Rail plan will improve performance

7:15am Tuesday 8th April 2008

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PROPOSALS to reinstate double track on the Cotswold Line through west Oxfordshire are so important they have been highlighted in Network Rail's strategic business plan, one of the company's top managers told Charlbury commuters on Friday.

Network Rail plans to put back a second track on the route from a point between Finstock and Charlbury as far as Ascott-under-Wychwood, where it would join the existing double track section via Shipton and Kingham to Moreton, in Gloucestershire.

Another reinstated section of double track would then run from Moreton to Evesham.

Speaking at a meeting in Charlbury's War Memorial Hall, organised by Witney MP and Conservative Party leader David Cameron, Network Rail's western route director Dave Ward said that the project had been ranked alongside upgrade work on the key East Coast route, linking London and Scotland, because it would bring a step change in train performance across a much wider area.

The extra double track would cut delays to Cotswold services, in turn reducing knock-on problems on several other routes, especially the main line linking London with Reading and Didcot.

Mr Ward said: "Putting the capacity, performance and economic benefits together makes a good case for the work."

He added: "Between now and the first week in June, all who feel passionately about this need to undertake some lobbying on the potential benefits."

The plan has been submitted to the Office for Rail Regulation, which will decide in June whether to approve funding to implement it. If the ORR gives the green light, track work could start next January and be completed by May 2010.

Mr Cameron said: "It's hugely exciting to hear this. I will get together all the MPs along the Cotswold Line to write to the Rail Minister and push the case before June."

Asked why Network Rail was not proposing reinstating double track on the entire route, Mr Ward said: This scheme gives 95 per cent of the benefits of that, at a third of the cost of full redoubling.

He said that when the Oxford area was due for resignalling, in 2014-15, then it would be possible to look at redoubling the section from Finstock to Wolvercot junction.

The Cotswold Line Promotion Group, which represents passengers on the route, has campaigned for 30 years for the reinstatement of double track, which was removed from much of the route in 1971.

Andrew Wilkins, from Long Hanborough, is the CLPG's treasurer. He welcomed the news and said: "We would say this is a step in the right direction. Improved infrastructure is the only way to get over the current reliability problems.

Also at the meeting were top managers from First Great Western, who reported on efforts to improve services on the route since a similar meeting held in January.

Mike Carroll, the firm's Thames Valley route director, who admitted in January that the standard of service was "unacceptable" said that although the Cotswold Line was still the least punctual FGW service, the number of trains running on time had risen from 61 per cent at the start of the year to 79 per cent last month.

He said: "We're encouraged that we have improved and met commitments we made in January, but are acutely aware that there's still a long way to go.

"We have got momentum now and we will keep that momentum going."

However, the decision not to completely redouble the line has come under fire from Vale MP Peter Luff, who said that delays to trains between Worcester and Evesham would still have a considerable knock-on effect on trains travelling in the opposite direction.