So they should have relocated the entire development to make it more convenient for interchange on a line that was about to be closed?
Milton Keynes Central didn't open until 1982. Bletchley was the main station until then. And centring the development around the existing station would have provided a stronger argument against closure. It would have been possible to provide services along an east-west axis through the centre as well as north-south.
Milton Keynes was something of a botch in terms of its connection to existing transport. Not just being built without a central station, but its link to J13 M1 and J13 itself have been rubbish from the start.
This in the UK, where the entire political process, which ultimately determines where the money for such schemes - the most important bit of the whole process - comes from is dominated by short-term thinking, which is why it has taken so long for the scheme's local backers to get Whitehall to pay attention.
That's before you get down to all the practical stuff that needs to happen on the ground, which has been outlined in copious detail, even if you don't want to hear it, or understand why you can't just click your fingers and a railway appears.
Yes, the deficiencies of the political process are part of what I'm complaining about.
And the "practical stuff which has been outlined in copious detail" is not "practical" at all and certainly does not need to happen. It happens because it suits the politicians to have the necessity for making any serious decision delayed until they'll have moved on to a different office, and at the same time support employment in the parasitic agencies which implement the delaying tactics. "Needs to happen" is stuff like assessing the deterioration of unmaintained structures to see what will need doing to them. And then doing it all over again because the original information is now out of date.
1. The track between Bicester-Claydon-Aylesbury Vale Parkway and Aylesbury-Princes Risborough isn't reusable.
2. The ballast along these sections is also spent and mostly unusable.
3. The track between Claydon-Bletchley doesn't exist in places.
Laying track and ballast is not hard. But even so, the longer it takes the more it deteriorates and the more needs to be done to sort it out.
4. The overbridges are mostly foul of electrical gauge.
That was never a problem originally. That only came up once it had dragged on long enough for someone to come along and throw a spanner in the works by adding a big extra thing which has to be done at the same time as all the other engineering work and needs all the existing assessments of overhead structures to be redone.
Solution to the MKC problem of being 'the centre of attention', enabling through services without reversal.
Utilise the Bradwell - Newport Pagnell line (currently a redway), but would require a major effort to reconnect to the slow lines on the WCML, then new-build alignment alongside the M1 motorway to rejoin the existing MVL at Ridgmont.
A lot of that route is obstructed at the ends, and it also does nothing to solve the similar reversal problem that exists at Bedford.
I prefer to come off the WCML north of Wolverton, and run along the outskirts of the current built-up area to Newport Pagnell, then up the Ouse valley to join the reopened Bedford-Northampton line to the west of Olney.
Like Bletchley E-N, this can be considered as a separate project from the main E-W and so does not need to act as a further cause of delay.
Confidently awaiting howls of protest, of course.
Whilst I agree almost entirely with what you (and several other learned correspondents) have posted in this thread there is some evidence that the lack of a direct service to MK has retarded passenger growth on the Marston Vale Line. It is cited as the main reason why people ( especially commuters) don't use the line in greater numbers. That and the poor reliability. I don't really mind changing trains but many do.
(The community rail group conducted a survey a few years ago but i cant find it now!)
PS Even after this work is complete and more trains are running between Beltchely and MK most of us on the Vale will be reliant on the hourly LM ( or other) service. It might say c.60 minutes MKC - Bedford on NRES but far too often it is X minutes via bus
I tried commuting on it once for a couple of weeks from Bedford to Wolverton when my car was off the road. It was, quite simply, bleeding useless.
To be at work by 8am I had to leave home at some hour so ungodly that my mind has rejected the horror of remembering it, get to work at 7:20 and hang around in the car park in the rain for 40 minutes waiting for the boss to get there with the key. The wait in the evening wasn't quite as bad but it still took the best part of 2 hours to get home. The infrequency of the service was part of the problem but the need to change at Bletchley pretty much doubled the problem.
