We went to the drop in in Bletchley this afternoon. The only plans and explanation boards were about the new depot and the new eastern entrance to Bletchley station - ie they were only talking about things related to Bletchley not the wider issues and area. Someone did say that they were still planning bridges at Woburn Sands and Bow Brickhill level crossings but that (3rd party?) funding had to be found for them.
I was there too today, and can add a little detail
At Woburn Sands, they will deliver a NMT footbridge, but the adjacent Woodleys Farm vehicle crossing will be delivered as part of a housing development, although EWR may complete the link up to a junction with Newport Rd.
At Bow Brickhill, EWR will deliver the vehicle overbridge with Redways either side from their project budget and the crossing will be closed
Fenny Stratford will also be closed, with a short NMT diversion via the Canal towpath to allow cyclist and peds to continue up Simpson Rd. Vehicle diversion route is still under discussion.
Pony's crossing will be retained as a NMT crossing.
There's a MVL drop in next month where the LCs will be covered.
I asked about the chaos the recent Saxon Street closure had caused and was told that they appreciated that any works in the future would need wider consultation and mitigation measures.
To be fair to EWR, the chaos wasn't their fault. The diversion route for buses incurred 15-20 minute delays, so Arriva ops decided to change the service pattern and run a shuttle to and from Fenny on Watling St to try to maintain service continuity......but didn't bother to tell anyone, so the PIDs were still showing the superceded service pattern at the bus stops in Bletchley. The shuttle bus drivers had to convince people to get on their buses......
There will be a working group established between bus operators and the Council to make sure things work better for the longer closure starting in October.
The new proposed station entrance - which they are keen on 3rd party funding being found for - is closer to the road bridge than I had realised. It depends on the roundabout being changed to a junction and Saxon Street ceasing to be dual carriageway along there. How on earth they expect all the traffic that uses the Buckingham Road and Saxon Street currently to get to and from both sides of the line to magically use another route - what route? - will be interesting to see. It also appears that the western station entrance will also be moved slightly and altered.
The new entrance designs look great with a nice airy looking concourse on Saxon St with retail opportunities, opening out onto a nice area of public realm, created by the singling of Saxon St....which works perfectly well in the traffic models incidentally. Buckingham Rd is already reduced to a single lane under the railway bridge anyway to accommodate the Redways there, so the traffic constraint is already there, and the removal of two lanes round the corner doesn't really make any difference. The problems last week were due to the closure of the V7 link further north of Princess Way.
There's a new station overbridge linking to the new entrance with provides for the circulating and vertical capacity to the platforms, located to the south of the existing overbridge (which is to be retained) and an enlarged Western ticket hall appears to occupy the site of the existing WMT offices and car park. So the station slides south about 50m or so. Overall, I was impressed.....except that EWR aren't going to pay for all of it, and are looking for NR/DfT and MKCC to match fund. Cost is about £13m ATM, although there is still optimism bias included, so it may reduce a bit.
I then asked why they'd gone for the location for the new TMD being out towards Swanbourne rather than using the existing train maintenance depot at Wolverton just up the WCML. The chap I spoke to agreed that Wolverton would have been a good plan but said that there is no capacity on the WCML to allow for the required train movements. I replied that HS2 was supposed to free up capacity on the WCML!
I asked the same question, and also asked about whether an enlargement of the existing Bletchley TMD had been considered and received much the same answer! They claim to have looked at 36 different TMD options......although there were only 6 in the technical document.
They seemed keen that we knew that the proposed trains would be battery units - has the new site been chosen I wonder as there's surrounding land for lots of solar panels to help with the energy needs?
I heard them say this too, and that's been the line for a while. I'm wondering if they were stressing that today to try to address resident concerns about noise. However, there's a freight loop proposed on the south side opposite the depot site that they were less keen to mention, as there will be stationary freight trains pulling off up a 1:80, and that's where the noise will be generated.....and one end of the loop is quite close to the Poets Estate.
I also had a chat with one of the EWR bods who admitted the NE chord at Bletchley is a no brainer from a strategic perspective, but it is not within their current scope as they are "focussed on delivering a passenger railway".....although he also admitted they'd done some preliminary work on this.
Seems rather a blinkered approach for a bit of national rail infrastructure to me, but the battle isn't lost on that yet.
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