Apologies if this has been discussed before, I had a look on the forum but couldn’t find anything.
With the rail track now, having been laid for the Oxford to Bletchley portion of East West rail, the service that will connect Cambridge, Bedford, Milton Keynes andd Oxford, I was wondering what Journey opportunities this opens up and whether the cancellation of the Manchester leg of HS2 will affect these possibilities.
And is there a possibility for open access operators to be involved, although none of the roots directly link to London, Milton Keynes has a linked to euston, and Oxford has links to marlybone and Paddington and Cambridge to Kings Cross, although that might be a bit of a stretch.
How about a direct service from Cardiff to London Marlebone, calling at Bristol, Temple Meads, Swindon, Reading and Oxford, to compete with GWR.
Well a man can dream.
This is a bit of a brain dump, addressing each section of EWR in turn
Oxford-Bletchley
The opening of phase 1 of HS2 will open up possibilities for EWR route extensions and interchange opportunities. With the WCML losing nearly all its long-distance traffic, the stopping pattern on the fast lines will change radically. There will be fewer trains on the fasts, but they will stop more often. I think Bletchley should get at least 4tph on the fasts and 2tph on the slows, making interchange there from EWR much more practical.
There will also be capacity for the Oxford - Milton Keynes trains to extend to Northampton, but I don't see they would go any further up the WCML than that. Oxford-Coventry is served by direct trains already, and Oxford-Nuneaton-Leicester should become practical after HS2 releases capacity for crossing moves at Coventry.
Aylesbury to MKC should work too, but this needs investment at Calvert. Is the demand there to justify this? If so, that's the first EWR extension that should be considered.
Bletchley-Bedford
They seem to have abandoned plans to upgrade the Marston Vale section of EWR. Without that investment, I don't see how EWR can carry long distance services beyond Bedford / Cambridge. And Oxford-Cambridge traffic will be forever hobbled by an inadequate Marston Vale section.
If there is scope for new infrastructure, then after upgrading the Marston Vale the one service extension that I think would work would be Oxford-Bedford-Kettering-Peterborough. If there is enough demand between Bedford and East Anglia to justify building a whole new railway between Beford and Cambridge, then there must be enough demand to build a short South to East chord at Manton Junction to enable direct services from Bedford to Peterborough. (And conversely, if there is not that demand, then it would be better not to build East-West at all, and just build a light rail network to allow Cambridge to grow.)
Bedford-Cambridge
If Bedford - Cambridge gets built, its main justification is as a commuter railway between dormitory towns like Cambourne and Tempsford to the booming biotechnology clusters around Cambridge. That requires 4tph service and frequent stops, which is not really compatible with long-distance extensions. I'd expect that Cambridge to Bristol is always likely to be faster via London than via Bedford.
Maybe there would be scope to extend EWR services through the centre of Cambridge out to Newmarket or Ely, to enable housing development in places like Fulbourn and Dullingham, but I don't see the scope to extend long-distance services from Oxford or beyond to places like Norwich or Ipswich.
To the West, there might be scope to extend EWR services to Didcot, for better connections, but going beyond that to Reading or Swindon would just eat capacity on the GWML.
Open Access
I don't see any scope at all for Open Access operators on EWR. Where's the demand going to come from? Sorry.