Delays To Opening Makes Station A ‘Laughing Stock’
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the sub-heading.
Residents of Winslow are frustrated a new railway station completed over a year ago has still not opened.
These three introductory paragraphs add detail to the article.
A local councillor said it had been due to open in the Buckinghamshire town in December 2025 but there had been a “comedy of errors”, including a row over who will control the opening and closing of carriage doors.
Diana Blamires, who sits on the town council, said the local community was “obviously furious” and “it makes Winslow station a laughing stock”.
In a statement, Chiltern Railways – responsible for operating services between Oxford and Milton Keynes – said no date for the opening had yet been confirmed.
My feeling is that this project has been badly affected by two many adverse factors.
- A lack of overall leadership at the top of the project.
- Too many changes of Government in the UK.
- Are all these governments committed to the project?
- The uncertainty about the Aylesbury Spur, which I wrote about in East-West Rail: Aylesbury Spur.
- The inability to reach a sensible compromise on route through Bedford, with the large number of Nimbys in the area.
- I used to live near Newmarket and their ideas for the town will arise the anger of the horse-racing industry.
- The theme-park I wrote about in ‘Rollercoasters In My Back Yard’: Welcome To Universal Studios Bedford, hasn’t exactly helped.
- Stories like East West Rail: Could A New Rail Link ‘Tear Apart’ A Village?, don’t help.
The planning for East West Rail hasn’t been good
But another story on the BBC, which is entitled How The Elizabeth Line Has Changed Reading, has to my mind shown up the poor quality of the planning for the East West Rail.
This Is the sub-heading.
Since the Elizabeth Line opened in May 2022 it has become the UK’s busiest rail service with an estimated 750 million passenger journeys.
And this is the first paragraph.
The line provides a direct service from Reading into central London, but after years of planning and delays is the Berkshire town finally feeling the benefits of an additional connection to the capital?
Are Bicester, Bletchley, Milton Keynes, Bedford and other places going to feel a similar effect to Reading, because the railway track layouts say that if Reading gets a boost from the Elizabeth Line, then they will get one from East West Rail!
The Reading/Oxford area is where the East West and Elizabeth Lines make contact and I predict, that if in the future, you want a machine to test the strength of jelly, this will be the place, where you will go to get one invented.
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