Oxford - Cambridge in 60 minutes??

[HSTEd]

Damn, someone must have leaked the plans for the Scilly Isles link!

 

[mr_jrt]

You will have a job running a train to Dunstable as the stretch (trackbed) is now a guided busway

You will need a complete new cutting

I'm well aware of that mistake. Rip the stupid thing up and do what they should have done in the first ruddy place!

 

[pitdiver]

I'm well aware of that mistake. Rip the stupid thing up and do what they should have done in the first ruddy place!

The money that was spent on the Busway should have been spent on improving the middle of Luton TOWN centre. I don't know why anybody would want to go Dunstable as it is non destination. Yes come the other way but there was already an adequate bus service in the area. Perhaps the Luton councillors should look at the car parking in the central car park. It took us 40 mins yesterday to get out of the car park and get out of the centre of Luton. A journey that should have taken at the most 15 mins. As for Luton's bid to become a city what a joke first demolish the whole of the town centre including the Station then start from scratch.

 

[AM9]

The money that was spent on the Busway should have been spent on improving the middle of Luton TOWN centre. I don't know why anybody would want to go Dunstable as it is non destination. Yes come the other way but there was already an adequate bus service in the area. Perhaps the Luton councillors should look at the car parking in the central car park. It took us 40 mins yesterday to get out of the car park and get out of the centre of Luton. A journey that should have taken at the most 15 mins. As for Luton's bid to become a city what a joke first demolish the whole of the town centre including the Station then start from scratch.

It's already known as 'the only ex mill-town in the south, so now they want it to be the only ex mill-city in the south?

 

[21C101]

I actually think the Busway was the right thing to do. A train would have been half hourly at best with people still having to get a bus to their destinations around Dunstable and Houghton Regis.

Now there is a tube interval service, as fast and reliable train with the buses leaving the busway and serving the local bus stops around Dunstable, Houghton and as far as Toddington.

I didn't like the Cambridge one as it ended on the edge of town and you then spent twenty minutes in urban traffic. However it is being extended to a direct interchange to the new Cambridge Science Park Station so rail like journeys will at last become possible. I hope when the new A14 is built one carriageway of the old one will be converted to extend it to Huntington Station.
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It's already known as 'the only ex mill-town in the south, so now they want it to be the only ex mill-city in the south?

Croydon runs it a close second in terms of ex mill town. Chard in Somerset (although much smaller) is also an ex mill town.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The money that was spent on the Busway should have been spent on improving the middle of Luton TOWN centre. I don't know why anybody would want to go Dunstable as it is non destination. Yes come the other way but there was already an adequate bus service in the area

To say it is a non destination and already had an adequate bus service is absurd. Buses from Houghton Regis and Dunstable took nearly an hour to get to Luton, now they take 10-15 minutes making working in London practical.

Also the combined population of Dunstable and Houghton Regis is over 50,000 hardly insignificant.

The busway is also going to be used for the new growth area north of Luton and Houghton Regis.

 

[philjo]

Why would they want to do that for when the current system works fine, I mean why would someone who travels from LST to Stansted Airport today any the many years in the past decide to go by EC from KX and change at SVG when any new route is available

I was meaning passengers travelling south from Yorkshire, Northeast & Edinburgh can change at Stevenage, not those coming from London. Especially if the frequency/journey time is better than changing at Peterborough onto the current hourly XC service.

Though I see recently in Rail a Leeds-Peterborough-Cambridge-Stansted service has been mentioned as a possibility for the future ECML franchise (which adds an extra service north of Peterborough but doesn't require a path through Welwyn)

 

[Carlisle]

I was meaning passengers travelling south from Yorkshire, Northeast & Edinburgh can change at Stevenage, not those coming from London. Especially if the frequency/journey time is better than changing at Peterborough onto the current hourly XC service.

Though I see recently in Rail a Leeds-Peterborough-Cambridge-Stansted service has been mentioned as a possibility for the future ECML franchise (which adds an extra service north of Peterborough but doesn't require a path through Welwyn)

I would have thought the demand for Stansted from the northern areas you mention would be fairly minimal , many if not most will opt to use Airports closer to home

 

[21C101]

I would have thought the demand for Stansted from the northern areas you mention would be fairly minimal , many if not most will opt to use Airports closer to home

Same goes for people who live near Stanstead, they probably use other airports most of the time as well that have planes to where they want to go rather than the Airline equivalent of Broad Street (/pot stirring)

 

[MarkyT]

I would have thought the demand for Stansted from the northern areas you mention would be fairly minimal , many if not most will opt to use Airports closer to home

I think Stansted is to some extent a convenient place to terminate with some demand of its own rather than being the main traffic objective alone of such a Leeds service. The rationale for such a service would be to link the Cambridge area AND Stansted with Yorkshire and towns in between. Stansted is popular particularly for low cost flights and there's no reason to believe flyers wouldnt be attracted from the north as well as from the London area. A north facing connection enabling trains from Cambridge to enter the airport station was provided when the rail link was built for just this kind of market.

 

[Abpj17]

To say it is a non destination and already had an adequate bus service is absurd. Buses from Houghton Regis and Dunstable took nearly an hour to get to Luton, now they take 10-15 minutes making working in London practical.

Also the combined population of Dunstable and Houghton Regis is over 50,000 hardly insignificant.

The busway is also going to be used for the new growth area north of Luton and Houghton Regis.

Quite right - the bus service was completely inadequate. But the guided busway is still pretty flawed. I really like what they've done in Luton Town Centre (ish) - the way it avoids the ring road etc. and connects with the station is ideal. But it only really links to cross-town buses. Many local buses still all go to Silver Street instead and the links from the guided busway into North Luton, wider Dunstable are still very poor.

Emotionally, I would have preferred a train

pitdiver - I think the point is that people who live in Dunstable want to go back there to sleep after work/shopping...

The Cambridge/Oxford link just needs to happen. As I live in Luton, I've got an obvious preference for it to be routed through there, but Bedford would be ok. Some kind of Luton Stansted link makes a lot of sense - London airports would finally be vaguely joined up by rail.