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Hertfordshire Rail Strategy

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Hertfordshire Rail Strategy Hertfordshire Rail Strategy Draft Report - 02 April 2015 Hertfordshire County Council Hertfordshire Rail Strategy Draft | 2 April 2015 This report takes into account the particular instructions and requirements of our client. It is not intended for and should not be relied upon by any third party and no responsibility is undertaken to any third party. Job number 233237-77 Ove Arup & Partners Ltd 13 Fitzroy Street London W1T 4BQ United Kingdom www.arup.com Document Verification Job title Hertfordshire Rail Strategy Job number 233237-77 Document title File reference Document ref Revision Date Filename Herts Rail Strategy - Rail Strategy Report – draft.docx Draft 2 7 Feb Description Draft report 2015 Prepared by Checked by Approved by Rupert Dyer Name Tim Pike Stefan Sanders Stephen Bennett Signature Draft 27 Filename March Description Second draft with tracked changes following HCC comments 2015 Prepared by Checked by Approved by Rupert Dyer Name Tim Pike Stefan Sanders Stephen Bennett Signature Draft 2 Apr Filename 2015.04.02.Draft HCC Rail Strategy.docx 2015 Description Formatting updated following HCC tracked changes Prepared by Checked by Approved by Rupert Dyer Name Tim Pike Stefan Sanders Stephen Bennett Signature Filename Description Prepared by Checked by Approved by Name Signature Issue Document Verification with Document | Draft | 2 April 2015 \\GLOBAL.ARUP.COM\LONDON\PTG\ICL-JOBS\233000\233237-77 HERTS RAIL STRATEGY SCOPING STUDY\4 INTERNAL PROJECT DATA\4-05 ARUP REPORTS\06 RAIL STRATEGY REPORT\2015.04.02.REVISED DRAFT FOLLOWING COMMENTS\2015.04.02.DRAFT HCC RAIL STRATEGY.DOCX Hertfordshire County Council Hertfordshire Rail Strategy Contents Page Executive Summary 1 1 Introduction 8 1.1 Background 8 1.2 Approach 9 2 Objectives and Industry Timescales 10 2.1 Rail Development Objectives for Hertfordshire 10 2.2 Rail Industry Timescales 13 3 Methodology 15 3.1 Rail Strategy Issues 15 3.2 Conditional Outputs 21 3.3 Development of Interventions 25 3.4 Intervention Sifting 28 3.5 Rail Strategy Development 31 4 The Rail Strategy for Hertfordshire 34 4.1 West Anglia Main Line 35 4.2 East Coast Main Line 41 4.3 Midland Main Line 51 4.4 West Coast Main Line 56 4.5 London to Aylesbury Line (including underground/overground lines) 60 4.6 Orbital (East – West) Movement Within the County 65 4.7 Access to International Airports 70 4.8 HS2 Opportunities 72 4.9 Station Facilities, Station Access and Train Facilities 72 4.10 Freight 74 5 Strategic Priorities 76 5.1 Strategic Priorities 76 5.2 Top Priorities 83 5.3 Action Plan 86 5.4 Implementing the Strategy 90 | Draft | 2 April 2015 \\GLOBAL.ARUP.COM\LONDON\PTG\ICL-JOBS\233000\233237-77 HERTS RAIL STRATEGY SCOPING STUDY\4 INTERNAL PROJECT DATA\4-05 ARUP REPORTS\06 RAIL STRATEGY REPORT\2015.04.02.REVISED DRAFT FOLLOWING COMMENTS\2015.04.02.DRAFT HCC RAIL STRATEGY.DOCX Hertfordshire County Council Hertfordshire Rail Strategy Appendices Appendix A Stakeholders Appendix B Disused Rail Lines | Draft | 2 April 2015 \\GLOBAL.ARUP.COM\LONDON\PTG\ICL-JOBS\233000\233237-77 HERTS RAIL STRATEGY SCOPING STUDY\4 INTERNAL PROJECT DATA\4-05 ARUP REPORTS\06 RAIL STRATEGY REPORT\2015.04.02.REVISED DRAFT FOLLOWING COMMENTS\2015.04.02.DRAFT HCC RAIL STRATEGY.DOCX Hertfordshire County Council Hertfordshire Rail Strategy Executive Summary Introduction Transport, including rail, has and will continue to play a key role in maintaining Hertfordshire as a place where people want to live and work. Recent and emerging national and local strategies, together with forecast population trends, point to the continuation of historical growth in Hertfordshire and neighbouring areas, with ever increasing pressures on the county’s existing transport system. Central government projections indicate that the strategic road and rail networks will become increasingly congested if nothing, or even a minimum, is done. The Hertfordshire Rail Strategy is therefore required to ensure that the railway in Hertfordshire can support economic growth and development by agreeing investment priorities for the next fifteen to twenty years and beyond. It sets the strategic framework against which decisions regarding future franchises and investment in key elements of infrastructure can be identified and prioritised. Specifically, the strategy will be used to influence the rail industry’s strategy development process, such as Network Rail’s Long Term Planning Process, and ensure that conditional outputs