Proposals for "Northern arc": linking north Oxfordshire (Banbury) with Northampton and Peterborough

[A0wen]

I think what @The Planner is saying is that rumours are swirling that the wires and extra 10mph *might* be back on the cards.
Again, huge emphasis on the word "might".

No, I think the point is Bicester to Bletchley was always specced as 100mph - not sure what Oxford - Bicester is and the Marston Vale certainly isn't 90mph or 100mph.....

 

[Bevan Price]

IF any of the proposed lines are justifiable, I think one solution would often be to forget most of the original alignments / trackbeds, and restart from scratch. A lot of old formations lay longish distances from the places they purported to serve, and there is/was never likely to be huge amounts of traffic from small villages.

What would be needed is fastish services between the larger towns and cities -- and so stations for tiny villages. So - I would suggest as a potentially useful route, something like Oxford - Milton Keynes - Northampton - Leicester (for the East Midlands) . The latter section might run either via Wellingborough, Kettering and MML - or alternatively via Rugby and a "replacement" line thence to Leicester. Suitable parts of old trackbeds might be useable in places, but I suspect that, in many places, it might be cheaper to build totally new rail alignments.

The "Oxford" end ought to be able to use at least part of the proposed EWR to the edges of Milton Keynes, and hopefully that line will have (at least) 100 mph line speed.

As for the other suggestions - is there likely to be much demand for more southerly E-W routes in the (say) Aylesbury - Watford - Luton - Stevenage area, etc.

 

[The Planner]

I think what @The Planner is saying is that rumours are swirling that the wires and extra 10mph *might* be back on the cards.
Again, huge emphasis on the word "might".

No, the below is correct. Its always been 100mph.

No, I think the point is Bicester to Bletchley was always specced as 100mph

 

[geoffk]

I normally agree with the sceptics on these things - but I think the idea of a new line to Northampton is often unfairly chalked up as a pie-in-the-sky idea, possibly because people assume that Northampton is a usual-sized county town - when actually 250,000 people live there, and there's another 200,000 in the other towns in North/Central Northants (Wellingborough, Rushden, Kettering and Corby).

I agree it wouldn't be viable to connect Northampton and Peterborough at the moment, or to connect Northampton and Banbury (in fact I really don't understand, as someone who knows the area pretty well, why there would ever be more than a handful of people wanting that last link, and calling it an 'arc' doesn't change that). But the Northampton - Wellingborough part should probably be treated a bit more seriously, especially because the distance isn't very large.

You'd have local demand arising from a combined population of nearly 500,000 - including a lot of commuting because there's a mismatch between location of employment (Northampton) and location of people (Corby in particular) which currently manifests itself in heavy traffic despite the development of the road network in recent years. You'd also get the potential for longer distance Birmingham to Luton Airport services (via Northampton and Bedford), which I'd suggest would be popular, similarly to the Birmingham - Stansted services.

Northampton must be the largest town in UK served by only one railway line, i.e. not a junction, apart from Plymouth, where the travel patterns must be very different as it's on the coast and has a large rural hinterland.

 

[Starmill]

Northampton must be the largest town in UK served by only one railway line, i.e. not a junction, apart from Plymouth, where the travel patterns must be very different as it's on the coast and has a large rural hinterland.

What about Aberdeen, Durham, Bangor, Chelmsford, Swansea, Hull, Walsall, Sandwell & Dudley, Luton, Blackpool, Sunderland, Poole and Telford?

 

[squizzler]

Surely we are best waiting to see the impact, patterns and benefits from when EWR is finished.

Do both. You need to consider the years it takes for such a concept to move from a coloured ellipse on a map to a specific plan with the political support needed for it to be 'shovel ready'. There is also the benefits in phasing such rail building around other projects within a continuous programme of railway construction. By the time this project is ready to go, the designers and builders might be able to fit it in straight after NPR, keeping them busy and their skills fresh, helping drive down the costs. So now is a great time to start the planning, bearing in mind it needs to go through all the stages of appraisal and political consensus building.

