East-West Rail (EWR): Consultation updates [not speculation]

[weeklycommuter]

Rumours that opening may be 6 months away. Training runs starting from Oxford last week using turbos. A bid to run Nottingham to Bristol services has seen widespread opposition. Propsed to start next year just as Marston Line has engineering work. Objections on ability of Midland ml, Oxford station and GWMl to cope. EWRCO say problems finding paths for a third service already. Fenny Stratford bridge ned=eds replacing. Bletchly HL only takes 4 coaches.

Sorry, your post raises a lot of questions, if you could answer some of them I'd really appreciate it, but no worries if you can't, for whatever reason.
How is this relevant to EWR? Wouldn't these be instead of, or at least similar to Cardiff-Nottingham XC services?
Also, who is making this bid, and who is opposed to it?
Why would this matter? The initial EWR service doesn't go that way anyway.
To cope with what? EWR's initial Oxford-Bletchley-MKC service, or the service of some later phase? And also, cope in what way?
Where are these alleged paths issues? On Bletchley-MKC? Oxford station? Oxford-Bicester? On finding a third path that fits on all of those?
AIUI, the aim was for 2tph Oxford-MKC, 2tph Oxford-Cambridge + 2tph Stewartby-Cambridge, so is this paths issue going to be an issue long-term?
Presumably, that will be dealt with as part of the plans for Bletchley-Bedford section, if not before?
Could they not use SDO or extend the platform, if more than 4 coaches becomes necessary?

This is the application from Midland Central and Western Railway (MCWR) for open access services Nottingham to Bristol via Bedford, the Marston Vale Line, Bletchley High Level Station and the reopened Bletchley to Oxford railway. Also the link to the document with the industry consultation responses: Transport Focus and London Travelwatch are happy but East West Rail strongly objects and other passenger and freight train operators using parts of the proposed route also have concerns. The Office of Rail and Road has not yet made a decision on this application.

https://www.orr.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-06/mcwr-s17-application-form-p.pdf

This application is for a 7-year operation of 8 Open Access Nottingham to Bristol services in each direction on Monday to Saturdays and 6 on Sundays, using the available and new East West Rail network capacity and Class 222 rolling stock (including first and standard class accommodation).
The train services shall call at Nottingham – East Midlands Parkway - Loughborough – Leicester - Kettering - Market Harborough - Bedford – Stewartby – Bletchley HL - Bicester Village - Oxford Parkway - Oxford - Swindon – Chippenham - Bath Spa - Bristol Temple Meads, and prospective new stations on the Marston Vale Line and at Wantage & Grove (Oxon) and Corsham (Wilts).
This will unlock wholly new direct ‘cross-country’ connectivity between the fast-growing communities of the East Midlands, Oxford-Cambridge Arc, Thames Valley and Bristol/West of England, and support several new stations, all swiftly expanding upon the new East West rail route’s capability and supporting the government’s fresh investment in the ‘Oxford Cambridge Growth Corridor' announced by Rachel Reeves MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer on 29th January 2025.

https://www.orr.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-07/mcwr-industry-consultation-responses.pdf

East West Railway Company and the Programme could not support and would strongly object to this proposal at this time.

 

[JamesT]

They have only just started driver training? Wow.

That’s not what has been reported previously, from April https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2025/04/25-east-west-rail-opening-delayed.html

A spokesman for the EWR Co said: ‘The East West Rail Alliance which built and delivered the new infrastructure between Bicester and Bletchley handed the line over to Network Rail on time and on budget. Now Chiltern has been officially appointed as their operator, their driving training programme is now in full swing.

Also on the countdown thread post 179 it was reported driver training on 196s started in January.

 

[fishwomp]

This is the application from Midland Central and Western Railway (MCWR) for open access services Nottingham to Bristol via Bedford, the Marston Vale Line, Bletchley High Level Station and the reopened Bletchley to Oxford railway. Also the link to the document with the industry consultation responses: Transport Focus and London Travelwatch are happy but East West Rail strongly objects and other passenger and freight train operators using parts of the proposed route also have concerns. The Office of Rail and Road has not yet made a decision on this application.

