comment on how much substance there is to the ease and speed of travel claims EWRCo is making from Cambridge, as I live a short walk from Shelford station on the West Anglia Main Line (WAML) and my children are (or were) at Edinburgh and Bristol universities. We all like, and regularly use, trains.
EWRCo’s current proposals and journey times along EWR
The Route Update Report (“RUR”) proposes four trains per hour to Cambridge. Two will originate in Bedford and two in Oxford. From information in the RUR and accompanying Economic and Technical Report (“ETR”), respective station-to-station to journey lengths are expected to be 23 minutes (between Cambridge and Tempsford), 35 minutes (between Bedford and Cambridge) and 89 minutes (between Oxford and Cambridge).
No journey time is given between Cambridge and Bletchley in these documents, but the 2021 Economic and Technical Report suggests that it will be approximately 60 minutes. It may now be expected to be longer than this because the RUR says “we’re also suggesting capping the line speed [on the Marston Vale Line] below the 100mph originally proposed”.
EWRCo tends to merge Bletchley and Milton Keynes when talking about journeys, although a person travelling from Cambridge and other places east of Bletchley will need to change trains at Bletchley to reach Milton Keynes Central. The journey time between the two stations is 5 minutes, making no allowance for changing platforms or waiting for a train. There are currently four trains per hour between Bletchley and Milton Keynes Central. This will presumably increase to six when the proposed two EWR trains per hour between Oxford and Milton Keynes Central are running. By contrast, EWRCo seems to regard Cambridge North station as on a different planet from Cambridge station, even though there are five trains an hour between them and the journey time is 5 minutes.
Where can I already get to by rail from Cambridge?
Anyone who lives in or near Cambridge is already lucky, because it is a city that is very well-connected by rail. Looking at the EWRCo map, I can already catch a direct train from Cambridge to Ipswich, Norwich, King’s Lynn, Peterborough, Birmingham and Thameslink destinations such as Gatwick Airport and Brighton. I can reach Birmingham International (for the airport) by changing at Birmingham New Street.
Peterborough gives me access to fast trains on the East Coast Mainline (“ECML”) to Leeds, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh (and, via Edinburgh, to Glasgow). By contrast, Network Rail indicated in its East West Rail Main Line Strategic Statement (“the Strategic Statement”) that it was unlikely that ECML fast trains would stop at any new EWR station[1]. Network Rail also looked at the rail journey between Cambridge and Peterborough in the Strategic Statement using generalised journey times[2] and concluded that using EWR would add 21 minutes to the journey time between Cambridge and Peterborough. This is despite the fact that the Strategic Statement also says “Rail connectivity … is …circuitous to Cambridge along the East Coast Main Line branch”[3]. From the perspective of a resident of Cambridge, EWR will not change the position as regards destinations on, or beyond, the ECML.
I can also catch a direct train from Peterborough to Nottingham and Sheffield. Despite what the map reproduced above implies, there are no direct trains from Bedford to Nottingham or Sheffield. It seems vanishingly unlikely that it will be quicker to travel from Cambridge via Bedford to these places, rather than via Peterborough.
As regards the journey to Birmingham, my rough estimates suggest that the journey time using EWR and changing at Bletchley (and possibly again at Milton Keynes Central) will be roughly the same length or likely slower once train changes and waits are taken into account. It is possible that the journey to Birmingham International might be slightly faster via Bletchley, but it seems unlikely to be materially faster or more convenient.
If I take a train to Ely (a journey of roughly 18 minutes with a very regular service) I can catch a direct train to each of Manchester and Liverpool. I accept that there is no direct train from Ely to Blackpool, Oxenholme, Carlisle or Glasgow but nor is there from Bletchley – as noted above, no direct Cambridge to Milton Keynes train is planned for EWR. In any event, there are not many direct trains to these places from Milton Keynes. There is also no direct train to Worcester or Hereford, but I can get one from Birmingham to which (as noted above) I can travel directly from Cambridge. It seems unlikely that a journey via Oxford to either place will be materially more convenient or quicker.
