East West Rail: Bedford council assessing routes - but says it's 'not appropriate' to share them yet

Bedford Borough Council is assessing various East West Rail routes, but it is “not appropriate” to share the information at the moment, a meeting heard

During last week’s Environment and Sustainable Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee (January 18) councillor Charles Royden (Lib Dems, Brickhill) said he had seen a map showing the routes Bedford’s mayor, Tom Wootton, is currently exploring.

“Many of which go south,” he said. “Is that map now out for public consultation and are the public being asked to give their views?” he asked.

“I think our community, our residents, deserve to have that information in the public domain so they know where these proposals might be,” he said.

Jon Shortland, chief officer for planning, infrastructure and economic growth, replied that the mayor has made a commitment to make this information public.

“But at the moment the draft is still being worked on so it’s not appropriate to make it public at this point,” he said.

“[The mayor asked us] to undertake an analysis of several routes.

“There is Route One and Route Nine which East West Rail put forward in their last consultation, plus the Tempsford variant [route] which they’ve come up within the Route Update Announcement.

“There are three routes that go through Bedford and out to the North and then there were alternative routes.

“One which East West Rail put forward in their Route Update Announcement and they said they’d looked at it and rejected it.

“And then there were routes put forward by pressure groups, one by BFARe which runs to the south of the town and one route with two options within it, which will put forward by different group called the English Regional Transport Association.

“We have employed consultants called SLC Rail who’ve been working for us for a number of years on railway matters to look at each of those route alignments and judge them against the set of criteria, which might be important to people in making a decision.

“So the outcome from that will be a report which looks at each of the criteria and ranks the routes against it.

“It will be a colour-coded table that will be available to members and to members of the public in order to inform decisions when it comes to the statutory consultation,” he said.

Councillor Royden said: “I think the process and the map could be made public, and I think that that should happen, because I think residents will feel that they’re being kept in the dark otherwise.”