Stratford to Honeybourne reopening plan rejected
Line would serve new housing, alleviate road congestion, and create new journey opportunities.
A PROPOSAL to reopen the railway between Stratfordupon-Avon and Honeybourne under the ‘Restore Your Railway’ scheme has been rejected by the Government, killing off all future hope of reinstating rail services.
Announcing the decision, Transport Minister Wendy Morton said the business case “did not demonstrate sufficient potential economic benefits of reopening to justify taking this project forward.” She added that there was also no indication of the potential market for these services.
The next stage, had it been approved, would have been an outline and full business case submission.
The DfT’s decision has come as a shock and will be a disappointment to the project’s supporting groups, which include 11 MPs, 10 local authorities, four rail user groups (RUGs), and more than 100 other organisations who had been lobbying for a reopening.
Supporters of the project believe the DfT’s decision is flawed for a variety of reasons, including future demand, tourism, and the regeneration of smaller towns.
Stratford-upon-Avon is a town with considerable traffic congestion, with bypass roads only on the west and southern sides. Reopening the railway was seen as a way of not only alleviating congestion and pollution, but providing an alternative to road use for the 3550 homes being built under the ‘garden village’ scheme on the former Long Marston MoD site, part of which is being redeveloped by rail leasing company Porterbrook.
With 1500 homes already built, predictions are for a population in Long Marston of 25,000 by 2031. Predicted rail journey time to Birmingham would have been 50 minutes.
New journeys
Reconnecting the North Warwickshire and Oxford to Worcester (Cotswold) lines – formerly part of a through route from Birmingham to Cheltenham, but which closed in 1976 after a derailment further south on what is now the Gloucestershire-Warwickshire Steam Railway – would also have opened up many more new journey opportunities and provided an alternative Birmingham to Oxford route. Many will recall the six weeks of disruption on a major cross-country artery after the Harbury Tunnel landslip in 2015.
On hearing the announcement, the chairman of the Shakespeare Line Promotion Group Peter
Morris said: “It is a sad day for Stratford-upon-Avon and the surrounding district, which is increasingly plagued by unsustainable levels of road traffic putting off potential visitors to the district.
“All four RUGs worked hard on this submission, and we successfully garnered the support of 11 MPs along the route from Birmingham to Oxford.
“We believe the RYR submission was strong and are disappointed that the broader network and economic benefits that would have arisen from restoring the missing rail link failed to get the submission to the next stage.
“The rail link would have also provided a sustainable transport to the Long Marston development.
“SLPG will no longer proactively campaign to restore the Stratford-uponAvon to Honeybourne section of line.”