IF any of the proposed lines are justifiable, I think one solution would often be to forget most of the original alignments / trackbeds, and restart from scratch. A lot of old formations lay longish distances from the places they purported to serve, and there is/was never likely to be huge amounts of traffic from small villages.

I apologise for being blunt, but it is pretty clear that is the idea all along. I think of Northern Arc Rail (let's call it NAR for sake of expediency) as being the Northern Powerhouse Rail to East West Rail's Trainspennine Route Upgrade. There is an excellent road network to serve local traffic once the long distance, through traffic on the A43 has been abstracted by NAR.

Incidentally, long standing members of the forum will remember the derision that NPR (then HS3) was greeted with when the concept was first floated a few years back. It takes time for such concepts to gain traction, but my hunch is that this is one such concept.

Incidentally, can the title of the thread be edited to reflect that the northeast end of NAR is Peterborough?

 

[DJ_K666]

I would have commented earlier, but I was top of the bill at the Palladium tonight.

Was that part of a cunning plan?
I've been reading this with interest and since I drive buses into Northampton there is a heck of a lot of housing about to be built there. Take a look at the 'road to nowhere' which is something you'd pass when entering Northampton from the north on the A45. This is in anticipation of housing stretching right to the M1, currently apart from Kislingbury it's open countryside until you hit Upton so at least 3 miles of new housing estates (My route there comes from Rugby via Daventry, where there is also a load of new housing going up). Even with that, how many of those people are likely to commute into Wellingborough, Towcester or Market Harborough? What would work best for me personally would be the reopening of the Rugby to Leamington and Rugby to Leicester lines as I have family and friends and do not want to drive to see them.

 

[A0wen]

IF any of the proposed lines are justifiable, I think one solution would often be to forget most of the original alignments / trackbeds, and restart from scratch. A lot of old formations lay longish distances from the places they purported to serve, and there is/was never likely to be huge amounts of traffic from small villages.

What would be needed is fastish services between the larger towns and cities -- and so stations for tiny villages. So - I would suggest as a potentially useful route, something like Oxford - Milton Keynes - Northampton - Leicester (for the East Midlands) . The latter section might run either via Wellingborough, Kettering and MML - or alternatively via Rugby and a "replacement" line thence to Leicester. Suitable parts of old trackbeds might be useable in places, but I suspect that, in many places, it might be cheaper to build totally new rail alignments.

The "Oxford" end ought to be able to use at least part of the proposed EWR to the edges of Milton Keynes, and hopefully that line will have (at least) 100 mph line speed.

As for the other suggestions - is there likely to be much demand for more southerly E-W routes in the (say) Aylesbury - Watford - Luton - Stevenage area, etc.

But we've been here before, several times. If you want to run a Leicester or Nottingham to Oxford service it can be done now - in fact IIRC it was a XC proposal at one time? And post EWR it could be run via Milton Keynes.

You don't need a Northampton - Wellingborough link to achieve any of this.

Far better (and more cost effective) to use the infrastructure that's already there and available.

 

[A0wen]

I apologise for being blunt, but it is pretty clear that is the idea all along. I think of Northern Arc Rail (let's call it NAR for sake of expediency) as being the Northern Powerhouse Rail to East West Rail's Trainspennine Route Upgrade. There is an excellent road network to serve local traffic once the long distance, through traffic on the A43 has been abstracted by NAR.

Sorry, but you're talking crap.

The "NAR" as you call it won't "abstract" long distance traffic from the A43. The journeys people are making on there are too diverse by far.

As someone who actually *lives* in Northampton, here's a sample of the journeys I've made in recent years using the A43 - not one of them would I have considered using rail for even if the "NAR" had existed.

- south coast using the A43 to access the A34
- Cotswolds, using A43 to Brackley then onto the Cotswolds
- south west, using A43 to get to A34 and then on towards Swindon
- south side of Birmingham using A43 to Brackley then Banbury and M40
- Kettering for various purposes
- Corby various purposes
- to get to A1 to visit friends in Lincolnshire or head further up A1.

