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Chiltern Trains' Oxford link seals franchise extension

CHILTERN Railways has secured the right to run trains between Oxfordshire and London until 2021 after the Government yesterday backed the firm’s plans to create a second route from Oxford to London.

Chiltern’s chairman Adrian Shooter Chiltern’s chairman Adrian Shooter

As previously reported in the Oxford Mail, the firm plans to spend £250m on creating the new route from Oxford to London Marylebone, via Bicester, along with track improvements to speed up its services between London, Banbury and Birmingham.

The Oxford service is due to start running in 2013.

Improvements to the Oxford-Bicester line will cut Rail journey times from 25 minutes now to just 14 minutes from 2013.

Oxford-London Marylebone journey times should be 66 minutes once the new line is open, compared with about 55 minutes on First Great Western’s express services to London Paddington.

A new parkway station will also be built at Water Eaton park-and-ride, near Kidlington, while Bicester Town station is set to be closed for up to seven months to be rebuilt.

Chiltern’s investment plans were praised by Transport Secretary Lord Adonis yesterday, as he announced a seven-and-a-half year extension to the franchise, until December 31, 2021, in return for the improvements.

The decision means the Chiltern franchise will run the full 20 years projected when it began in 2002. The firm has to meet a series of investment targets in order to secure the full franchise term.

Lord Adonis said: “Today we gave the go-ahead to Chiltern Railways to take forward plans for a completely new service from Oxford to Marylebone, including a new parkway station.

“These will be huge improvements in the transport infrastructure for Oxford, not only providing alternative routes from Oxford to London, but providing a station serving north Oxford and the area around Oxford, by providing regular fast trains to London.

“It will particularly benefit residents of North Oxford and areas of Oxford who have not had good rail connections in the past. It will also help to get cars off the road and people on to trains.”

The new link line in Bicester and the other improvements to the route will be funded by a £250m loan from Network Rail, which will be paid back over 30 years.

Chiltern’s chairman Adrian Shooter, who led the firm into the private sector in 1996 when British Rail was broken up, pledged there would be no fare increases to pay for the scheme.

He claimed it would be paid for by extra revenue generated by more people travelling by rail, including customers of Oxford-London coach services, who would be attracted by the quicker journeys by train.

Mr Shooter said the work would be carried out in two phases, with speed improvements on the existing route, allowing more 100mph running, being completed before work starts on the Oxford link.

Lord Adonis will decide in the spring whether to hold a public inquiry into the Oxford-Bicester scheme.

Any inquiry would take place by the autumn.

Chris Bates, of the Cherwell Rail Users’ Group, welcomed the franchise extension.

He said: “It’s good news for rail users and for Chiltern it’s well deserved.

“Hopefully, any new Government will see longer franchises work better than short-term ones.”


Comments (12)

15/01/10

The Ferryman says...

That's a great service. But it doesn't mention how often they run to Brill from here !!

15/01/10

Andrew:Oxford says...

The Ferryman wrote:
That's a great service. But it doesn't mention how often they run to Brill from here !!
It's 75 years since the Metropolitan line ran to Brill on the tramway...

15/01/10

jockox3 says...

So let me get this right, Transport Ministers puts his full weight behind a plan which will involve stealing, in essence (compensation is not the same as "price" if the sellers are coerced), tracts of land off people which would be examined in public enquiry. Surely that makes his part in any decision as to whether or not to hold said public enquiry prejudiced.

15/01/10

Joe Cooke says...

It's about time Kidlington had a station, then Witney and Abingdon, but will it ever happen? nothing gets done in Oxfordshire as its full of nimbys, whatever happened to the canal basin at Worcesrer street car park?

15/01/10

jonny1976 says...

Kidlington and witney used to have a station but they shut many years ago to cut cost and the fact that not many people use them

15/01/10

Gunslinger says...

I don't understand jockox3's point.

Any proposal to do virtually anything whether rail, road, new housing is likely to involve a compulsory purchase order (CPO). That isn't stealing.

I dare say that some or all of the facilities he uses on a daily basis, possibly even the home he lives in, involved exercise of a CPO by some authority at some time in the past.

Does that make him an accessory to theft too?

15/01/10

Joe Cooke says...

