I do feel they should have at least evaluated relocating the northern Guided Busway to return the alignment to Bar Hill back to rail use. Couldn't spot it if it was there, though.
This was looked at, but ruled out because it trashes a significant portion of the bus network between Cambridge and Huntingdon.
The southern approach means that it’s not necessary to do that in any event.
Why would through services from the south be possible, but through services from the north not be? Is this a poorly opaquely worded statement due to the lack of either terminal capacity at the new Cambridge South or capacity on the WAML down to somewhere else with terminal capacity?
As
@zwk500 says:
Because of a lack of suitable places to terminate the trains south of Cambridge. Cambridge South itself won't be able to reverse trains without a severe impact on the throughput, so you'd need to run them through to either Royston (no bay platform) (or Maybe Letchworth, quite far away) or Stanstead Airport (single lines and platform occupancy). Whereas trains approaching from the South can run to Cambridge North, Ely or King's Lynn which although tight do have more scope for intervention as well as generally more capacity available.
You would also have to expand capacity on the West Anglia Mainline south of Cambridge to run services through, negating much of the cost and constructability advantage.
The most unexpected part of the report is the Tempsford Variant, which isn't as good for the immediate productivity benefit as a station near St Neots, though on a longer view the Tempsford proposal does have merit.
This is very much a ‘long term sustainability and quality of development’ decision.
That being said, the St Neots South station location wasn’t all that much better in terms of immediate benefits because it’s still a fair way from the town centre and on the ’wrong’ side of the river.
even though the indicative service shows no through trains.
The MVL service pattern isn’t confirmed. There’s a high likelihood that all 3FP on the MVL will run through to Cambridge and, potentially, it might be a consistent stopping pattern for all three i.e. all three call at largest settlements with the remaining stations going parliamentary or getting a bus instead.
However, I feel that the report has missed some opportunities. The totems for opposition to EWR, the Bedford Poets Estate
The opportunity has been taken to grasp the nettle: houses are going to be demolished.
the Great Wall of Cambridgeshire
This is going to be looked at again as part of the next phase of detailed design, but ultimately if the railway is going to be built then there will be some inevitable impacts.
And the report could have been stronger on local benefits, notably reducing congestion and transport links to/from the hospitals on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
You won’t believe some of the internal arguments about this, but things ended up where they did. There was a large contingent in the company which wanted to say even less!
Line speed on the Marston Vale is 60mph. It's ridiculous that line speed will not be raised (if this report is to be believed) to match the 100mph capability elsewhere. Surely this will also affect the original projected journey times on EWR?
The service pattern needs to be confirmed first. The timetable modelling indicated that trains wouldn’t really get up to this line speed due to the intermediate station calls which then calls into question whether a 100mph uplift is actually value for money.
And if a lower maximum line speed reduces the scope of works, costs and severance (level crossing closures and so on) then that has to be factored in as well.
Presumably Cambridge South could be reconfigured easily enough for terminal use, though? Build a central turnback south of the station in alignment with the central island platform and the planned arrangement of running lines works fine as platform occupancy is only marginally worse than what is currently planned. Make the turnback passenger-grade and you won't even have to take the time to tip passengers out?
It’s not that simple because you would have to expand capacity between Cambridge and Cambridge South to run anything more than a token service each hour. That increases the costs significantly, but is already being done on the selected southern approach.
What I don't see is a fast Ox-Cambs service calling at Cambs South, Bedford, Bletchley and Oxford
There isn’t one.
Can the line take another 2 tph calling Cambs South, Bedford, Bletchley and Oxford?
In theory, yes, but that wouldn’t align with the strategic and economic case for the scheme which is about joining up the shorter intermediate flows as well i.e. EWR only makes sense if you call at Cambourne, MVL settlements and so on to join them to the bigger population and employment centres.
), but I can appreciate why they wouldn't want to lump anything like that that into this project.
