Philip Hammond’s planned train route between Oxford and Cambridge is set to become the first big privately funded railway project since Victorian times.
Senior sources have confirmed that the announcement of £110 million of funding for the East West Rail link in the autumn statement is the trigger in a campaign to attract private investors to finance the multibillion-pound project.
“The chancellor is pump-priming private equity firms and other investors to fund the western phase of East West Rail,” an industry source said.
The co-financing of the route between the two university cities, a re-imagining of the original Varsity Line that closed in the 1960s, could lead to public-private investment in future rail projects laid out by the chief executive of Network Rail. The project, which also envisions upgraded “expressway” roads between Oxford and Cambridge, will help to create a so-called brain belt, retaining and attracting technology and advanced manufacturing companies in the region.
Mark Carne, Network Rail’s chief executive, believes that local authorities, businesses in the area and housebuilders that will benefit from the initiative should help to fund the project. The first section of the new line has already received funding from Chiltern Railways.
Mr Carne said: “It is the sort of reform that I want to bring into the railways. It is completely wrong for the entire country to fund individual railway investment when that is creating specific local opportunity.”
Public-private funding models also could be used in multibillion-pound financing to produce faster trains with greater capacity on the TransPennine route between Manchester and Leeds.
The first section of East West Rail was completed quietly last week and opens for business in a fortnight’s time. Network Rail and Chiltern Railways began a £320 million co-funding joint venture to build the Oxford Parkway station to the north of the city and to rework the rail line to Bicester to take in a popular retail centre near the town. It has now completed the connection in the other direction from Oxford Parkway to Oxford’s central train station.
That new connection gives travellers to and from central Oxford an option of rival train operators: the existing First Group Great Western service via Reading into London Paddington, or the new Chiltern Railways option into London Marylebone.
Network Rail expects the connection to the line going east from Bicester to become operational between 2020 and 2025. The £1.5 billion project will also upgrade existing lines through to Bedford. Part of the plan also includes providing Milton Keynes with an alternative to its London Euston connection by enabling services into Marylebone via Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.
The trickier and much more expensive part of East West Rail will be connecting Bedford to Cambridge as the old Varsity Line now lies under housing and industrial estates.
However, even the Bicester-to-Bedford section, regarded as an early phase of the development, is not without issues. The line will cross the planned HS2 railway at Calvert in Buckinghamshire, where additional works will be needed to ensure that both lines can be accommodated.
There are other problems regarding staffing. The high-speed link between London, Birmingham and Manchester will rely on civil engineers and although many of them will be coming back on to the market after the completion of London’s Crossrail, there may be a shortage of staff for East West Rail if it goes ahead at the same time.