They would surely use the stations now though if they were built in Kidlington,Witney and Abingdon.

15/01/10

Andrew:Oxford says...

Joe Cooke wrote:
It's about time Kidlington had a station, then Witney and Abingdon, but will it ever happen? nothing gets done in Oxfordshire as its full of nimbys, whatever happened to the canal basin at Worcesrer street car park?
Don't worry, the canal basin is still there, it's just filled in with rubble and topped off with tarmac to allow ordinary people a chance to park in the city centre. All the artists impressions I've seen of the canal basin look interesting. All open, not a railing in sight, with people wandering alongside. Can't see that in reality can you? Unprotected waters alongside a busy transport route and busy pub/club area. There'd be inebriated clubbers in there every night. Probably the odd car (or bus) too.

15/01/10

Andrew:Oxford says...

jockox3 wrote:
So let me get this right, Transport Ministers puts his full weight behind a plan which will involve stealing, in essence (compensation is not the same as "price" if the sellers are coerced), tracts of land off people which would be examined in public enquiry. Surely that makes his part in any decision as to whether or not to hold said public enquiry prejudiced.
The railway is currently open, albeit single track, as far as the waste management facility at Calvert. The original line/embankments were built to double-track standards and will generally be returned to that. Small parcels of land may need to be purchased to accommodate new or improved stations and land in Bicester has been left free of buildings for many years to accommodate a chord between the Chiltern Mainline and the East-West route. Hardly "tracts of land".

15/01/10

jockox3 says...

Gunslinger - of course it's theft, well robbery really, the clue is in the word, "compulsory" - if we get this Order through we have the government behind us in taking your land whether you like it or not and a price set by someone else.

So the man who has now, rightly I should say, so openly supported the scheme in principle, should not be the one to decide whether or not to deny the potential victim of that theft their say in a public enquiry.

Andrew, unless you're an Andrew I know I take it you have not seen the Transport and Works Act Order with the extent of the land they want to take under CPO. It is less to do with the trackbed than the works access itself, but there are some areas where they think they will need to extend embankments as well.

It includes, for example, some peoples' back gardens and yes, "tracts" of land alongside the embankment, and the point about a public enquiry is that it gives those people the opportunity to question issues such as whether other alternatives were investigated rather than just what appeared most convenient, because once the order is granted they can then simply CPO anything up to the boundary of what they have asked for in the Order, which in some cases appear either excessive or nonsensical or both.

16/01/10

Gunslinger says...

Jockox3
As I said in my previous post, CPO's have been used for many decades for small and large schemes, that hasn't and doesn't stop ministers, councillors etc announcing and supporting those projects in principle.

Just because you have some issue with this particular scheme, doesn't make the minister's actions improper, or justify words like 'stealing' and 'theft'. There is presumably a statutory process for dealing with objections and setting compensation.

Chances are that YOU could be an accessory to 'theft', it may be that land for the school you or your kids went to, maybe the house you live in, the road you drive along, could all have been purchased at some time by CPO.

16/01/10

jockox3 says...

It makes it quite improper for Adonis to be the person who decides whether an enquiry will take place or not. Just as if a councillor has expressed overt support or opposition to a planning application he must not take part in the deliberation on it.

Nor is there any point in your persisting with the argument that things we use now have probably also been gained by compulsion. Of course they have, that much is blindingly obvious as many have been the result of state action which in almost all cases involves compulsion. I do not like it, just as much as I do not like the fact that large tracts of Oxfordshire are owned by a man whose ancestors sent men to their deaths on battlefields or an organisation who has in the past laid claim to our souls. Nor do I like the fact that large parts of the civic infrastructure of some of our great cities were built on slave-trading profits - it doesn't mean I either have to remain out of Bristol, or be a supporter of slavery if I do go there.

Neither make it okay for such compulsion to continue, or for it to be prejudiced as in this case by overt and public supporters of the cause being the ones who will decide whether those who may have issues with it can have their day in court.

There should be a public enquiry, simple as that. No "decision" is necessary, unless that is, all outstanding issues can be resolved mutually and without compulsion before hand. That should be the only way in which the state can predate (to use a more euphemistic word if you don't like the truth of it - "theft" or "stealing"), if it ever ought to be able to do, on others or their property.

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