Shame they couldn't have just done Milton Keynes to Oxford - it seems that the government sponsored organizations are finding this very hard indeed.

 

[DavidGrain]

The Turbos are used for route learning. Traction learning has been done on the 196s.
This raises the question Has anyone seen the 196s recently? Where are they? They are supposed to be in Chiltern livery for the start of service.

 

[BlueLeanie]

How quickly could an Open Access or Charter operator start an Oxford-MK non-stop operation for the October break?

If the Government isn't up for using it for ordinary passenger services, why shouldn't someone.with a commercial interest make a bit of cash?

Steam Hauled from Oxford to MK, diesel dragged back?

Potential for 5 round trips a day? If you got hold of either of the Harry Potter locos to haul it would be a licence to print money with Oxford tourism.

 

[PLY2AYS]

The Turbos are used for route learning. Traction learning has been done on the 196s.
This raises the question Has anyone seen the 196s recently? Where are they? They are supposed to be in Chiltern livery for the start of service.

Last saw a set parked up in Oxford Station sidings about a month ago, still in West Mids livery.

They have only just started driver training? Wow.

No, although I completely understand why you’d think that, given the seemingly stagnant (lack of) progress.
I’m fairly certain that a lot of drivers sign the route and the traction at Bletchley now.
It’s only new drivers, recruited off the street (yet to pass out) who are doing full time training.

 

[Cowley]

Just a reminder that this thread is purely for discussing the consultation process please.

Thank you

 

[E6007]

Could somebody provide the link to the thread for bringing the Bicester - Bletchley section in to public service please?

 

[fishwomp]

Could somebody provide the link to the thread for bringing the Bicester - Bletchley section in to public service please?

East-West Rail (EWR) countdown to entry into service

Railway Touring Company advertising two steam charters over the new stretch - on 25th October and 1st November. Maybe we need the media to use the story that we can operate Steam between Oxford and Bletchley but not the 'new trains' sat in Tyseley :)

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[DavidGrain]

Could somebody provide the link to the thread for bringing the Bicester - Bletchley section in to public service please?

This will take you to a recent post. You can back track from there.

East-West Rail (EWR) countdown to entry into service

Railway Touring Company advertising two steam charters over the new stretch - on 25th October and 1st November. Maybe we need the media to use the story that we can operate Steam between Oxford and Bletchley but not the 'new trains' sat in Tyseley :)

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[absolutelymilk]

£700m East West Rail tender race set to hit the tracks | Construction Enquirer News https://share.google/cbR5Jc3xq2kwGusJn

The eight-year Programme Support Works Framework will bring together multiple suppliers across five lots from archaeology and ground investigation to principal contractor/minor civils. It is due out to tender in April 2026.

 

[cle]

Is that for early works for Bedford-Cambridge, or for the Marston and Bedford works? It feels like the latter is more pressing, especially if the third TPH is still planned for 2030 (Bedford-Oxford) - - - and if that starts before things like the station consolidation etc works?

 

[InTheEastMids]

Is that for early works for Bedford-Cambridge, or for the Marston and Bedford works? It feels like the latter is more pressing, especially if the third TPH is still planned for 2030 (Bedford-Oxford) - - - and if that starts before things like the station consolidation etc works?

There's no geographic information, and EWR are giving themselves room to extend it until 2035.

By extending until 2035, a lot of these services which appear to relate to pre-construction / enabling works should be complete for both Phases. The services are

1. Archaeology & Heritage
2. Ground Investigations & Monitoring
3. Environmental & Ecological Works
4. Principal Contractor / Minor Civils
5. Utilities & Services

By not including any geography/phase info, it may mean the there is flexibility to ask suppliers to deliver the works anywhere within the overall remit of EWR.

This may include Oxford-Bletchley, were somebody to decide that these services needed to be delivered on/adjacent to the existing line. EWR might, in the ~10 year life of the framework, be asked to deliver things that are currently outside the scope of the organisation (we can dream, can't we?).

