The Rail Freight Group has released a document about East West Rail, detailing how freight services can help the proposed new railway become the catalyst for economic development along the Oxford-Cambridge corridor.
The paper says that rail freight could supply most of the construction materials needed to build an estimated 85,000 homes planned for the corridor over the next 20 years. Each freight train would move the equivalent of 30 houses’ worth of material, which would need up to 75 freight lorries to move by road.
To demonstrate this potential, the policy paper shows where rail freight is already successfully being used, and identifies sites for possible freight facilities on the line.
It also warns that this cannot happen on EWR unless freight is planned from the outset, and consideration given to different ways of funding the line and its future operation.