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East West Rail Link - sorely needed at £100M but not funded. M1 Widening - £600M badly spent

The Green Party very much welcomes last month’s report on the East West Rail Link. We have been campaigning for the re-instatement of rail services to Oxford for over 25 years. The report concludes that the rail service could be re-instated for £100-135 million. There could be trains every half hour with a journey time of 45 minutes from Milton Keynes Central to Oxford.

However there is no funding allocated for this project. There is no funding for it in Network Rail’s 2007 Business Plan published last week. The EWRL report suggests that it might be possible to raise money by applying a tariff to all housing developments in the Oxford- Milton Keynes corridor. We are doubtful about the viability of that idea and fear that it would cause even more development on greenfield sites beyond existing settlement boundaries.

But the government does plan to spend £601 million on another transport project in the Milton Keynes area. That is the widening of 15 miles of the M1 between junctions 10 and 13. Detailed plans were announced last week and the cost has leapt from £382 million to £601 million in just two years. So at £40m per mile just 3 miles of widening of the M1 would pay for the whole of the re-instatement of the rail service to Oxford.

The Labour government claims that it is concerned about climate change and wants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But widening the M1 will cause more traffic, which will cause more CO2 emissions. Re-opening the rail line to Oxford, on the other hand, would mean less car use and a decrease in CO2 emissions.

The Green Party would invest money in public transport schemes to reduce the impact of climate change not in climate changing motorway widening schemes. £600 million would be enough to re-instate rail services from Milton Keynes to Oxford, Aylesbury, Cambridge and Luton or to provide a tram network for Milton Keynes. That is a much better use of the money for both people and for the environment.

Alan Francis

Milton Keynes Green Party