Track laying for East West Rail between Bicester and Bletchley is now ‘99 per cent complete’, according to East West Rail Co (writes Sim Harris).
The route was already equipped with track between Bicester and Calvert Junction, but this has been relaid. The formation of the rest of the route between Calvert and Bletchley was intact but disused. As a result some rails and sleepers had disappeared, and were presumably stolen for their scrap value, while the flyover which carries the route over the West Coast Main Line at Bletchley has been been replaced, along with all the track between Bletchley and the junction with the Oxford line at Bicester.
But although moving forward, the project has also sustained some hard knocks.
Plans to electrify the route as part of the ‘Electric Spine’ of 2012 were dropped some years ago, although passive provision is being made for a future overhead when structures are built.
Meanwhile, the section of the former Great Central Main Line between Calvert and Aylesbury has been singled but still carried freight trains until 2021. The line north of Quainton Road has now been lifted and the connection at Calvert Junction has been removed from the current plans, meaning that Aylesbury will not gain its hoped-for connections with Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford and eventually Cambridge for the forseeable future.
The project’s value for money has also been questioned in a new report from the National Audit Office, which has concluded that it is ‘not yet clear’ how the benefits of the £6-7 billion scheme will be achieved, nor how it fits in with other government plans for growth in the region.
The Treasury has set up a cross-government board to support the development of a ‘shared vision for growth’ associated with the scheme. The NAO is recommending that the Department for Levelling Up Housing & Communities, the Department for Transport and the cross-government board should establish effective ‘cross-department governance’.
Head of the NAO Gareth Davies said: ‘The rationale for East West Rail rests on its wider strategic aims of increasing economic growth in the Oxford to Cambridge region.
‘To maximise the economic benefits from its investment in East West Rail, government must ensure stronger strategic alignment between departments and with wider local growth initiatives, so that there is a shared, coherent vision for the future of the region, and the contribution that the East West Rail project will make is clear.’