Opinion: Restoring Your Railway and the value of rail reopenings

Rail restorations will continue to power economic regeneration, says our Industry Insider.

Case studies where rail services have been restored demonstrate that when these reopenings are integrated into overall development plans for regeneration, a business case can be established and funding provided.

The pattern of employment and the location of essential services such as education and health provision have changed beyond recognition since the Beeching era closure programme.

Perhaps the starkest example is the coal mining communities, where a local population served the needs of a pit and had little requirement to travel elsewhere on a day-to-day basis.

There are similar characteristics with the decline of the steel industry and the closure of labour-intensive plants that has taken place over recent decades.

Hence the justification to provide access to employment and other essential services from Ebbw Vale to both Cardiff and Newport, where the passenger service was withdrawn in 1962, and the Airdrie-Bathgate line that once served many coal mines but lost its passenger services in 1956.

In England’s North East, driver training has started ahead of the reopening of a line linking Ashington and Blyth with Newcastle, although the reopening has been put back to this winter. The line has not seen passenger services since 1964, but was retained as a freight route.

In Scotland, rejoining the network this year has been the Levenmouth branch, which served a coal mining district. A link has been revived to Edinburgh after the withdrawal of passenger services in 1969 and cessation of freight services in 2001. The line reopened to passenger traffic in June.

In each of these cases, freight infrastructure remained in place, so a renewal to meet standards for passenger operation was possible for much more modest expenditure than if the means of way had been lost.

A similar economic pattern exists for the Borders Railway, where decline of the traditional wool industry resulted in high unemployment, creating a need to access jobs elsewhere in Edinburgh - particularly to alleviate social deprivation by developing a railhead at Tweedbank.

The service is provided using the alignment of the former Waverley route between Edinburgh and Carlisle, which closed in its entirety in 1969. The new terminus of the restored 35-mile section of the line is at a greenfield site that enables easy access for the surrounding region.

Restoring railways as a tool to combat road congestion in urban areas is a greater challenge.

The past closure of many routes that are seen as essential today prompted the creation of the Passenger Transport Authorities and their Executives. This brought significant investment - for example in Liverpool, where the Merseyrail network, much of it threatened by closure, was created by linking separate lines to an underground loop with stations that served the city centre.

Elsewhere, routes were converted to light rail operations using the formation of previous heavy rail infrastructure where services had been withdrawn - such as the former alignment between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, where Snow Hill station in the centre of Birmingham was repurposed together with the restoration of previously withdrawn services.

Local authorities that did not combine to form Passenger Transport Authorities have had to play catch-up ever since, although in the East Midlands a partnership approach resulted in restoring services between Nottingham and Mansfield, which at the time was the largest population centre in Britain without access to a rail service.

The concept of a combined authority headed by an elected Mayor is a key strand in current transport development, and is driving a new generation of projects such as bringing rail connectivity to Portishead and stations served by the proposed Mid-Cornwall Metro.

Such projects were conceived before the previous government’s Restoring Your Railway initiative, and can be expected to proceed using alternative funding such as drawing on the government’s Levelling Up fund.

The expansion of university education is another change, with a student population that would be unrecognisable to transport planners of an earlier era.

Providing accommodation is a significant constraint, and an unexpected development from the restoration of services to Okehampton is demand from the Exeter student population to rent local properties.

The use of Development Corporations to plan and deliver large-scale changes to employment and housing incorporates transport investment such as building the Docklands Light Railway, which used many of the closed rail routes that once served the Port of London.

Similarly, the growth of Milton Keynes has provided a stimulus for the East West Rail project that is restoring the former route between Oxford and Bletchley to reach Milton Keynes.

To support continuation of the EWR line to Cambridge, a new town is proposed centred on Tempsford, where there will be an interchange with the East Coast Main Line.

The route will also serve Comberton (an enlarged settlement that has poor transport connectivity), as a result of a new alignment that does not use the trackbed of the former Varsity line for this section.

Political parties have identified a levelling-up agenda that reflects concern about social deprivation, which exists as a result of decline in past sources of employment. Creating new rail journey opportunities that responds to this structural change is a lever that can improve poorly performing local economies.

Economists use the gross value added (GVA) measure as an indicator to identify areas where stimulus is needed to improve the level of household incomes, by providing rail services that allow a local population access to higher-paid jobs. This does not necessarily mean reopening a route, but rather upgrading existing infrastructure to enhance the timetable, by raising line speed and reducing signalling headways to allow faster and more frequent services.

The coastal towns in North Wales have significantly lower GVA ratings than the average, and this is an example of where the railway can be used to improve access to higher-paid employment in north-west England which is not possible with the existing timetable.

For rural lines, the standout ability to provide restoration is the heritage rail sector. These meet very different economic criteria by providing a visitor attraction that brings tourists to towns such as Pickering, Whitby and Minehead.

Rail travel to Whitby to experience the North Yorkshire Moors Railway has escalated to the point where the capacity of network services has had to be supplemented by coach connections from York.

Routes such as the Severn Valley Railway and the preserved lines in the West of England have also benefited employment, creating a market for local suppliers and a revival of engineering skills.