As regards Cardiff, Bath, Exeter and Penzance, even with EWR, it appears that each of these places would require two changes from Cambridge – there is no direct train from Oxford. I think I will stick with WAML to London Liverpool Street (or a Thameslink train to Farringdon), a short walk to the Elizabeth Line which goes directly to Paddington and a train from Paddington. I simply don’t believe that travelling via Oxford will be measurably faster or more convenient. This tallies with the conclusion that Network Rail reaches in the Strategic Statement. Using generalised journey times, it concludes that journeys from Cambridge to Bristol and Cardiff will be slower on EWR (by 8 and 59 minutes respectively)[4].
Cambridge to Watford might be slightly quicker via Bletchley than travelling into London and out again. However, the proposed HERT (Herts Essex Rapid Transit), linking Hemel Hempstead to Harlow (and communities in between, including Hatfield), may prove a competitive alternative when combined with a rail journey to Hatfield. In addition, neither seems likely to be particularly competitive with a direct journey by car.
Airport journeys
EWR makes some claims about journeys to Gatwick, Birmingham, Luton and Stansted airports. I have considered the position as regards travelling from Cambridge to Gatwick or Birmingham airports above.
Stansted airport is on the WAML. I live close to a WAML station and about 30 minutes’ drive from the airport. There are two direct Cambridge to Stansted airport services per hour, which are reasonably fast (around half an hour). However, they are at roughly 10 to the hour and 10 past, so I could have a long wait if I arrived in the 40 minute interval. Neither train calls at Shelford station and only one of them calls at the reasonably close alternative of Whittlesford Parkway. The journey from Shelford station itself involves a change and takes around an hour. As a result, I don’t generally travel to or from Stansted airport by train. Perhaps this situation will improve when Cambridge South station opens, but I still think there are too few trains between Cambridge and Stansted airport for the service to be a useful one. May be EWRCo would like to consider a northern approach to Cambridge and carrying on through to the airport?
Luton airport is a roughly 50 minute drive from my home. The Strategic Statement gives a generalised journey time to Luton of 110 minutes, using EWR. First, this is likely to Luton station, rather than Luton Parkway, and secondly, it is necessary to change onto the Luton Dart to get to the airport from Parkway. So, catching an EWR train to Luton airport will involve two changes and (estimating) have a generalised journey time of about 120 minutes. Alternatively, I could catch a National Express coach from the Trumpington Park and Ride, with an estimated journey time of 55 minutes or I could catch a train to Hitchin (slightly over half an hour) and take that same National Express coach from the station to Luton airport (estimated journey time of 20 minutes), with the alternative of a more frequent, but slower bus leaving from the centre of Hitchin (about ten minutes’ walk from the station).
Conclusion on travel from Cambridge
EWRCo claims thatEWR “will bring you closer to towns and cities across the UK by connecting with the country’s main north to south railway lines and linking into wider existing services, allowing you to easily explore the north of England and Scotland…or head west to cosy up in the Cotswolds, the West Country or Wales”.
My personal conclusion, from the parochial perspective of a Cambridge resident is that, save for stations actually on EWR, it will make very little difference to getting out and about across the UK. Even for EWR’s stations, I personally remain to be convinced. If I am going to Ikea in Milton Keynes or Bicester village, I am still likely to choose to go by car and not only because I won’t want to lug my purchases home on the train.
Conclusion on travel from other EWR stations
But what about getting out and about across the UK from other EWR stations? The Strategic Statement concludes that rail journeys from Oxford, Milton Keynes or Bedford to Peterborough using EWR will be materially faster than the alternative. It is therefore true that a link to the ECML might well result in some journey time benefits from these stations on journeys to Edinburgh and places between it and Peterborough. However, as the Strategic Statement shows, a detailed exercise is needed to determine whether these benefits are more illusory than real. For example, an Oxford resident can already travel by rail to Edinburgh with a change at Wolverhampton or Birmingham New Street. Someone living in Milton Keynes already has a direct rail link to Edinburgh.
