Personally I am not that bothered how the line gets to Cambridge. I am bothered about the Oxford - Blethcley - Bedford bit getting built.
Now, if we could get a direct Fenny Stratford - MK service out of this i would be a happy man!
fenny stratford would close for sure, but you would get a nice new station for milton keynes stadium right by the tescos.
it would not be difficult to do compulsary purchase on that land.most of it is dereclict industrial estate..about 15% capacity is actually in use...so would not be a problem to give companies in residence a little incentive to relocate a couple of hundred metres and it would tidy the whole area up a lot.
as for getting to cambridge...I am most certainly interested on how quick I could chop and change trains to get from one mainline IC hub to another.I want to get from a to b with the minimum of fuss.
with a direct fast line from bedford midland to cambridge with 4 or 5 stops in between should take about 30mins....way faster than acar via A428..but if I have to stop in between for a change that connection time improvement will be lost considerably/totally.
it's still an improvement on the 2 hours it would take via london or st albans/hatfield on the plusbus, but it needs optimisation badly.
the A428 is a bit of a lottery as there's a bit of single carriageway road where you'll always get stuck behind a lorry doing 40mph the whole way...and it's chaos at rush hour.
don't even bother trying bedford midland to cambridge stations by bus either. at both ends you have about a 15 minute walk to the respective bus stations as the connecting service does not stop at either rail station...so best case is that's just under 2 hours as well pojnt to point.
considering it's only 30 miles that's an average speed of 15mph,which is quite pathetic.