You'll notice that visit Banbury or Peterborough don't figure.

 

[si404]

Northampton must be the largest town in UK served by only one railway line, i.e. not a junction, apart from Plymouth, where the travel patterns must be very different as it's on the coast and has a large rural hinterland.

Plymouth has a branch heading north.

But not it's not - the Bournemouth-Christchurch-Poole conurbation is twice the size, though I guess that's three towns. Hull and Luton beat both Northampton and Plymouth. Walsall may do, but it's hard to find helpful lines given it's part of a much larger urban area.

What about Aberdeen, Durham, Bangor, Chelmsford, Swansea, Hull, Walsall, Sandwell & Dudley, Luton, Blackpool, Sunderland, Poole and Telford?

Urban area populations of these from http://citypopulation.de/, in size order (with Plymouth and Northampton thrown in).

• Poole: 485,998 (Bournemouth UA) or 159,108 (town population)
• Sunderland: 338,162 but the Metro makes it a junction. It may not be NR, but it's still a railway!
• Hull: 318,351
• Walsall: 285,478 (Metropolitan borough that includes unserved Aldridge and Brownhills) or 72,541 (town population). However, even if you ignore the branching south of Bescot Stadium, it's going to become a junction soon by the reinstatement of passenger service the direct Wolverhampton line.
• Luton: 274,473 (the biggest urban area in EEH, save for the tentacles of London into Herts, but see how it's pretty ignored by the body)
• Plymouth: 266,823 but Tamar Valley line makes it a junction.
• Blackpool: 240,221 - but does a bifurcating branch count as 'only railway line'? I'm leaning on the side that it does - there's only one connection to the outside world.
• Northampton: 230,583
• Aberdeen: 198,000
• Swansea: 185,166
• Telford: 156,145
• Chelmsford: 118,581
• Sandwell & Dudley: not a real place (Sandwell) combined with a place not directly on this railway (Dudley). I'm going to go with Dudley's town population of 83,980 as it does only have one railway line going through it - the Snow Hill-Worcester line (not the one in question). Oldbury, which S&D station actually serves, is 25k and has Langley Green station within the boundary too. Tipton is 45k. A bigger option in the West Midlands is Sutton Coldfield's 107,732 - still not even half of Northampton's size.
• Bangor: the Northern Irish one is 63,090. The Welsh one is under 20k, and I doubt you would go with that.
• Durham: 53,717

 

[Starmill]

Sunderland: 338,162 but the Metro makes it a junction. It may not be NR, but it's still a railway!

Ah ah. Plymouth has a trivial branch line. If the Tamar Valley line is allowed, then so is the South Hylton metro!

Of course you might say that neither do, but then it just goes to show the comparison in use here doesn't make any real sense.

 

[Camden]

Sorry, but you're talking crap.

The "NAR" as you call it won't "abstract" long distance traffic from the A43. The journeys people are making on there are too diverse by far.

As someone who actually *lives* in Northampton, here's a sample of the journeys I've made in recent years using the A43 - not one of them would I have considered using rail for even if the "NAR" had existed.

You'll notice that visit Banbury or Peterborough don't figure.

Perhaps you're not the target demographic. Railways aren't built for one person, so if you don't get any use out of it I guess that evens the score for someone who doesn't use the A43, who instead might use rail for a diverse range of reasons.

 

[squizzler]

Far better (and more cost effective) to use the infrastructure that's already there and available.

You won't find too many who are willing to argue with you on that score. But now is the time to plan ahead for a decade or so in the future when the bag of tricks as to what can be done with the current network starts to become empty.

As someone who actually *lives* in Northampton, here's a sample of the journeys I've made in recent years using the A43 - not one of them would I have considered using rail for even if the "NAR" had existed.

- south coast using the A43 to access the A34
- Cotswolds, using A43 to Brackley then onto the Cotswolds
- south west, using A43 to get to A34 and then on towards Swindon
- south side of Birmingham using A43 to Brackley then Banbury and M40
- Kettering for various purposes
- Corby various purposes
- to get to A1 to visit friends in Lincolnshire or head further up A1.