Network Rail has already looked at this in some detail
Those making bold claims about the increased ease of getting out and about as a result of EWR would do well to read pages 30 to 37 of the Strategic Statement. Network Rail’s generalised journey time analysis suggests that the journey time to Cardiff will be worse using EWR from all of Cambridge, Bedford and Milton Keynes (it is obviously unchanged from Oxford). The Strategic Statement notes an improvement in journey time between Bedford and Bristol using EWR, but a worse journey time to Bristol from Milton Keynes and Cambridge.
Network Rail’s conclusion in the Strategic Statement is “three broad generalisations can be inferred from the data [we have analysed]:
1. East West Rail services will radically improve rail connectivity within a ‘core’ geography between Oxford, Cambridge, Milton Keynes and Aylesbury….,
2. East West Rail services will offer marginal or no improvement … between key locations within that ‘core’ geography and those further to the east and west [later, the Strategic Statement gives an example of a 16 minute improvement between Milton Keynes and Ipswich]
3. East West Rail services will not offer a viable alternative for longer distance journeys between the extremes of the given geography, where interchange at London remains more efficient.”
The Strategic Statement goes on to say “The use of high frequency, fast services via existing main lines effectively cancels out the advantage accrued from the shorter physical distance travelled using East West Rail. This is due to the need to interchange repeatedly and the potential for misalignment between existing and East West Rail services (which are of a lower frequency, particularly west of Bletchley)… For those journeys where either the origin or destination, or both, lie off the core route, travel by road is likely to remain a more efficient and convenient option given the length of existing journey times and the marginal improvement offered by East West Rail. To return to the previous example, generalised journey time between Bedford and Swindon would – when using East West Rail services – drop from just under four hours to just over three and a half hours. Travel by private car would typically take between two and two and a half hours for the same journey. Improvements on present generalised journey times by rail would need to be greater if East West Rail were to offer a competitive alternative to road in this instance.”
Final thoughts
So why did EWRCo make the poorly verified claims about EWR’s usefulness through this map and accompanying articles and video? It seems to me that this reflects an unresolved schizophrenia about its purpose and possibly also project inertia[5]. It is not sure whether it is supposed to be providing a fast end-to-end service between Oxford and Cambridge or a commuter service taking workers into each of these relatively small cities and the somewhat larger Milton Keynes. The RUR and related documents seem to make clear that it is the latter, but EWRCo is nevertheless attempting to be all things to all people. This may not be surprising given its apparent lack of strategic focus[6] – why does freight have such a low profile, for example, when it seems critical to achieving net zero – and unconvincing business case[7].
EWRCo has a good deal of homework still to do. Even in its own backyard, as William’s 13 May 2022 “Will the EWR compete with Road?” makes clear, any advantage it may have is by no means overwhelming. When the really significant cost of rail travel and station parking is taken into account, together with the first mile/last mile issue (which EWRCo appears slow to address), that advantage may well melt away.
[1] This is because of the potential for unacceptable detriment to journey times or capacity of these services if they were to do so.
[2] The concept is explained at 4.1 of the Strategic Statement.
[3] My own personal experience is that this journey does not compete well with road.
[4] The Strategic Statement also says “The opening of the Elizabeth Line will improve connectivity between Paddington and Liverpool Street for long-distance journeys to East Anglia”, so the difference may be even greater now (the Elizabeth Line opened after the Strategic Statement was published).
[5] The continuing preference for southern approach may also be a consequence of project inertia. EWRCo accepts in the RUR that “a northern approach is potentially quicker to construct and is likely to cost less than a southern approach. The extent of work required is less, including less disruption to the existing network…[it]…may have less potential environment impact”. The ETR gives more detail on the environmental impact question saying “there are higher presence of higher value habitats and higher embodied carbon than for a northern approach”. The Cambridge Independent of 3 August quotes EWRCo’s chief executive as saying “quite honestly, when I started, I didn’t think that the northern approach was viable at all”. It is a pity that she did not start the job with an open mind regarding the approach to Cambridge.
