East West Rail (EWR) undertook a consultation on its proposals for the route its railway will take through Bedford Borough. The consultation closed on 9 June 2021.
After consideration of all the EWR proposals and listening to residents’ views, the Council formulated its response which was debated at an informal meeting of Full Council on 2 June 2021.
Our formal response to the East West Rail consultation can be found here.
You can read more about our response to earlier consultations on East West Rail here.
Technical review of options
Bedford Borough Council commissioned SLC Rail, specialists in rail projects, to conduct a technical review of this section of the route in response to EWR's current consultation proposing six tracks to run north of the station.
The report looked at options around the East West Rail route north of Bedford Midland (PDF) has shown that the service could run effectively using just the existing four lines, and avoid the need to demolish any homes in the Poets area.
Public meetings
We held two virtual public meetings to hear views from residents and businesses on what they wished to see in the Council’s response to the 2021 East West Rail consultation. These meetings were held on:
- Wednesday 12 May from 12pm - 2pm
- Thursday 13 May from 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Recordings of the public meetings can be found here: (12 May) and here (13 May).
We asked members of the public to submit questions for the meetings, not all of which could be answered during the meetings.
You can view questions from the public here.
Written answers to all questions have been provided. We have grouped the questions into 12 categories according to their subject matter. Answers to the questions can be found here:
- Category1 Q&A Choice of corridor E
- Category 2 Q&A Route options within Corridor E
- Category 3 Q&A Rural environments and villages
- Category 4 Q&A Demolition of houses in Poets etc
- Category 5 Q&A Freight train usage
- Category 6 Q&A Roads, traffic and parking
- Category 7 Q&A Costs and who pays
- Category 8 Q&A Electrification of the line
- Category 9 Q&A Disruption during Construction
- Category 10 Q&A Plans for Bedford Midland Station
- Category 11 Q&A Local stations, St John’s, Wixams, etc.
- Category 12 Q&A Other
Each of the categories will be uploaded as they become available.
East West Rail public meeting video presentation
You can now view the presentation by the Chief Officer for Planning, Infrastructure and Development in relation to the East West Rail Consultation as delivered at the recent EWR public meetings.