The list of possible trips you provide has me scratching my head, and I doubt I am alone here. If the intention was to demonstrate that people in Northampton do not make trips that would benefit from the EEH's NAR, I regret your list of longer distance out of town trips - a market to which rail is naturally suited - appears to have the opposite effect!

South Coast (via XC), Cotswolds (via North Cotswold Line), Swindon and South West (GWML), Southern Birmingham via Chiltern Mainline, points north on MML, points north on ECML - all would be empowered by NAR to the extent they become attractive (rather than theoretically doable) destinations by rail.

Of course many of the beneficiaries will not even live in the region but merely passing through; the region will still benefit from less congested roads for the local traffic.

 

[A0wen]

Perhaps you're not the target demographic. Railways aren't built for one person, so if you don't get any use out of it I guess that evens the score for someone who doesn't use the A43, who instead might use rail for a diverse range of reasons.

Perhaps not - but equally when I talk to people I know socially I don't think anyone has ever been making trips to Banbury.

A few, with specific business interests have gone to Peterboro, but wouldn't have used the train even if it existed, because it was usually part of a day involving journeys to other places as well.

I keep coming back to the point that successful rail reopenings have been with journeys where currently there is a well used bus service. Northampton, Daventry or Towcester to Banbury fails on that straight out.

Northampton to Peterborough does exist, though I don't know how many people make it end to end. Certainly the Corby to Peterborough part is less well used.

 

[si404]

Plymouth has a trivial branch line. If the Tamar Valley line is allowed, then so is the South Hylton metro!

If there was an arbitrary 'trival branch' cut off, it could very well cut off the route that provides 147 seats every two hours but not the one that sends 1280 seats every two hours. An every-120-minutes 2-car route is clearly more trivial than an every-12-minutes 4-car route!

So, no, if the Tamar Valley line is allowed (I don't think it should, and thought that I was pretty clear) because it's too trivial, that doesn't mean that South Hylton metro should also be!

it just goes to show the comparison in use here doesn't make any real sense.

If you are going to suggest that Durham* is possibly bigger than Northampton despite being less than a quarter of the size, or that a route with nearly 9 times the seats is on a par with a line that has a tenth of the frequency, I don't think you have any right to opine on what comparisons make "any real sense".

That said, I agree - it's a bit of trivia and little more.

*to take the most egregious example, unless you did mean Bangor, Gwynedd rather than the town of the same name that's 4 times the size.

 

[Starmill]

If there was an arbitrary 'trival branch' cut off, it could very well cut off the route that provides 147 seats every two hours but not the one that sends 1280 seats every two hours. An every-120-minutes 2-car route is clearly more trivial than an every-12-minutes 4-car route!

So, no, if the Tamar Valley line is allowed (I don't think it should, and thought that I was pretty clear) because it's too trivial, that doesn't mean that South Hylton metro should also be!

Even if you walked the whole way, it would take only an hour from Sunderland city centre to the area served by South Hylton. It may be frequent, but it's a short stub. The Tamar Valley line is extremely infrequent, but its service runs to many times longer.

Quite what the point of any of this discussion really is though I don't know. Despite all being large settlements, Sunderland, Plymouth and Northampton all have rather poor local transport but extremely different patterns and services for regional and long-distance transport.

The original comment was meant in principle to establish Northampton as a place with a unique connectivity challenge. I think we have established that it is in fact an extremely common connectivity challenge, present all over England outside of London, both inland and by the coast, for different reasons.

If you are going to suggest that Durham* is possibly bigger than Northampton despite being less than a quarter of the size, or that a route with nearly 9 times the seats is on a par with a line that has a tenth of the frequency, I don't think you have any right to opine on what comparisons make "any real sense".

This is all nonsense, but if you'd prefer to converse in this manner I shan't trouble you with any further explanation of why.