[6] The Strategic Statement says “The statement outlines a vision for an East West Main Line …which is aimed at gaining the most from the investment made in the new infrastructure and providing a railway that delivers for passengers and freight users into the future.” It goes on to make six suggestions, which include optimisation for freight, provision of a strategic route for service re-routing, planned diversions, and operational flexibility in times of perturbation and electrification.
[7] EWRCo has a singular focus on transporting workers to theoretical job growth at or near the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Its Theory of Change is not based on the years of detailed and recent work and public consultation carried out by Greater Cambridge Shared Planning in preparing the draft Local Plan, but on a 2017 National Infrastructure Commission (“NIC”) report “Partnering for Prosperity: a new deal for the Cambridge-MiltonKeynes-Oxford Arc” and an earlier Cambridge Econometrics report, “Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Northamption Growth Corridor,” commissioned by the NIC. Both reports are pre-pandemic and so take no account of really significant changes in commuter travel patterns and rail revenue or the lack of a centralised housing plan envisaged by the now-defunct central Government Ox-Cam Arc proposals.
The Elizabeth Line – a sensible public investment.
Figure 1 Elizabeth Line Map. Pretty obvious why it carries so much traffic.
The Elizabeth Line (Figure 1) was built for a capital cost of £20 billion and carries 500,000 commuters to London every day. The capital cost per commuter is therefore £40,000 (20 billion / 500,000). That’s the cost of a fairly expensive new car. The number of Elizabeth Line daily commuters was recently reported to have reached 738,000 which would be £27,100 capital cost per commuter. One can see that this is a sensible use of public money – effectively the commuter is renting their seat on the train through ticket sales.
The UK Rail Finances from the Office of Road and Rail.
The Financial Times recently published the Office of Road and Rail Income figures in graphical form see Figure 2.
The railways have needed a substantial subsidy for a long time. The changed travel patterns during and since the pandemic have had a huge effect on passenger revenue and hence the subsidy required to keep the network going. Not only have rail passenger numbers dropped, but there has also been a shift from business to leisure travel and hence a reduction in peak rate ticket sales. Part of the discussion about the recovery since the pandemic centres on whether to include the Elizabeth Line which only opened after the pandemic and, despite being mainly a London local transport scheme, is sometimes included in the figures for intercity rail passengers. Figure 3 is up to date and excludes the Elizabeth Line. The passenger numbers are between 75% and 80% of pre-pandemic numbers. But fare revenue will be lower than that due to the shift to leisure travel. EWR is being built for business travel. In February 2023, Mark Harper stated that season ticket sales were at only 28% of pre-pandemic levels.
Figure 3 Rail Passenger use Excl. Elizabeth line c.f. pre-pandemic. Source: Department for Transport.
It is interesting that both Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Transport Secretary Mark Harper referred to a permanent shift in post pandemic business travel patterns as part of the justification for cancelling the second phase on HS2 at the 2023 Conservative Party Conference.
Proposed East West Rail Bedford to Cambridge (EWR CS3)
In our previous post on this subject, we explained that the capital cost estimate of EWR CS3 in today’s money is £7.85billion[1] and the number of Cambridge commuters using EWRCo.’s “Theory of Change Trip End Model, Conventional Scenario” would be 472. Not 472,000, but just 472 and this model is calibrated on pre-pandemic behaviour reported in the 2011 census, also ignoring the effect of the new A421/A428 dual carriageway now under construction and running alongside the route and also ignoring the effect of the Cambridge South Station also under construction.
The EWR CS3 capital cost per Cambridge commuter therefore works out at £16.7million (£7.85billion/472). I did look at the most expensive cars in the world to find an equivalent, but it seems that a personal helicopter for each commuter might be a better comparison. One for each day of the week.
Optimism Bias
If you are trying to justify a publicly funded project and know that (a) you will be long gone by the time the project is executed (b) it’s not your money and (c) suspect that there is competition for the same funds from other project proposals; you might as well present the best possible picture. The alternative is that you don’t get funded at all.
