Read the Maximising East West Rail prospectus
The opportunity East West Rail presents is about so much more than new train services on 80-odd miles of track. East West Rail can transcend expectations of what infrastructure can unlock for our economy, environment and society: but only if we – collectively – enable this to happen.
East West Rail must be the catalyst for a far wider integrated, connected transport corridor, offering superb door-to-door connectivity to and from stations. Alongside this, the Oxford-Cambridge section can be used as the foundation for realising the Northampton-Milton Keynes-Aylesbury-High Wycombe-Old Oak Common rail corridor; and a coast-to-coast main line from Bristol through to Ipswich and Norwich.
At the same time, there are opportunities to use delivery of East West Rail to supercharge a regional investment corridor, innovation corridor, skills corridor, nature corridor, digital corridor, and so on. Creating a fully integrated ‘corridor of corridors’, much more than the sum of their individual parts, to realise the ambitions for the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor.
That’s why England’s Economic Heartland has been working with government, local partners, East West Railway Company, the Pan Regional Partnership, Science Supercluster Board and Oxford to Cambridge Universities Group to explore how East West Rail can supercharge the ambitions of the region.
You can read more about this work in our new Maximising East West Rail prospectus, which sets out the initial programme of work being progressed by EEH and its partners (some of which is funded as part of Government’s ‘East West Rail legacy funding).
Agreed by our Board in March 2025, the prospectus provides the framework for a bold future that puts our region’s communities, lifestyle, environment and economic strengths at the forefront of what we do.