 

[Dr Hoo]

I apologise for being blunt, but it is pretty clear that is the idea all along. I think of Northern Arc Rail (let's call it NAR for sake of expediency) as being the Northern Powerhouse Rail to East West Rail's Trainspennine Route Upgrade. There is an excellent road network to serve local traffic once the long distance, through traffic on the A43 has been abstracted by NAR.

As a resident of Northamptonshire for over 20 years (albeit now moved to Derbyshire) I always found the through traffic on the A43 past Silverstone to be composed largely of lorries. Could you flesh out how these will be removed by your NAR (in any way that is different from the freight routeing and modal shift opportunities already to be provided by East West Rail)?

 

[Camden]

I keep coming back to the point that successful rail reopenings have been with journeys where currently there is a well used bus service. Northampton, Daventry or Towcester to Banbury fails on that straight out.

Northampton to Peterborough does exist, though I don't know how many people make it end to end. Certainly the Corby to Peterborough part is less well used.

Peterborough to Northampton on the X4 takes over 3 hours, with all the obvious implications for the journeys in-between.

You try holding a job down by relying on an hourly bus that takes an hour and a half to transport you. The local bus services are just that - local.

I don't really see why you feel the need to spend so much time arguing against investment in your area, even though it is clear it would be built to benefit others.

This is clearly a visionary project, exploring what beneficial economic activity can be created through creating linkages where few currently exist. It's not a mundane project that seeks to serve existing on-paper demand, but one designed to rewire economies, building demand over time.

At the very least we should be free to creatively explore the notion.

 

[Metal_gee_man]

If I lived in Northampton and wanted to travel Durham or York, the only way to manage this is via London, imagine how useful being able to skip WCML to ECML or from Corby to Newcastle or Swindon to Peterborough all avoiding London, stopping overcrowding, offering new freight routes or just new Crosscountry routes when things go tits up.

The benefits outweigh the negatives

 

[Bald Rick]

The benefits outweigh the negatives

On what basis?

Such statements are regular said on pages such as these, without any back up to them.

 

[Camden]

To be more balanced, "the benefits might outweigh any costs, and there may well be no negatives at all."

Of course, if the thread is just full of comments expressing displeasure at the discussion, we will never know (on here).

Meanwhile, in the real world where such idle chatter is expensive, cold business cases will slowly be built and infrastructure will emerge, or not as the case may be.

This being the case in the real world, do you think that we might, in the non-consequential virtual one of amateurs, be allowed to just chat and explore ideas for ourselves? After all, if anyone really hates the idea there are hundreds of other threads that might be of interest instead.

 

[Bald Rick]

Of course - it’s a free country / free forum*!

I suppose my point is that the discussion does need to look at that balance of benefits for costs. I’m sure there are some people for whom a line from Northampton to Peterborough (or wherever) would be beneficial. There are people everywhere for whom new lines would be beneficial. It would really help me and no doubt thousands of others if there was a line from Luton to Milton Keynes. But just saying ‘the benefits outweigh the negatives’ without explaining how that might be the case doesn’t in my view, help with exploiting the argument.

*subject to moderation

 

[A0wen]

If I lived in Northampton and wanted to travel Durham or York, the only way to manage this is via London, imagine how useful being able to skip WCML to ECML or from Corby to Newcastle or Swindon to Peterborough all avoiding London, stopping overcrowding, offering new freight routes or just new Crosscountry routes when things go tits up.

The benefits outweigh the negatives

Erm, LNW to Birmingham or Tamworth and XC to York or Durham. No need to go via London. NR journey planner reckons 3h 15 as quickest.

Corby - Newcastle (for the couple of people a year who make such a journey) would be more logical to head north on the MML to Derby and change to XC.

Not sure how Banbury - Northampton would enable Swindon - Peterboro though. Again EWR would do that more effectively.

There is already a WCML - ECML link at Nuneaton to Peterborough and when EWR is in place from Bletchley to Sandy there will be another.