“optimism bias is a well-established concept, with a substantial body of research showing that forecast costs and benefits are generally highly inaccurate. More recently our work showed over-optimism was still an entrenched problem in government.”
Margaret Thatcher is a marmite figure, but one of her quotes seems appropriate here. “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Even with all the green field housing, the cost per commuter is still in personal helicopter territory at £3.75million (£7.85billion/2090) although now you would have to make do with using the same helicopter every day. If you think the houses will be built or you believe EWRCo.’s “very aspirational” model parameters, use those. The best capital cost per rail commuter I can get, even taking all EWRCo. optimism bias is around £1 million per rail commuter.
I don’t think it’s reasonable for the taxpayer to subsidize these commuters that much. What would the ticket price have to be to break even without a subsidy? Asking the Cambridge commuter to pay £16.7million up-front is a big ask, but perhaps generations of commuters could pay it back over the 60 year life of the railway. That would be £1,265 per workday but £4,010 allowing for a 5% interest rate on the loaned capital. The assumed subsidy is so high the rail fare is irrelevant. On the other hand, who is going to pay £4,010 a day for a return rail ticket? No one.
We have heard that Beth West recently announced that EWRCo. were seeking reduce the capital cost of the project by reducing the amount of civil engineering. What would the capital cost have to be in order to be comparable with the Elizabeth Line in terms of capital cost per commuter? Let’s give EWRCo. a break and assume that somehow the green-field houses are built and also assume that the target is a capital cost of £40,000 per Cambridge commuter as we saw with the Elizabeth Line. The target capital cost for EWR CS3 becomes £40,000 x 2,090 = £83.6 million. They would need to cut out 99% of the capital cost. If they can do that, it would be scandalous that they ever proposed the current costs.
EWRCo. assume houses for 213,300 people are built – let’s assume that’s 100,000 houses[2]. Taylor Wimpey Ltd recently reported a gross margin of 25% on their house building.[3] At £300,000 per house that’s a gross profit of £7.5billion. About the same as the capital cost of the railway. Can we offset the cost of the railway with housing profits? Surprise windfall tax on property developers and land owners anybody?
A Possible EWR Timeline and Financial Summary
Here is a prediction of what would happen if this project went ahead.
The taxpayer funds EWR CS3 for £7.85billion
472 Cambridge rail commuters.
Local authorities grant permission for 100k new houses, which are constructed and sold to new people. {This is a high risk step and may well not happen}
Landowners and property developers make a profit of £7.5billion
Another 1,618 rail and 9,115 road commuters to Cambridge
Railway shut down because the subsidy required to keep it running is too high.
The net transaction is a transfer of £7.5billion from the taxpayer to property developers (steps 1 and 4), new towns on green field sites and more road congestion. The government will claw back some of the profits of the property developers through taxation. However, if you really want to supersize Cambridge, there are less financially daft transport schemes. Such as busways and light rail networks.
[1] EWRCo. and DFT quote numbers in the £5-6billion range, and it depends on how much of the risk estimate is included and also whether inflation is allowed for. There is a huge problem even at £5 billion capital cost
[2] Economic and Technical Report Appendix 4 Table 4.1. 99% of these people do not use the railway to commute to Cambridge.
By reference to a paywalled article in the Economist, EWRCo. imply that their railway increase the Gross Value Added (GVA) of the OxCam Arc to £274 billion/year from a base of £111billion/year. They also state that if 80,000 jobs could be created in Cambridge by 2050, then that would only create £4 billion GVA/year. But they claim their railway can only create 28,200 Cambridge jobs – so £1.4billion GVA/year. Quite a drop.
This article examines the 28,800 claim and, using EWRCo.’s “Theory of Change Trip End model”, explains why it should really be closer to 500 only Cambridge jobs. Considering the Capital cost of the railway in 2023 money, this would equate to £16.7million per Cambridge job.
For reference, the Elizabeth Line is carrying 500,000 commuters per day, presumably going to that number of jobs.
