Plan to link Milton Keynes and Bedford by rail 'key to economic growth'
Plans to link Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford and Cambridge could help unlock tens of billions of pounds in economic growth - with East West Rail described as central to those ambitions.
Dr Andy Williams, chair of the Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster Board, said the railway was central to plans to connect jobs and businesses across the region.
The Board represents science and technology businesses, investors and universities across the Oxford to Cambridge growth corridor.
“Our supercluster board has identified £78 billion of additional economic growth between now and 2035 just on the promise of East West Rail,” Dr Williams told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
“When East West Rail comes you get much better than that.”
The £78bn figure relates to wider growth ambitions across the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, with infrastructure, planning and investment all expected to play a role.
He added that current transport links were holding the area back.
“If you’re going for a 9am meeting [in Cambridge], you have to give yourself two and a half hours [from Bedford] because you just do not know whether the roads are going to be busy,” he said.
“It’s almost not possible to get from Cambridge to Oxford for an early morning meeting, you have to give yourself four hours.
“It’s just farcical,” he said.
Dr Williams said the railway would help create a single labour market across a region of around 3.5 million people.
“This is about joining them all up together so we can create a single workforce, and that will open up new job opportunities,” he said.
“It’s not all about PhDs and postdocs,” he said addressing concerns that growth benefits could be limited to highly qualified workers.
“There’s a load of technical jobs, apprentice jobs available to everyone.
“A complete range of skills from top to bottom [would be] required.
“We can’t just end up this being a lazy growth driven by either immigration from outside of the UK or even within the UK but outside of the region.
“We’ve got to make sure that we create more local jobs for local people.”