The railway with no station (From Bucks Free Press)

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The railway with no station

2:37pm Thursday 11th March 2010

By Oliver Newbury »

It’s been in the pipeline for years. Now finally the government has announced the route it thinks the new high speed railway between London and Birmingham, and eventually further north, should take.

It’s inevitable that this route will run through the Chilterns. The Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty guards London from the north-west and so as a result all existing London-Birmingham routes also run through them.

In principle I am in favour of high speed rail, and I think this project is a fantastic scheme. I’m not going to introduce those terms ‘environmentally friendly’ or ‘carbon emissions’ because they’re not the main reasons I support this railway. The biggest reasons are convenience and capacity. Network Rail’s estimates suggest that the West Coast main line will be full to capacity by 2025, and the Chiltern main line’s upgrades will help relieve some congestion but in the long-term, unless that route is quadrupled, little relief will occur in the future.

As I said almost any route will have to go through the Chilterns. The finalised route proposed today would mean new track from London Euston through west London to interchange with Crossrail, then up the old Great Western Railway’s lines to West Ruislip, on what is now the Chiltern Main Line. From there the new line would enter Buckinghamshire on a 2.5 mile long viaduct over the Grand Union Canal and River Colne. Then a tunnel would take the route to Amersham where the new railway would run alongside the old Metropolitan Railway north-west. After by-passing Aylesbury, the route would make use of the old Great Central main line, which until 1966 provided connections from Aylesbury to Manchester and Sheffield. Near Brackley, the line would enter Northamptonshire.

The only “new” alignments needed in Bucks would be the viaduct connecting the two main lines of south-mid Buckinghamshire, and the bypass of Aylesbury. Other sections in the county would run alongside existing railway tracks.

What about stations? The plan includes only very few stations: two in London and the rest in Midlands and the north. None will be provided in Buckinghamshire. And that’s something that really bugs me. The people of Kent were appeased with high speed stations near Dartford and in Ashford. So why not us? Looking at the map above I was thinking Aylesbury would be a good location for a high speed station. It’s roughly a third of the way along the route and could become a hub for connecting bus and rail services.

Then what about funding and construction? Sadly 2017 is the earliest any work could start. Crossrail is the government’s main priority at the moment, and that’s costing £16 billion. But that project would just improve London and a few outlying towns. As it is the new Crossrail line would call at two Buckinghamshire stations, but only to provide services to central London and Essex. It is my view that any high speed route should take priority and be built before Crossrail, as HS2 is a national project and Crossrail is a London one.

So yes, I am in support of this high speed railway. I too love the countryside and wish it to be preserved as far as is practical, but there has to be exceptions, and for the sake of two running tracks I feel that exception is justified, as long as a station is provided for the residents of Buckinghamshire, and all possible effort is taken to minimise impact on the AONB, as was done in Kent for HS1.

This is a subject of polarising debate, and I welcome your comments.

XI © MMX

Comments(12)

demoness says...
3:56pm Thu 11 Mar 10

NO
The area will not benefit.
The only people that will benefit are the greedy fat cats who thought it up.
How the hell you can even try and justify this amazes me Ollie.

Let me tell you something - this planet does NOT belong to us.
We share it with a lot of other creatures .
So to you it is fine to rip up trees, destroy habitats, kill animals birds and insects all to knock a few miles off a journey time.

I am sickened by this - truly sickened.