 

[Bald Rick]

Whilst I don’t know, £700m is a lot of cash for prelims, and is in the right order of magnitude for the whole job.

 

[Class 170101]

Whilst I don’t know, £700m is a lot of cash for prelims, and is in the right order of magnitude for the whole job.

Even with construction inflation being what is? Say many on this board.

 

[Bald Rick]

Even with construction inflation being what is? Say many on this board.

Sorry, when i say “whole job”, I mean only the prelims, but for the whole line to Cambridge.

The whole job will be 10 x that I guess.

 

[andyjhatton]

Sorry, when i say “whole job”, I mean only the prelims, but for the whole line to Cambridge.

The whole job will be 10 x that I guess.

£7bn would be unaffordable; and not justified.
They may as well all just go home now.

 

[PLY2AYS]

£7bn would be unaffordable; and not justified.
They may as well all just go home now.

Bicester to Bletchley costed at £1.084bn itself (including the reintroduction of the Aylesbury spur)

What makes you think that £7bn is unaffordable or unjustified? I think that’s a pretty reasonable quote.

 

[weeklycommuter]

£7bn would be unaffordable; and not justified.
They may as well all just go home now.

This Government is proposing the build the Lower Thames Crossing whose costs are ten billion pounds upwards and increasing all the time so the Government can clearly fund East West Rail all the way from Oxford to Cambridge. If the Government were to cancel the Lower Thames Crossing, the money saved would fully fund East West Rail with several billion pounds to spare for other rail projects. The benefits of rebuilding an Oxford to Cambridge railway will repay the cost of building it many times.

The Government has again and again in budget after budget committed to building East West Rail all the way from Oxford to Cambridge so I expect it will be done.

 

[Nottingham59]

If the Government were to cancel the Lower Thames Crossing, the money saved would fully fund East West Rail with several billion pounds to spare for other rail projects. The benefits of rebuilding an Oxford to Cambridge railway will repay the cost of building it many times.

The transport benefits of the Lower Thames Crossing are vastly greater than any benefits from an Oxford to Cambridge railway.

 

[JamesT]

This Government are proposing the build the Lower Thames Crossing whose costs are ten billion pounds upwards and increasing all the time so the Government can clearly fund East West Rail all the way from Oxford to Cambridge. If the Government were to cancel the Lower Thames Crossing, the money saved would fully fund East West Rail with several billion pounds to spare for other rail projects. The benefits of rebuilding an Oxford to Cambridge railway will repay the cost of building it many times.

The NAO found that EWR had a BCR below 1, so it wouldn’t repay the cost. Whereas the Lower Thames Crossing has been forecast to bring in £40bn of benefits for the £9bn cost.

 

[slowroad]

The NAO found that EWR had a BCR below 1, so it wouldn’t repay the cost. Whereas the Lower Thames Crossing has been forecast to bring in £40bn of benefits for the £9bn cost.

Less sophisticated, and apples and pears, but E-W rail may carry around 2,000 passengers per hour on busier sections. The LTC may carry around ten times this number of vehicles (including lots HGVs). Gives an impression of relative benefits….

 

[weeklycommuter]

I just seen the following online news report from Rail magazine that there will no longer be a planned statutory consultation for the Bedford to Cambridge part of East West Rail with the necessary authorisation instead being provided by the Planning and Infrastructure Bill now before Parliament.

East West Rail Bedford-Cambridge consultation plans revised

Plans for statutory consultation for the line east of Bedford are being shelved.

www.railmagazine.com

East West Rail Bedford-Cambridge consultation plans revised
By Phil Haigh
27 October 2025

East West Rail no longer expects to undertake its planned statutory consultation into building a new rail line eastwards from Bedford to Cambridge, with the change driven by the Planning and Infrastructure Bill now before Parliament.

 

[zwk500]

The NAO found that EWR had a BCR below 1, so it wouldn’t repay the cost.

which bit(s) of EWR were being assessed in that?

 

[Magdalia]

£7bn would be unaffordable; and not justified.
They may as well all just go home now.

