Supporting a better infrastructure is fine until it is your house that they want to demolish
What is dominating politics where I live at the moment is nothing to do with the pandemic or Brexit but about the planned East West railway – an overall project that was announced by Chris Grayling when he was TransportSec in 2017.
Most of the route between Oxford and Cambridge uses existing tracks but for the central section a completely new line is going to have to be built and working out exactly where that will run impacts a lot of people. Quite near where I live more than 100 houses will need to be compulsorily purchased and then demolished and one of those was bought just five days before the new owner received notification that it was going to be affected.
Almost every property in many of the areas being considered are displaying posters like those above and until the final alignment is agreed thousands of people are going going to struggle if they want to move.
More than half a dozen routes are part of the current consultation and this has set village arguing with neighbouring villages like in the pics above.
This is all going to take a lot of time and, of course, a lot of disruption during construction. We are told that work will begin in 2025 and the line, and all the benefits we will get from it, won’t be fully operating until 2030.
Of course these things happen all the time with new infrastructure developments. New rail lines are complex and take longer than new roads.
As a resident I’m delighted that by 2030 we’ll have several services ian hour to Oxford and Cambridge as well as London and the south coast. I’m just glad my house isn’t on one of the routes being considered.