Background
On the 26th of May 2023 EWRCo. published an Economic and Technical Report (ETR). The appendices to the report contain an interesting set of estimates of the number of jobs that the railway would support in Cambridge. There is of course a close relationship between the number of regular commuters to Cambridge and the number of jobs supported in Cambridge.
Appendix 4 of the ETR explains EWRCo.’s favoured technique for this which they call ‘Theory of Change Trip End Modelling’. They build up the number of commuters to Cambridge by adding up the numbers from a set of origin-destination (OD) journey pairs. The Destination of the OD pair is always Cambridge; the Origin is taken from a set of EWR stations: Cambourne, Tempsford, Bedford, Stewartby, Ridgmont, Woburn Sands and Milton Keynes/Bletchley.
[origin population] = number of people residing within the 2km catchment area around the origin EWR station
[workers per pop.] = (no. of working people / population) at the origin
[market size] = fraction of commuters from the origin that travel to the destination by all modes.
[rail mode share] = fraction of commuters that use the railway.
The Conventional/Conservative Scenario
The 2011 census evidently asked people to say where they lived, where they worked and how they travelled to work. This allowed EWRCo. to work out the [rail mode share] and [market size] parameters for existing rail connected OD pairs around Cambridge as a function of the distance from Cambridge and in 2011. The figures from the 2021 census would have been affected by the pandemic.
The factors derived from this analysis were then applied to the new EWR stations and the results are presented in table 4.1 which is reproduced below. The name given for this model is either the conservative or the conventional scenario.
This scenario estimates 2,090 regular Cambridge commuters and assumes that 213,300 new people residing within 2km of an EWR station.
The model does not consider the following:
Cambridge South Station
Hauxton Park and Ride
The A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet Scheme
GCP busways Cambourne to Cambridge and CSET
GCP congestion charge/enhanced bus services will encourage more use of park and ride and bus services.
All of these would tend to reduce the [rail mode share] or [market size] parameters either through more remote working, reducing congestion on the road or providing new modes of commuting.
The results of the conventional scenario also depend on new housing being signed off in the catchment areas of the new station by several uncoordinated local authorities. EWRCo. say that this is not in their control and therefore it is a significant risk to the commuter numbers and hence the business case for the railway.
Appendix 8 of the ETR gives new capital cost estimates for the chosen heavy rail solution (HR5). Recent rail projects have tended to overspend their budgets (HS2, Transpennine), so it is reasonable to add the risk to the estimated capital cost. This is £5.34billion in 2010 money. The Bank of England shows that the general economy has had 47% inflation from 2010 to the latest figures in June 2023. Ignoring the fact that construction costs have suffered more inflation than the general economy we can say that this figure in today’s money should be at least £7.85billion.
Dividing the capital cost by the number of commuters leads to the result that each Cambridge commuter costs £3.76million. Knowing the parameters of the conventional model allows us to calculate how many Cambridge commuters there would be if the new housing were not built. There would be 132 from Cambourne; 6 from Tempsford and 334 from Bedford leading to a total of 472 commuters to Cambridge; £16.7million each in case you were wondering.
Well done to Anthony Browne MP for staying on the fence about EWR to support the wishes of those 132 Cambourne commuters. But I am sure they would rather have the £16.7million each.
The Transformational Scenario
The good people at EWRCo. decided to go a different way with their analysis and created a new set of parameters for [rail mode share] and [market size]. The justification for the new parameter settings is as follows:
“Transformational scenario: Representing a plausible but very aspirational world where market sizes and mode shares represent around the limits of what is observed today for a given mode share, which may not be transferrable between contexts.”
Not entirely clear what this means, but these new parameters are used to create table 4.2
Now the number of EWR Cambridge commuters has increased four times to 7,990 (still £0.98million per commuter). I think EWRCo. are saying that if the parameters turn out to be the best ever seen everywhere this is what we might get.
How EWR will support 28,200 jobs in Cambridge (apparently).
Not satisfied with the aspirational 7,990 Cambridge commuters, appendix 4 goes on the claim that EWR will actually support 28,200 Cambridge jobs. They stick with the “transformational” parameter for [market size] and define three stages “Expand”, “Grow” and “Strengthen”.