This morning the main news is a rumour that the Office for Budget Responsibility is going to downgrade their forecast of productivity growth:

Reeves could face £20bn Budget hole as UK productivity downgraded

The OBR is understood to have downgraded the UK's productivity level in early Budget forecasts

www.bbc.co.uk

The government is facing a bigger-than-expected hole in the public finances as it prepares for next month's Budget.

A downgrade to the UK's productivity performance from the government's official forecaster could lead to the chancellor facing a £20bn gap in meeting her tax and spending rules, the BBC understands.

The two places in the UK best placed to deliver lots of high productivity growth are Oxford and Cambridge. In order to improve UK productivity it is essential for Oxford and Cambridge to grow and not be affected by constraints limiting that growth. One of those is transport infrastructure. The UK can't afford not to build East West Rail.

£7 billion is not a huge sum for a project of this size. The works required at Bedford and Cambridge alone are going to cost a lot, noting that Cambridge South has cost about £200 million. I'd suspect that the works in and around Cambridge on their own will come to somewhere near £1 billion.

Comparing with roads, the Black Cat-Caxton Gibbet project is costing about £1 billion for 10 miles of new road.

£2.5 billion of the £7 billion is already committed in the spending review announced in the summer.

The NAO found that EWR had a BCR below 1, so it wouldn’t repay the cost.

BCRs are spectacularly useless at measuring the costs and benefits for projects with long lives, and a railway will last for hundreds of years. BCRs depend hugely on various economic assumptions, and being able to identify all of the possible benefits. For example, the estimated BCRs for East West Rail won't have included any benefits for the Universal Theme Park near Bedford. Recent economic shocks such as Covid, the Ukraine war and USA tariffs show how easy it is to forecast the economic future.

Less sophisticated, and apples and pears, but E-W rail may carry around 2,000 passengers per hour on busier sections. The LTC may carry around ten times this number of vehicles (including lots HGVs). Gives an impression of relative benefits….

Actually it doesn't, because you are comparing apples and pears. A commuter going to a high wage high productivity job in Oxford or Cambridge contributes far more to UK value added than a truckload of imported goods coming through the Thames tunnel, which mainly benefits the economy of the exporting country.

It is also essential to recognise that East West Rail is not a standalone project, it part of a bigger picture which is the economic development of the Oxford-Cambridge corridor. That also includes, for example, the Chatteris and Abingdon reservoirs, and New Town development at Tempsford, Heyford and Milton Keynes. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.

 

[FMerrymon]

The NAO found that EWR had a BCR below 1, so it wouldn’t repay the cost. Whereas the Lower Thames Crossing has been forecast to bring in £40bn of benefits for the £9bn cost.

BCR usually only accounts for the transport benefits and even the wider economic impacts are under calculated. It also doesnt value the counter factual of doing nothing. For Lower Thames Crossing, the BCR is 0.48 and 1.22 with wider economic impacts. The £40bn figure is not using the standard framework and taking into account additional benefits to the freight industry etc, which are difficult to calculate.

EWR Bedford-Cambridge is £5billion (in 2021 prices) - for 31-36 miles of new track. The BCR is 0.4, but the strategic objective, the more important part of a dft business case, is being the backbone of the oxcam arc, or whatever we call it today. That has considerable value to the economy and therefore the 0.4 bcr is a substantial underestimation of the value of the investment.

 

[slowroad]

This morning the main news is a rumour that the Office for Budget Responsibility is going to downgrade their forecast of productivity growth:

Reeves could face £20bn Budget hole as UK productivity downgraded

The OBR is understood to have downgraded the UK's productivity level in early Budget forecasts

www.bbc.co.uk

The two places in the UK best placed to deliver lots of high productivity growth are Oxford and Cambridge. In order to improve UK productivity it is essential for Oxford and Cambridge to grow and not be affected by constraints limiting that growth. One of those is transport infrastructure. The UK can't afford not to build East West Rail.

£7 billion is not a huge sum for a project of this size. The works required at Bedford and Cambridge alone are going to cost a lot, noting that Cambridge South has cost about £200 million. I'd suspect that the works in and around Cambridge on their own will come to somewhere near £1 billion.

