The proposed line (essentially new build) from Bedford to Cambridge would be very expensive to build and most (but not all) longer-distance flows (passenger and freight) can be catered for by other routes. The previous alignment has been essentially destroyed. Therefore reinstatement is unlikely ever to happen, however useful the line might have been now if it had not been closed. Closure was a BR decision, ratified by the Wilson government, not one recommended in the Beeching report.
You don't say. I think most people are well aware of how we arrived at the present situation.
That recreating a rail link between Bedford and Cambridge is going to be expensive and far from straightforward due to subsequent development is hardly a revelation.
What 'other routes'? The freight TOCs would dearly love to have another alternative to going via North London on top of the Nuneaton option - and people planning passenger services in London would also be delighted to get as many container trains as possible off their patches - the instant any more container services go via Ely they will be bidding to take over the paths - or more container trains from the Isle of Grain will fill them.
If you think anyone living west of London look with any pleasure on the idea of changing stations in London and taking the Tube to get to East Anglia - or people doing the reverse - you have got to be joking. Crossrail will certainly improve matters but it still doesn't avoid the changes of stations and trains, which a direct Bristol-Norwich service would.
And in case are you're not aware, the original drive to create the East West consortium came not from Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire or even Cambridgeshire, but Suffolk - where they clearly don't share your faith in 'other' - and slower - routes - aka via London.
But clearly they should just give up now, as it's going to be too hard and too expensive. I suppose they could always build a motorway instead, as the east-west road links in much of the Oxford-Cambridge arc are rubbish as well - which is one of the key factors driving the rail project.
Improving the route from Ipswich to Ely would enable the significant freight flows from Felixstowe to the West Midlands and NW England to take this route instead of travelling via the North London line. It obviates any justification from a freight perspective for rebuilding the Cambridge-Bedford line or improving the single track line via Newmarket,
I see, so even though the East West route would make it far easier to run Cardiff/Bristol-Felixstowe/Harwich container trains, to take one example, there just won't be any. What traffic runs now is no guide to what might be on offer 15 or 20 years from now if the capacity to handle it is there.
And where do you suggest trains to and from Felixstowe should go when, as will inevitably happen, engineering work blocks the Nuneaton option somewhere, some time, but the likes of Maersk still want the container trains to run when their ship docks? Oh yes, that's right, the quiet backwaters of North London...