Northampton - Bedford - Hitchin opens up Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire & Essex to Birmingham and the northwest.
You've no chance of getting Bedford - Hitchin back, too much has developed over the trackbed south of Henlow, so you can forget that one.
And last time I checked, Herts had a direct link to Birmingham (Watford and Hemel to New St).
Essex does from Stansted Airport. And East Essex wouldn't benefit from this.
It allows Oxford, Milton Keynes & Northampton to the Leicester/Derby/Nottingham triangle. Milton Keynes is due for a huge expansion which is will make one of the most important urban centres in the UK yet the rail links to it are very poor. The line only closed in 1980 remember - it has strategic railfreight importance. Up until the end it had 20 trains a night to Didcot power station - via Bletchley & Bicester...but they were diverted via Birmingham which is now heavily congested. The East Midlands is described as the 'distribution capital of the UK' yet only has the one container terminal (DIRFT). Many of the Stobart, Malcolm & Russell containers to DIRFT end up at Magna Park, Lutterworth which is sandwiched in between the two closed Rugby - Leicester lines. The A5 is re-surfaced every 10 years because of the sheer volume of lorries (and the Lutterworth southern bypass was built to allow access to the M1).
Somebody else has pointed out Didcot's life is limited so that doesn't work.
And the Rugby - Leicester lines don't feature in any of the ideas, so you're simply adding more 'let's re-opens' to the list......
The A45 was re-numbered to the A14 east of Cambridge. From the M6 to Thrapston it was an all new road and then an upgraded A604. The A43 was not only widened through Silverstone but also to Northampton and with the A45 forms the Northampton bypass. The dual-carriageway on the A45 extends to only a few miles short of Thrapston. The A605 north of there was significantly upgraded to trunk route status (using the trackbed of the Peterborough line).
You've largely re-iterated my points, however you're wrong about the A43 dualling in Northampton - that pre-dates the dualling from the M1 to M40. I believe it was done to support the development of the Hunsbury area of Northampton.
The A605 is totally inadequate for the role it performs. It is single carriageway with few if any safe passing places and has a large number of slow vehicles which cause tailbacks. It could and should be improved to dual carriageway linking the A1M at Peterborough to Thrapston.
So how do you propose to get people out of their cars? In case you hadn't noticed, the DfT is spending £280 million + investing in the A14/M6 interchange - clearly connections to Birmingham, the northwest and the west in general to/from the east are important.
You are correct to say that east-west roads carry a huge mixture of different journeys and therefore is much difficult to transfer to rail than going to London. However, if we don't get the core links in, we can't develop the local feeder services and we'll be stuck as a car-loving nation. I take it A0wen that you drive? My rationale is simple - I want a transport network that is a viable alternative to using a car. At the moment we aren't even close.
I don't is the simple answer. Instead rail has a part to play in accommodating key passenger flows e.g. commuter traffic into London. Intercity traffic. And probably most importantly, freight.
Yes, I drive. But I have also used the train where it makes sense to my circumstances. And there are many circumstances where rail links, however good, are totally inappropriate to the journey I need to make.
No country, either same size or larger than the UK, in the world has a rail network which is a 'viable alternative to using a car'. Very small countries e.g. Switzerland may have, but their geography and population distribution is very different. Compare the UK to France, Sweden, Spain, Portugal or Italy to make meaningful comparisons.
When I went to the Long Marston open day in 2007, it take me 4.5hrs for a journey that is less than an hour in the car (which involves nearly all use of single carriageway roads many of which are country lanes and not direct).
How terrible - so the rail network should provide a direct link from Lutterworth to Long Marston (basically nowhere very important to nowhere very important) for the 1 day every couple of years you want to go on a day out?
That is precisely the kind of rail network which grew up in the period up to 1900. And a large number of lines were going out of business. Even Holman F Stephens struggled to make some work and that was with a far less stringent safety regime than you have today.
Your attitude demonstrates much of what is wrong with so many who commentate on these issues. A blind view which says people shouldn't use cars, so lets make a rail network to cover every single obscure journey viable regardless of the cost - both monetary and social - of such a crazy viewpoint.
Although a direct link to MK is a little difficult!
