In the FT (behind a subscription wall)....
Financial Times. November 28, 2011
Signal green for ^Varsity^ line reopening
By Mark Odell and George Parker
Ministers are expected to give the go-ahead to re-open part of the Oxford to Cambridge railway line, closed in the wake of the Beeching cuts in the 1960s, as part of a key infrastructure announcement.
Under the ^250m scheme, passenger services between Oxford and Bedford ^ withdrawn by British Rail in 1967 ^ will resume by 2017. The main part of the project involves re-laying and upgrading mothballed track between Bicester and Bletchley that was last used for freight services in the mid-1990s.
The scheme is expected to be one of the surprises among 40 key infrastructure projects the government is due to announce on Tuesday (Chancellor's "Autumn Statement"), which will include schemes already under way or well advanced in the planning process.
Supporters of the project, which include the local county and borough councils, have campaigned since the mid-1990s to get the route re-opened, arguing that it will bring considerable economic benefits by linking the fast-growing city of Milton Keynes to academic and research centres in Oxford.
Under their calculations, the route will generate more than ^6 in economic benefit for every ^1 invested, a key government measure of the value of big infrastructure projects. The benefit figure would rise to ^11 if the scheme were 15 per cent funded by the private sector, they argue.
The government is expected to instruct Network Rail, the owner of the
UK▸ rail network, to include the scheme in the list of projects it has put forward for the next funding period between 2014 and 2019 (IIP &
CP5▸ ).
The re-opened line would allow passengers to bypass London by linking the west of England with the Midlands and the north. It would connect with Great Western services at Didcot and Reading and with West Coast services at Milton Keynes and Midland mainline services at Bedford.
The full scheme, known as East West Rail, ultimately envisages fully re-opening the old route between Oxford and Cambridge, dubbed the Varsity or Brain Line, which closed in the aftermath of the restructuring of Britain^s railways by Dr Richard Beeching in the 1960s.
But since part of the old route between Bedford and Cambridge has been built on, ministers have baulked at the idea of trying to build a new line.
Re-opening the stretch between Oxford and Bedford also offers a political dividend for the Tories, as it runs through the constituencies of a number of Conservative
MPs▸ .
Separately, George Osborne is set to announce a cap on regulated rail fares in his autumn statement on Tuesday.
Season tickets and peak travel fares were due to rise by 8.2 per cent on average after the coalition government earlier this year increased the formula to 3 per cent above the retail price index rate of inflation.
The chancellor is now expected to announce the average fare will rise by 6.2 per cent, and that the cap will also apply to Tube and bus fares in London.
Public transport lobby groups had warned of a backlash from commuters in the south-east ^ where the constituencies of the four transport ministers are located ^ if the government left rail fare rises unchanged while appeasing the motoring lobby by acting on fuel duty.
The government is expected either to freeze or to delay the imminent full 3p increase in fuel duty.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ee150f0-1919-11e1-92d8-00144feabdc0.htmlTransport Briefing picked the leaks up too....
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