Wisbech Access Strategy Consultation

access_study

Please take part in this consultation response.

Fenland District Council are consulting on their Wisbech Access Strategy which describes road improvements crossing the route of the railway which would prevent the railway reopening into the centre of the town:

http://www.fenland.gov.uk/wisbechaccess

This has come out of work done by the Greater Cambridge Greater Peterborough Local Enterprise Partnership.

The railway is mentioned in the ‘Links to other projects’ document which says the reopening is:

  1. supported by Cambridgeshire Country Council’s Long Term Transport Strategy, and has also been
  2. In June 2017 the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority approved a grant of £6.5million towards the WisbechGarden Town Project. This funding includes £3.2milion to deliver the next stage of the WisbechMarch railway line project.

However the ‘preferred package’ page:

http://www.fenland.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=14286

states “By linking Boleness Road and New Bridge Lane, the new road will permanently cut the railway line in this location. This means that it will not be possible for the Wisbech Rail Line and the new railway station to be north of the A47. The new station will have to be south of the A47, probably in the Redmoor Lane area.”

We ask everyone who supports the reopening of the railway to fill in the simple On-Line survey by Monday 27th November:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ZXVZ79M

and indicate they don’t support the draft strategy because there is no mention of rail in the preferred package options, but involves upgrading the road at the point which could obstruct a reopened railway from reaching the town centre. 

You can also back this up in the section by stating you “Disagree strongly” with the “Southern Access Road” and “Strongly disagree” with the recommendation for the short-term package.

The survey forces you to select a level of agreement for each part of the plan, so we can only suggest answering ‘Neutral’ to any others which you don’t have a view on.

We hope that large number of people doing this will wake up the District Council and LEP into putting rail into the strategy.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.