Analysis

A Campaign for Better Transport report has identified routes that could benefit from restoration of passenger services, but funding remains a problem to be solved. PHILIP HAIGH examines the problems

Rail reopenings.

WISBECH lies at the end of a closed eight-mile branch line from March. Its station closed in 1968, although the line lasted longer, carrying pet food until 2000.

The line’s track is heavily overgrown in places, with some level crossings now hidden under tarmac. Nothing remains of the town’s three stations, with one subsumed by the pet food factory and the others by housing.

Despite this industry and the surrounding fields of crops, Wisbech is reckoned to be economically poor in terms of skills and access to jobs by public transport, as well as having aboveaverage youth unemployment. Local business talks of skills shortages.

A new report from the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) suggests that reopening this and other towns’ rail links could help. Its introduction says: “Reopening railways has the potential to transform communities. For both passengers and freight, rail is a high-quality national transport network that can give people access to a wealth of social and economic opportunities. It can support local economies; expanding labour markets and encouraging new investment and development. It can help tackle regional inequalities, making economically disadvantaged parts of the country more attractive for investment.”

Wisbech lies 38 miles by rail from Cambridge and 23 miles from Peterborough, both of them centres of major activity and employment. A rail link could help bring people to those jobs, just as the Borders line in Scotland helps feed (and was justified on) Edinburgh’s need for workers. But that risks taking the life from towns such as Wisbech, rather than injecting new spirit.

Talk of reopening rail lines captures headlines from time to time, but there’s very little progress in returning passenger trains to disused rail corridors, or even to lines that already exist but only carry freight. Scotland has enjoyed some success, but that’s beginning to be history with neither Transport Scotland nor the country’s current government having ever authorised a line’s reopening.

In London, trains have returned to the Dalston route that British Rail closed in 1986. But that reopening dates back to 2010.

The Department for Transport is now backing East West Rail to return trains to the missing and closed parts of the OxfordCambridge route. It has a hefty £1.1 billion price tag for its BicesterBedford section ( RAIL 859), which is a mix of mothballed and open tracks. Nevertheless, it’s making progress with a public inquiry opening in February.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, work to make the case for returning trains to the mothballed tracks to Levenmouth ( RAIL 843) grinds forward with another round of reports being compiled.

The area is deprived and would doubtless benefit from its residents being able to reach jobs further afield, perhaps in Edinburgh. But the latest report suggests there’s no evidence of rail freight demand for