 

[PeterC]

The important thing is to have "destinations" close to the stations. People will raihead from home but are less likely to trust cabs or buses if they then need to continue the journey to an out of town business park. Simply bolting on an inter-urban railway when town planning designs the region for car travel is never likely to catch more than a tiny fraction of journeys.

 

[si404]

It would really help me and no doubt thousands of others if there was a line from Luton to Milton Keynes.

And from EEH's perspective, linking the two biggest urban areas in the area, that are really not very far apart (about 20 miles), would be important - you'd have thought.

However none of their 'Corridors for Improved Connectivity' do it. The southern arc's northern bit covers Luton, but that's as the southern arc is basically an oval on a map covering everything south of E-W's arc. And these corridors are just a "let's look in a bit more detail at whether we can do something". Here's how the conclusion of the report (p111) puts it:

This baselining exercise has identified ten corridors to take forward into the next phase for benefits analysis. These corridors are a mixture of existing rail corridors where direct services are non-existent or infrequent, or corridors where rail there is no appropriate rail infrastructure to support a rail journey. These corridors are:

• Northern Arc: A corridor linking North Oxfordshire with Northamptonshire and on to Peterborough
• Central Arc: Linking Swindon and Reading through Oxford to Cambridge, Ipswich and Norwich via Milton Keynes and Bedford, overlapping with the East West Rail corridor
• Southern Arc: Linking the southern edge of EEH north of the M25 corridor
• Corridor 1 – Oxfordshire and Swindon: Cross Oxfordshire links and improvements to Swindon
• Corridor 2 – Chiltern Main Line: The area covered by the two routes from London Marylebone improving connectivity between intermediate stations on the route and towards Oxford, Banbury and the West Midlands
• Corridor 3 – East Midlands – Thames Valley: Linking Old Oak Common through the Chilterns to Aylesbury, Milton Keynes, Northampton towards the East Midlands
• Corridor 4 – Milton Keynes – Peterborough Two of the biggest economies and growth in the region are not linked by direct services
• Corridor 5 – East Hertfordshire – Cambridgeshire: Improving the connectivity between the towns on the West Anglia and East Coast Main Lines to Cambridge
• Corridor 6 – Peterborough – Cambridge-Stansted Airport: Improving upon the hourly service that links these three key employment, leisure and housing centres
• Corridor 7 – Peterborough – East Midlands – West Midlands: Improving upon the hourly service that links Peterborough with Leicester and Birmingham

A slightly longer description of the numbered corridors exists on p85 (and the three arcs on the pages just before).

This whole document is a high level statement of intent to look into these corridor in more detail - no actual plans to do anything (and with many corridors, nothing more than a short description!)

 

[A0wen]

Peterborough to Northampton on the X4 takes over 3 hours, with all the obvious implications for the journeys in-between.

You try holding a job down by relying on an hourly bus that takes an hour and a half to transport you. The local bus services are just that - local.

I don't disagree - but the fact is also that Peterborough is NOT a major employment centre for people living in Northampton, Wellingborough, Kettering or Corby, particularly those on lower wages for whom travel costs will be a consideration.

I don't really see why you feel the need to spend so much time arguing against investment in your area, even though it is clear it would be built to benefit others.

Because IF this scheme were to go ahead it would cost at least £ 1bn - that is against "benefits" which are highly questionable. As Bald Rick often points out, the first thing that needs to be answered with any such proposal is "what is the problem you're trying to fix" ? The next logical step is "Is this actually a problem"? - and this on fails on that. Then as DarloRich pointed out recently, there is only going to be a limited amount of money and this may be a 'one time' opportunity - which means schemes put forward need to be viable. Already on this one you've got local authorities spending money on exploring this seemingly without asking the basic questions. Look over on the Wisbech one and Bald Rick has pointed out the shortcomings of the "Benefits Case" the regional authority there have put forward - namely the case has been constructed to support a certain answer and has overlooked the fact that doubling the service to March would achieve circa 85% of the benefits without the need to spend a penny on a line to Wisbech.

