And it should be ready just in time for any looming general election (unless it’s called for very early 2024!
364 days after rail expert Jonathan Roberts delivered the results of his study into a radically-improved rail network to Rail Future East (I blogged about it here – scroll halfway down), Rail Future East confirmed at their annual Cambridge meeting that Mr Roberts would be undertaking a refreshed study on the back of the planning applications from the sci/tech sector *and* more recent announcements from central government. Amongst other things this means doing an enormous amount of number-crunching – the likes of which makes it harder for policy advisers to ignore.
Rail Haverhill, Rail Future East, and The Greater Cambridge Partnership
Some of you will have seen the reports about Cambridge Connect such as this one in Suffolk News from April 2023. There is a lot of history behind the bid to reopen the rail links from Cambridge to both Haverhill (see here) and also to Wisbech (see here).
Above – proposals from Rail Future East Anglia/Wisbech Rail showing the restored rail services in green as tram-train lines.
I’d be quite happy to see a suburban line from Haverhill to Wisbech going via Cambridge, Newmarket, Soham, Ely, and March – with a view to constructing a new line via Chatteris. Just get something built!
Hence the presentation from Martin Seiffarth of Network Rail was particularly interesting for the 30 or so of us who attended the Cambridge meeting on a day that (as ususal) clashed with the Mill Road Winter Fair. Only this time around the thermometers barely got above freezing point. A quick browse of Mr Seiffarth’s LI page shows he’s got both a public policy and party-political experience, having worked as a researcher for an MP. So credit to him for turning up to something that he knew could have been an absolute grilling. Especially given Cambridge’s transport politics!
Above – Martin Seiffarth of Network Rail
The main presentation and update Mr Seiffarth gave to members who had travelled in from across East Anglia (it was a shame more Cambridge locals didn’t come along) was about Cambridge South Station. There were a number of very important points he made that explained a whole host of things – including the bland station designs we often see with new or revamped small stations. It is the concept of the “Minimum Viable Product” which Network Rail has a legal duty to design to (or commission consultants to design to). See Modern Railways’ explainer here – they blame The Treasury for imposing such a requirement on the Department for Transport and the railway industry generally. Understandable given the huge costs of infrastructure projects, but then why are they so expensive in the first place? This European Commission paper – Overview of Transport Infrastructure Expenditure and Costs 2019 makes for interesting browsing. While looking at the costs and noting the costs-per-km of railway, it’s worth remembering the geographies of the countries – for example the mountains that Italian and German railways have to deal with in some parts of their countries.
“Developers often underestimate how much it costs to build a railway station”
I put this question to Mr Seiffarth given I’d spent part of this year going around developer-hosted consultations to find out if in principle they would be willing to contribute towards the costs of new rail infrastructure. I was glad when all of the ones I visited responded positively. I was also glad that Mr Seiffarth confirmed that Network Rail had the mechanisms in place to negotiate and accept contributions towards such infrastructure upgrades. The bit that I wasn’t aware of – and I suspect most people are not aware of either, are the additional costs associated with building a new station. Take Soham Station for example.
“The station, which cost £18.6 million to build, was funded by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority and delivered by Network Rail.”
Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority 08 Dec 2022
Earlier estimates were above the £20million mark, and people quite rightly asked how two long slabs of concrete, a metal footbridge, a ticket machine and a generic bus/train passenger shelter could possibly cost up to twenty-million-quid! (Something discussed in more detail in this blogpost by BusAndTrainUser). Mr Seiffarth said such costs also came along with the need to upgrade supporting infrastructure – including but not limited to signalling, wiring, electricity substation construction, timetabling changes, and more.
This brings us back to some of the issues discussed at the Form the Future Annual Conference 2023 the day before (see my blogpost here) where several panellists and delegates criticised ministerial policy failures on vocational skills and the chronic shortages of skilled workers in key industries. To what extent is that chronic shortage a cause of higher costs in the rail infrastructure industries? Mindful that engineers are working in all sorts of weather at some of the most unsociable hours of the day and are working through the public holidays that many other full time professions/occupations take time off for granted. As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, if ministers wanted to make a short/medium term impact on those shortages, they’d explore grant-funding mature workers to undertake the training needed to switch from careers where there is a surplus to those where there is a shortage – paying tuition fees and providing a living cost grant too.
Jim Chisholm reminds us all of local history – and how long it took to get to here
The longtime transport campaigner (pictured here opening the first stage of the cycling trail named after him) reminded us that it was central government that was largely responsible for the failure to build a station at Addenbrooke’s in the 1990s.
Above – the then Cllr Geoffrey Heathcock (LibDems – Queen Edith’s) complaining about underfunded Cambridge
This was at the time when the Conservatives had privatised the railways and when the country was about to find out the hard way what a mess they’d made of it. Having browsed through some of the other newspaper articles I flipped over to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough 2001 (still being digitised).
Above – p83 – Addenbrooke’s Rail Station listed as a local scheme – but one needing central government funding.
Thus we come back to the same stumbling block that the Form the Future delegates hit on the previous morning: central government being a block to locally-created solutions to local problems.
One of the criticisms of “Section 106” funding for infrastructure is it applies a levy/cost on *new* developments to pay for infrastructure but does not provide for any means of imposing a levy on those firms benefiting – especially where there is an existing infrastructure shortage. (Arts, leisure, community, transport, you name it). Therefore Cambridge is in a situation where no local governmental authority can tax the wealth generated within the economic sub-region to pay for the transport infrastructure upgrades that are so desperately needed to link the city to surrounding towns.
How might a future government deal with this?
That’s one for people to put to their candidates in the run up to the general election. To find out more specifically on campaigning for better rail infrastructure, see Rail Future and how to join them here. In the meantime, we wait to see what ministers announce on all things Cambridge 2040.
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The Cambridge Town Owl 