This is a joke right? Do you have any grasp of geography or the layout of the site, the costs involved in changing the exiting infrastructure and/or fitting some mad cap scheme into the available footprint before you start buying up an entire business park and then knocking down half of Bletchley! Do you have any grasp of what is actually feasible and realistic in the real world? It is a bit harder than getting out your map and crayons, drawing a nice curve and shouting MAKE IT SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is something I have thought about every time I've been past the site because the need for through running between MK and MV is so cryingly obvious, see above. It does not require anything as hyperbolic as "knocking down half of Bletchley". It's not a difficult problem. It's a bridge. Like the one that already exists starting at the same point, only not so big. Bridges are not difficult. We've got sections of motorway that run on them for miles. Railways, too.
yes obviously a joke - no one in the real world can honestly suggest this surely?
A north-about loop from MK to Bedford? Certainly, I've had the same idea.
I think you are using a definition of "real world" which is entirely alien to me. The real world is defined by physics. The difficulties of building a bridge or a railway line are a function of engineering, which in turn is a branch of applied physics. They are not, in any of these cases, great. This is shown by the existence of a plethora of comparable structures which were nearly all built when the less advanced state of engineering made the difficulties a lot greater.
Difficulties caused by people being awkward are not "the real world". They are stuff people have made up. It is always possible to make up something different.
There are countries that work the way you want them to, Richieb1971 - China is one of them - and Iraq had a tendency that way. You did not find many NIMBIES in Sadam Hussein's Iraq, that's for sure.
Which if pretty ok if you were the top honcho, or someone very close, as , in that case nobody builds a 6-lane motorway that so much as impedes on your land, let alone your house. For the remaining 99.5% of society, however, if your house was in the way, tough luck. Complain and you'd be enormously lucky to only rot in jail for the rest of your life.
Democracy is not an easy way of life.
This has no relevance to the case of East West Rail. (The various suggestions above are not, of course, part of East West Rail.) We are not talking about building a brand-new 6-lane motorway. We are not talking about a brand-new anything. We are simply talking about
replacing the clapped-out track, ballast, bridges, signalling and so on, on a railway that ALREADY EXISTS.
This is not difficult. It is in fact very easy because the railway is currently disused. It is far more difficult to do it on a main line with trains running on it all the time, but that doesn't stop them doing it. It could, and should, have been done years ago; all that has been achieved by fiddling endlessly on is to allow the unmaintained structures to deteriorate so that things which once would have needed only repair or refurbishment now need to be completely replaced.
I'm a beggar so I can't be the chooser. I'm starting to blame the system now more than any party or individuals. To me, I envisage an end product and set out to accomplish the project. I don't see how railways differ from any other infrastructure from that standpoint.
I've been blaming the system all along
If you have a tick sheet and every box must be checked. The more boxes, the more failure points. The more failure points, the more likely it won't be completed. From what I have read above the tick sheet is far too long for a railway as it stands.
And the politicians love this. Politicians of both sides tend to see transport, and railways in particular, as more of a nuisance than anything else. Low on voter priorities for the most part, requires long-term thinking in a short-term environment, involves decisions which are pretty much guaranteed to ****
someone off, noisily, no matter what you decide, takes lots of money, and is perceived as being disadvantageous to your political career. So they just LOVE to be able to hide behind a mountain of statutory requirements and announce that they are holding another survey or inquiry or consultation because it looks like they're doing something and being all active and concerned, it doesn't cost as much as actually doing something, and with any luck by the time the consultation reports back they will have moved to a different department and it will be some other bugger's job to deal with it.
We have a system which selects for power people who
want power, and where the required skills for remaining in power include evading responsibility for anything likely to be seen as unpopular, being a weasel, toadying to those at the top, and leaving your brain outside and voting just as the leader tells you to. And also, it seems, it helps to be part of a
crony network who help each other to power and keep each other in line by holding the dirt on them about hilariously disgusting activities involving dead pigs, which while wonderfully funny doesn't involve any actual harm to anyone, but also rape and death in suspicious circumstances, which is a different matter entirely.
It's not just at the sharp end that it's rotten, it's rotten right the way through.