“Expand” counts the number of existing residents somehow inspired to commute to Cambridge just because EWR is built – even if they do not use the railway. (+5500 Cambridge jobs)
“Grow” counts additional Cambridge commuters from the existing local plans to 2031 extended to 2050 by adding 50%. This is housing not designed around EWR stations, but amazingly, they show the best possible [market size] parameters from the Transformational scenario. (+7900 Cambridge jobs)
“Strengthen” counts Cambridge commuters from 69,400 EWR dependent housing around new stations. (+14,480 Cambridge jobs). Again, this is for all modes not just rail.
So, 20,000 of these 28,200 Cambridge commuters in this scenario do not travel on the EWR. The roads would clearly get busier.
In summary, EWRCo. claim 28,200 Cambridge jobs. As explained above I can only see 472 in their model.
Interaction with other plans to support the growth of Cambridge Jobs
The Greater Cambridge local plan to 2041 is being prepared and is well advanced. There is provision for 66,000 additional jobs which is the independently assessed level of job demand. The plan provides housing (57,000 houses) and other interventions to support these jobs. EWRCo. say that their jobs target is part of this total. That must mean they are assuming some of the local plan will be withdrawn to fit around EWR. I understand that developers would be likely to take legal action if this were the case.
The local plan is currently held up by lack of water infrastructure (9,000 houses around Bourn Airfield, Waterbeach new town and the Cambridge city edge cannot be signed off), a problem that will not be fixed until the late 2030s at the earliest. Note that Anglian Water is the second most indebted UK water company after Thames Water.
We now also have the Cambridge 2040 Plan from Secretary of State Michael Gove. A new quarter for Cambridge and a strategy of densifying Cambridge rather than sprawling over the whole area between Oxford and Cambridge. How can the Department for Transport continue with an EWR project that is part of a now clearly out of date DLUHC OxCam Arc strategy that has been replaced by a completely different strategy to densify Cambridge?
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.
Well, the Route Update Announcement (RUA) is here and the documents associated with it contain quite a bit of material about the business case for the railway. Here are some points that I found interesting.
If you are environmentally conscious and concerned about the level of development we have already seen in our area (and that included in local plans), perhaps you think that new railways are a green form of transport. We could have the electric car vs rail debate, or we could talk about the lack of interest that EWRCo. have shown in taking freight of the road, or even the vast embedded carbon in construction of a new railway. But there is more direct evidence in the RUA material about the scale of EWR dependent housing development (economic growth’s ugly sister) that EWRCo. are assuming in their business model.
Look at the assumed growth in Cambourne and Tempsford from development dependent on EWR. Together, they would be houses for an additional 97,400 people and just about all on green field / prime agricultural sites. For comparison, the population of Cambridge in the 2021 census was 125,000. These are also only the people within 2km of an EWR station – the population of Milton Keynes is much higher than 66,000 shown in the table. The EWRCo. objective is to get more people commuting into high paid jobs in Cambridge where they can generate income and taxes for HMRC. But EWR is not very efficient and doing that. Not everyone in the new houses will commute to Cambridge and not all of them will use rail – see above for some optimistic assumptions. As usual, EWRCo.’s journey times are ridiculously optimistic since they do not include first and last mile or the time spent waiting for the next train or indeed the fact that rail tickets are just really expensive.
We had some level 2 BCRs in the 2020 Option Report which were all pretty low. Since then, the cost estimates have “matured” and I was going to say there had been inflation. However, notice this table is still at 2010 prices (PV) so we can add at least 30% to all these numbers to get to today’s prices.
The point is that the level 2 BCRs are all very poor and even adding a huge allowance for yet more “wider benefits” (tax revenue from new jobs), it’s still not looking like a good investment.
The rational decision here (unless, like EWRCo. employees, your job depends on it) is not to do the project. If you had to do it the best option is clearly HR2. But EWRCo. have chosen HR5 which has the lowest BCR. Strange, and perhaps indicative of the power of the Triple Helix. Read on to find out…
Before we go there let’s have a deeper look at the construction cost comparison and what those HR numbers are. Here is the table with the latest costs and an explanation of the HR numbers. EWRCo. do not state the basis year for the costs.