This is clearly a visionary project, exploring what beneficial economic activity can be created through creating linkages where few currently exist. It's not a mundane project that seeks to serve existing on-paper demand, but one designed to rewire economies, building demand over time.

At the very least we should be free to creatively explore the notion.

You clearly have a very different view of "visionary" to me.

This scheme is flawed for so many reasons. Firstly there isn't the demand to link Peterborough (a smallish city in the East of England) with Banbury (a medium sized town in the South Midlands). There aren't any synergies between the two, there's not even a historic link between the two. Let's not forget the Northampton - Banbury line and Northampton - Peterborough lines were completely separate entities. There were never through services in the past.

What you actually have are two distinct corridors - let's deal with Northampton westwards first. Is there a demand for travel from Northampton westwards? Yes, the A43 provides ample capacity for that currently. What are the destinations? Towcester is one and there is a regular bus service which takes 40 minutes. Beyond that? Brackley or Silverstone aren't big places and the demand there is limited. Most people will be heading towards Oxford - so running a railway to Banbury makes little or no sense at all. Add in the fact that when EWR is in place, you'll be looking at a Northampton - Oxford rail journey time of circa 1 hour with a change a Milton Keynes - that is competitive with driving it which Google Maps reckons is about an hour as well. Going north of Banbury you've got Leamington (again accessible to Northampton by 1 change) and then Birmingham - which there's already direct connection with and anything via Banbury would be much slower.

Now look at Northampton eastwards - you've got Wellingborough, Kettering, Corby and ultimately Peterborough - the latter being about 45 miles away, same distance as Oxford the other.

Is there demand for travel between Wellingborough, Kettering, Corby and Northampton? Yes - there are regular buses, though none are 'full and standing' and the buses between Northampton and Wellingborough (lets focus on this for a sec, because it's the first bit of re-build you'd need) also run via the villages like Earls Barton - the railway line ran south of the A45 so was at least 2 miles from places like Earls Barton, so they wouldn't benefit - and before you wonder, no there isn't another formation that's even remotely viable.

The question remains though - are there enough people wanting to travel from Wellingborough, Kettering or Corby to Northampton to make such a route viable? Probably not. What about onward journeys? Well to the south you're looking at Milton Keynes - which back to EWR, it will almost certainly be quicker for people from those three towns to travel to Bedford and change to EWR than any reinstatement via Northampton would be. Apart from that, going south they have direct rail connectivity to Luton - which is something Northampton doesn't. And then it's London - so no gain there.

Going north - I pointed out that a journey from Wellingborough or Kettering to Birmingham can be done currently via Leicester and is pretty much time neutral against a via Northampton option.

So then we come back to Peterborough. Peterborough and Northampton are a similar size - a bit over 200k - Northampton being the bigger of the two. Given shopping trends, people rarely go from Northampton to Peterborough to go shopping - Milton Keynes is closer and has a better selection. So then you're looking at other leisure - not sure Peterborough has a huge amount in that space - or work.

Peterborough's lost Thomas Cook, so its large employers are people like Perkins or BGL Group - Northampton has Barclaycard, Travis Perkins and a couple of other large companies - so it's neutral on that. For people choosing jobs some of it will come down to distance - and for Wellingborough and Kettering, Northampton is preferred to Peterborough.

There are plenty of rail improvements which *could* be made in Northampton - Northants without the need to lay an extra yard of track. Getting distracted by "pie in the sky" schemes which are little more than rebuilding a pre-Beeching closure, a Beeching closure and tacking them together and claiming it's a "new transport arc" is ridiculous.

Start by defining the problem, then work out what the solutions are. This "scheme" is little more than authorities crayoning on a map and then trying to justify their crayoning.

 

[si404]

Start by defining the problem, then work out what the solutions are.

That's what this Northern Arc is! It's a definition of a problem - E-W connectivity is poor across Northants and the working out what the solutions are is to come in a less high-level report.