Comparing with roads, the Black Cat-Caxton Gibbet project is costing about £1 billion for 10 miles of new road.

£2.5 billion of the £7 billion is already committed in the spending review announced in the summer.


BCRs are spectacularly useless at measuring the costs and benefits for projects with long lives, and a railway will last for hundreds of years. BCRs depend hugely on various economic assumptions, and being able to identify all of the possible benefits. For example, the estimated BCRs for East West Rail won't have included any benefits for the Universal Theme Park near Bedford. Recent economic shocks such as Covid, the Ukraine war and USA tariffs show how easy it is to forecast the economic future.


Actually it doesn't, because you are comparing apples and pears. A commuter going to a high wage high productivity job in Oxford or Cambridge contributes far more to UK value added than a truckload of imported goods coming through the Thames tunnel, which mainly benefits the economy of the exporting country.

It is also essential to recognise that East West Rail is not a standalone project, it part of a bigger picture which is the economic development of the Oxford-Cambridge corridor. That also includes, for example, the Chatteris and Abingdon reservoirs, and New Town development at Tempsford, Heyford and Milton Keynes. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.

It is economically illiterate to assert that imports mainly benefit the exporting country. In any case, the road goes both ways. Business travel and commuting is likely to be a small fraction of the - comparatively- small volume of passengers on E-W rail.

BCRs are incomplete and imperfect. But they are a building block - if you can’t get a decent BCRs as a starting point, you may as well go home.

 

[hwl]

The NAO found that EWR had a BCR below 1, so it wouldn’t repay the cost. Whereas the Lower Thames Crossing has been forecast to bring in £40bn of benefits for the £9bn cost.

And there is the revenue from tolling, the detail on pricing structure is still TBC but it will be tolled and probably match Dartford. Revenue from Tolling will being the net cost down (The C in BCR is net cost)

 

[JamesT]

BCR usually only accounts for the transport benefits and even the wider economic impacts are under calculated. It also doesnt value the counter factual of doing nothing. For Lower Thames Crossing, the BCR is 0.48 and 1.22 with wider economic impacts. The £40bn figure is not using the standard framework and taking into account additional benefits to the freight industry etc, which are difficult to calculate.

EWR Bedford-Cambridge is £5billion (in 2021 prices) - for 31-36 miles of new track. The BCR is 0.4, but the strategic objective, the more important part of a dft business case, is being the backbone of the oxcam arc, or whatever we call it today. That has considerable value to the economy and therefore the 0.4 bcr is a substantial underestimation of the value of the investment.

From the NAO report https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/investigation-into-the-east-west-rail-project.pdf

2.9 In May 2023, the Economic and Technical Report published by EWR
Co provided revised economic figures following completion of its Affordable
Connections Project. Prior to this work, the estimated cost of completing connection
stages 2 and 3 was between £5.9 billion and £6.3 billion. EWR Co now estimates
that the revised costs for connection states 2 and 3 are between £4.5 billion and
£5.3 billion, in addition to the £1.2 billion cost of connection stage 1.
2.10 In the Economic and Technical Report, EWR Co provided updated benefit–cost
ratio figures for the parts of the project not yet under construction, connection
stages 2 and 3. It calculated revised benefit–cost ratio figures under high-growth
assumptions, giving a benefit–cost ratio of 0.3. It recalculated the benefit–cost
ratio to include wider economic impacts around changes in land use, such as
redesignating land to be used for housing, resulting in the benefit–cost ratio rising
to 0.6.

So if we take the wider economic impacts as apples to apples, then the Thames Crossing is twice as beneficial as EWR. More importantly, it's more than 1.
I agree BCRs are imperfect, but what else does one use as a starting point to determine how to allocate resources?

 

[FMerrymon]

what else does one use as a starting point to determine how to allocate resources?

The strategic case. As pointed out by Magdalia, its all about the oxford-cambridge corridor and developing that and the wider economic impacts of that are not included in the bcr.