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For those of you unfamiliar with how much Haverhill has expanded I’ve attached a ‘side by side’ screenshot of a 1930s map and a present day satellite view.View attachment 197321
I'll never forget finding out that Haverhill had around 6000 people when the railway closed in 1967, now it's over 27000. A very similar size to Sudbury (nearly 24000) and the railway is a success there with far better regional buses too. Sudbury reportedly resisted any rail closures in the 60s which is why it still exists today. Haverhill has been let down big time, such a failure of planning. Unsurprisingly it has declined a lot since the 2008 recession. The towns without railways seem to struggle more than those with railways intact.
Unless the initiative id taken in Cambridge nothing will happen until 2029 at the earliest, this is due to local government reorganization and the establishment of a Norfolk / Suffolk mayoral authority,
As to the present Suffolk seem have made reasonable ude of their BISO allocation but I don't think mine has been spent in Haverhill.
People like a door to door service and the car wins here and a bus comes a close second. My prediction is that within 10 years we will see autonomous mini buses running services such as Haverhill ,- Cambridge to meet that demand.
Go to the High Street in Haverhill and you'll see what I mean. Very depressing place. The large Tesco doesn't help. It feels like a ghost town the majority of the time and yet the 3 pubs including a Wetherspoons means it has some form of nightlife, it's weird.
Also the reason Haverhill expanded so much is because it was designated as London Overspill. Today, it's Cambridge Overspill. I wouldn't say population growth determines if a town is doing well or not. I have family living in a village nearby and I specifically remember Haverhill having far more to offer than it does now. The population is growing but the town has declined. In part because it's built around driving and people go elsewhere. And it seems more noticeable in regional towns I noticed. I think the loss of shops like Woolworths hurt a lot of smaller towns.
I don't know why Haverhill reminds me of many of the larger towns in the South Wales Valleys (just as depressing, especially Merthyr Tydfil!), but at least there you can get on a train to your nearest city!
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People like a door to door service and the car wins here and a bus comes a close second. My prediction is that within 10 years we will see autonomous mini buses running services such as Haverhill ,- Cambridge to meet that demand.
Maybe but I don't see fixed bus routes going anywhere. DRT is notoriously expensive to run and even with self-driving vehicles, that will still be expensive with few benefits. There would still be a need for public transport that runs at nearly all times of day every day and I think towns above a certain size need a railway. No technology will change that.
Unless the autonomous service is literally every 5 minutes, minibuses would not be enough for Haverhill to Cambridge. It regularly fills up Double Deckers at the current half hourly frequency.
Go to the High Street in Haverhill and you'll see what I mean. Very depressing place. The large Tesco doesn't help. It feels like a ghost town the majority of the time and yet the 3 pubs including a Wetherspoons means it has some form of nightlife, it's weird.
Also the reason Haverhill expanded so much is because it was designated as London Overspill. Today, it's Cambridge Overspill. I wouldn't say population growth determines if a town is doing well or not. I have family living in a village nearby and I specifically remember Haverhill having far more to offer than it does now. The population is growing but the town has declined. In part because it's built around driving and people go elsewhere. And it seems more noticeable in regional towns I noticed. I think the loss of shops like Woolworths hurt a lot of smaller towns.
I don't know why Haverhill reminds me of many of the larger towns in the South Wales Valleys (just as depressing, especially Merthyr Tydfil!), but at least there you can get on a train to your nearest city!
But, as you demonstrate with your South Wales comparison, this isn't peculiar to Haverhill.
Royston town centre was similarly affected by an edge of town Tesco, and I know people who describe the current state of the town centre in St Neots in a similar way.
Having a railway isn't going to make that better, it is likely to make it worse. It will make it easier for Haverhill people to go to Cambridge, in a similar way to how the railway makes it easier for Merthyr people to go to Cardiff.
The way I see it, is there is a minimum population size before a railway is worth serving that town in a region without one. I think 20000 is the minimum, even though in reality far smaller places also have railways through them (not always tourist hotspots either). But what I meant is it shouldn't matter if a railway with no passenger services still exists or none at all. Once a town reaches 20000 is when it needs to seriously put in plans for a railway. Any bigger, transport habits become entrenched, traffic becomes a daily issue and it's a lot harder to find an ideal central point to put in a station, which is ideally walking distance of a high street and bus station, especially if an interchange is not possible due to space or development.
At the current size, a potential Haverhill station could be within a mile of the High Street which is just about acceptable to me, but many residents would be further away from this so a review of the bus network would be needed whenever it happens.
This raises one of the issues of simply reopening railways on old alignments, many weren't ideal in the first place and just a bit of a mess. Shelford-Sudbury closing was a mistake in my opinion though and frankly reckless when they were expanding Haverhill at the same time. Doesn't mean we would follow the exact route now though. I think a connection at Whittlesford for a branch line has a lot of merit.
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But, as you demonstrate with your South Wales comparison, this isn't peculiar to Haverhill.
Royston town centre was similarly affected by an edge of town Tesco, and I know people who describe the current state of the town centre in St Neots in a similar way.
Having a railway isn't going to make that better, it is likely to make it worse. It will make it easier for Haverhill people to go to Cambridge, in a similar way to how the railway makes it easier for Merthyr people to go to Cardiff.
Again maybe. A railway either makes a town or it reduces it to a dormitory. I think in all these cases, it shows why we also need local industry, so the whole town is just going to the city every day. I think Cambridge's problems including very high rents mean Haverhill would see a ton of investment off the back of a new branch line. A railway plus the more affordable cost of living would Haverhill suddenly more attractive to live there. Surely it isn't just London who can regenerate whole areas like we have seen with the DLR and Elizabeth Line.
They would naturally go hand in hand. In Cheshunt, while they thought Crossrail 2 was coming down the road, investment and re-development poured in. Now Crossrail 2 is no longer on the horizon, everything stalled, in part because the council is useless. But in some places, private investment only happens if the government shows they will invest first. I'd say that is true in somewhere like Haverhill, where house developers are perfectly happy to keep building car dependent sprawl but show no interest in more public services or shops yet alone more infrastructure. They don't even want to put in new roads from the looks of it!
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