Instead you've over-obsessed about Banbury (which doesn't even get mentioned in the detailed description - it's just in the shorthand descriptions), made a big deal about it being one corridor about end-to-end journeys, and treated it as if it's fleshed out reopening proposal. It's an oval on a map and a promise to investigate further.

You make a big deal about EWR being able to provide the journeys. You know what? So does EEH in their longest of their 4 short paragraphs that give some detail about the Northern Arc (p83)!

This could be provided by additional services to locations off the core East West Main ine or by extending the proposed Oxford-Cambridge services to destinations further afield. In whichever way the output is achieved, increasing the range of destinations that can be reached directly by trains using the new infrastructure will improve the ability to reduce GJTs across the region.

Your valid points would carry a lot more weight if they weren't drowned out by a load of tilting at windmills that don't even exist!

 

[squizzler]

As a resident of Northamptonshire for over 20 years (albeit now moved to Derbyshire) I always found the through traffic on the A43 past Silverstone to be composed largely of lorries. Could you flesh out how these will be removed by your NAR (in any way that is different from the freight routeing and modal shift opportunities already to be provided by East West Rail)?

The EEH study is called 'Engilsh Economic Heartland Passenger Rail Study, so as you might imagine the report does not consider freight in the rail corridors. Nonetheless, it is possible to speculate that NAR would provide considerable benefits to railfreight.

The southern parts of MML and ECML are both congested, so a route between Oxford/Banbury and Peterborough would allow freight from London or Southampton to bypass these stretches (fed via WCML and South coast XC routes respectively) and join them at more northerly points than East-West rail would permit. The freight connection at Peterborough could be equipped with a grade separated link to the 'Joint line' through Lincolnshire allowing freight to hit the ECML even further north.

Daventry Intermodal Railfreight Terminal lies in the middle of this proposed corridor and has become a very desirable interchange. The proposed corridor would connect DIRFT to Felixtowe avoiding London (via Ely) and also Southampton docks (via Reading).

 

[A0wen]

That's what this Northern Arc is! It's a definition of a problem - E-W connectivity is poor across Northants

Except by and large it isn't. The A43 is dual carriageway from the M40 to the M1 - and isn't close to capacity - that's connectivity.

Northampton is linked by dual carriageway to Wellingborough and Rushden and there are regular buses along there - again it's connected.

Northampton to Kettering is more problematic.

And East to West across the county is the A14 - dual all the way.

Rail connectivity across Northants is poor I'll give you that - but so it is across Essex for example or Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire.

and the working out what the solutions are is to come in a less high-level report.

Except connectivity per se isn't the problem. So what is being attempted is a fig leaf to create solutions to problems that either don't exist or don't warrant fixing..

Instead you've over-obsessed about Banbury (which doesn't even get mentioned in the detailed description - it's just in the shorthand descriptions), made a big deal about it being one corridor about end-to-end journeys, and treated it as if it's fleshed out reopening proposal. It's an oval on a map and a promise to investigate further.

You make a big deal about EWR being able to provide the journeys. You know what? So does EEH in their longest of their 4 short paragraphs that give some detail about the Northern Arc (p83)!

Well OK, that's your view. It's worth noting that others such as The Planner have pointed out there's no capacity to run stuff up to Northampton for example.

The report probably ought not to have mentioned Banbury - but for some bizarre reason it touts it.

Your valid points would carry a lot more weight if they weren't drowned out by a load of tilting at windmills that don't even exist!

The point remains ideas such as those being touted are unrealistic and it would be better if they weren't even floated publicly.

 

[edwin_m]

It would really help me and no doubt thousands of others if there was a line from Luton to Milton Keynes.

I think that was considered as an option for EWR, at least from Bletchley, but discarded partly because of the difficulty of continuing eastwards to the ECML and Cambridge and because it was too far south to be the optimum Oxford-MK-Cambridge route. It looks relatively easy to diverge off the MML at Sundon (grade separation needed though) and follow the M1 to join the Bedford-Bletchley line at Ridgmont. It always struck me as a sensible section but obviously out of line with EWR's objectives - but perhaps something this Arc study ought to be considering?