There is also a caveat that HR1 uses a 4-track northern approach to Cambridge (NATC) while HR2 uses a new 3-track approach for the NATC. That presumably doesn’t involve knocking down any houses. It’s good that they now agree this is possible.
It also means that we can work out how much cheaper it is to approach Cambridge from the north than from the south. Base cost (HR3) – base cost (HR2) = £2.37Bn-£1.98Bn = £390 million. Actually, based on HS2, Transpennine etc, we should definitely be using the upper end of the risk range figures. That would be £620 million.
Similarly at the Bedford end base cost (HR5) – base cost (HR3) = £3.35bn – £2.37bn = £0.98bn, with the risk added £1.57Bn. You could do a lot for Priory Country Park on the Varsity route for that.
Summary
EWRCo. analysis assumes huge green field housing developments outside any local plan and, with the demise of the centrally driven OxCam Arc, no clear means to deliver or spatially plan them around EWR. EWRCo. analysis also assumes journey times that make no allowance for first and last mile. That implies perfect “place making” meaning they assume that everyone can get to the station immediately at both ends of the journey and a train just happens to be waiting for them. Despite all this, they can only get to a BCR less than one with 2010 prices. Furthermore, of the four options analysed, they picked the one with the worst BCR which avoids any damage to the Priory Country Park and has the first station that it reaches in Cambridge as Cambridge South and the Biomedical Campus (CBC).
They are targeting the creation of 80,000 jobs in addition to the 17,000 already there. There is little room to expand the CBC since it is hard up against the Green Belt and was not the prime focus for the Greater Cambridge Local Plan.
Both the northern and the southern approach to Cambridge can easily serve all three Cambridge Stations. The economy of the space constrained CBC to the south is easily balanced by the Science parks and new planned developments to the north of Cambridge.
There have in the past been indications of rationality from government about EWR and the OxCam Arc. Remember Grant Shapps was going to cancel the project. Michael Gove ditched the centrally controlled OxCam Arc. There were signs of Huw Merriman seriously talking about the NATC (it’s cheaper and better for freight). The NATC is even used as the reference heavy rail comparison in the RUA’s light rail study document published as late as January 2023.
As we have seen from the details of the RUA report there is no business case, and the chosen route is has the lowest BCR. But, to mis-quote J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings:
“Victory was near, but the power of the Triple Helix could not be undone”.
It seems that the RUA material has been changed in the run up to the announcement which turns out to be more of a route confirmation rather than an update.
I am looking at this strange section in the Economic and Technical Report
§6.4.19“The Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge region is further advantaged by its access to a unique ‘Triple Helix.’ The Triple Helix is an established concept that demonstrates overlapping interactions between academia and universities, industry and business, and government and public sector institutions. The close proximity of these institutions and organisations to each other form overlapping circles or helixes.”
It then goes onto list three life science related triple helixes involving players from the CBC. Here is the first one:
Astra Zeneca on the CBC (had they actually moved there in 2020? Having spent £1Billion on their new HQ at the CBC is there any evidence they would build another one there because of EWR?)
Government – In Downing Street / Westminster
The University of Oxford (specifically the Jenner Institute which is a 30 minute bus ride from Oxford Station)
These three entities successfully worked together on the AZ vaccine without EWR in place and there is no evidence that EWR would have made any material difference to that project, especially during a lock down where rail travel was restricted.
There is nothing unique about the CBC Triple Helix, nor does Silicon Valley depend on rail rather than the roads.
But despite all logic, this example seems to appeal to HM Treasury at an emotional level and hence connecting to the CBC first is clearly essential to get this project funded. Even if it means signing off a loss making project and compounding the error by going for the route which their own analysis says has the lowest BCR. It’s a sorry state of affairs for our democracy, but HM Treasury is the customer and the local people and logic really don’t matter.
