“Mind The Gap,” the Infrastructure Jigsaw of the Ox Cam Corridor

It was with keen interest that we listened to Chancellor’s announcement yesterday reinforcing the Government’s recognition that infrastructure and investment underpins the growth of the UK economy. As a planning and urban design practice based in Milton Keynes, and with live projects for both the public and private sector running throughout what was previously referred to as the Arc, we particularly welcomed the renewed commitment to an Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor as the canvas upon which ‘Europe’s Silicon Valley’ is to be brought to life.

We know the geography of this corridor intimately. The need to support the economic growth of this corridor is undisputed, not only at Oxford/Didcot and Central Cambridge but along its entirety. The Government now recognising the ability of this area to accommodate New Town scale growth to support economic growth hubs is positive news.

Back in 2017, as part of the National Infrastructure Forum Conference, we posited the scale of growth opportunities that might be unlocked in the Arc by co-ordinating the planning and design of east-west infrastructure. We mapped those ‘propitious places’ where the coming together of green, blue and grey infrastructure offered the opportunity to do things differently and at scale.  Today, we dusted down that plan. Little has altered; the ‘good places to grow’ we mapped in 2017 remain so.

East vs West

What has changed is that the eastern half of the Corridor now benefits from co-ordinated strategic rail and road commitments (road under construction, railway and stations committed):

• Greater Cambridge, already committed to planned strategic growth within and at new settlement locations outside the City, can continue to protect the principles of its Green Belt through its ‘hub and spoke’ settlement pattern, but can add rail connectivity to its guided bus offer and MRT ambitions.

• The potential of the oft-quoted new places such as Tempsford can be unlocked, where road and rail have the ability to converge and create interchanges, ensuring people can easily move between road based and rail-based transport services.

• Growth within the Marston Vale between Bedford and Milton Keynes can be better co-ordinated, with sustainable rail travel opportunities properly integrating planned homes and jobs such as at Marston Valley and Universal Studios, all set within the Community Forest, a potential exemplar for a strategic green and blue infrastructure framework for growth.

• The economic influence of Milton Keynes as a ‘fast growth’ city for both jobs and homes, and a strategic interchange for north south rail, and road links with an ambitious long term growth Strategy, can extend more easily east and west along the rail corridor.

The western half of the corridor stands to see the benefits of investment earliest, with East West rail services opening this summer. However, in stark contrast to the east:

• Other than at Bletchley and Bicester there is no planned growth at scale for places benefitting from enhanced rail services. New stations, crossings, bridges and tunnels have been built or improved, yet for the most part sit in splendid isolation.

• With no plans to align strategic road improvements with East West Rail (EWR) west of Milton Keynes, Bicester will remain a bottleneck and the A34 from the M40 to Oxford is already beyond capacity, potentially hampering economic growth of key economic foci such as the research and innovation offer at Harwell.

• A New Town at Calvert, at the intersection of the HS2 and EWR rail lines was mooted between 2017 and 2021 as part of the analysis underpinning the National Infrastructure Commission’s work , but without connectivity to both rail and strategic road infrastructure this will remain a piece of placemaking theory.

• The full potential for new or expanded places at Winslow and Bicester is stifled by constraints on the road network, and failing to explore the strategic connectivity options around Oxford will likely stifle the full economic potential in and around the City.

We recognise the challenges around transport links quoted by Reeves, and these have undoubtedly impacted economic growth. This is compounded by a series of ‘failures to commit’ to the preparation of strategic growth and infrastructure plans more widely covering the ‘grey’, ‘green’ and ‘blue’ infrastructure within growth areas, including in the corridor since the removal of the layer of regional and subregional planning in 2010.

We urge Ms Reeves to consider how the economic return on investment in transport and services within the Growth Corridor could be cranked up a notch. Firstly by the strategic integration of land use and transport plans more generally, unlocking the interplay of green blue and grey infrastructure in its broadest sense to realise greater benefits. Secondly by extending government support for and investment in local ambitions for intermodal transport connectively, such as Milton Keynes’ plans for a city-scale MRT network to fully capture the local economic benefit of investment such as East West Rail.