feed through into key documents such as the Government’s Initial Industry Plan (2016) and High Level Output Specification (HLOS) for Control Period 6 (2019-2024), which is due to be published during summer 2017. It will also inform the specifications for all of the local rail franchises when they are retendered. Arup was appointed by Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) in March 2014 to undertake the Hertfordshire Rail Strategy study. The objective for the study was to update and refresh HCC’s existing Rail Strategy published in 2011. This document is the Hertfordshire Rail Strategy Report, the main deliverable from the study. The report is informed by a suite of technical reports1, which are referenced in this report and should be consulted for further details and evidence. Approach and Objectives A high-level strategic approach has been developed for this study. The strategy does not develop detailed options, rather it identifies potential interventions that the County Council and its partners can either develop directly or can support third parties to develop. The initial task of the study was to identify the rail development objectives for Hertfordshire. These were identified through review of relevant planning and policy documents and internal officer discussion. The four development objectives for rail in Hertfordshire are: 1. Competitiveness; 2. Economic Growth; 3. Environment and Sustainability; and 4. Population Growth. 1 Baseline Report, Conditional Outputs Technical Note, Interventions List Technical Note, Options Sifting Technical Note. | Draft | 2 April 2015 Page 1 \\GLOBAL.ARUP.COM\LONDON\PTG\ICL-JOBS\233000\233237-77 HERTS RAIL STRATEGY SCOPING STUDY\4 INTERNAL PROJECT DATA\4-05 ARUP REPORTS\06 RAIL STRATEGY REPORT\2015.04.02.REVISED DRAFT FOLLOWING COMMENTS\2015.04.02.DRAFT HCC RAIL STRATEGY.DOCX Hertfordshire County Council Hertfordshire Rail Strategy The objective for the study is to identify proposals for strategic investment in rail to meet these objectives, which the County Council, working with partners, can plan and deliver. It is important to understand that rail industry planning timescales are long. Each Control Period (the period over which the Office of Rail Regulation sets regulatory targets, income and costs for Network Rail) lasts five years. Whilst this is good for the industry, in that it can plan with some certainty of funding for that period, it means that new infrastructure schemes often have to be planned with more than five year lead times. This highlights the importance of having a rail strategy to inform this long term planning process. The approach and industry timescales are presented in Chapter 2, including the LTP4 Vision work that is taking place in conjunction with the Rail Strategy. Key Issues and Themes Baseline analysis and stakeholder consultation was undertaken to identify the key issues that will impact on achieving the development objectives in Hertfordshire. A number of key stakeholders were consulted throughout the development of the rail strategy to obtain views on the key issues for rail in the county. The key themes identified during the baselining stage of the study are: rail plays a very important role in the Hertfordshire economy; a few key rail stations in the county are dominant, particularly for travel to London; there is a lack of good orbital (east-west) rail links in Hertfordshire; there are issues with station and train facilities that affect the passenger experience of rail in the county; rail is an important component of the Hertfordshire transport network in providing mobility and accessibility; rail will need to accommodate increased travel demand in future; a number of Hertfordshire’s rail lines are forecast to be over capacity by 2031; and a number of rail projects are committed or planned that will transform rail travel in the region in the next 10-15 years. Detailed issues have also been identified by line and these can also be found in the ‘Baseline Report’. Overarching themes that occur over a number of lines include: capacity constraints and bottlenecks on lines; peak time overcrowding on key services; highway congestion on major roads; strong projected population, employment and housing growth; low frequencies and slow journey times from key stations; gaps in suburban and long distance provision; and poor connectivity between key Hertfordshire towns. | Draft | 2 April 2015 Page 2 \\GLOBAL.ARUP.COM\LONDON\PTG\ICL-JOBS\233000\233237-77 HERTS RAIL STRATEGY SCOPING STUDY\4 INTERNAL PROJECT DATA\4-05 ARUP REPORTS\06 RAIL STRATEGY REPORT\2015.04.02.REVISED DRAFT FOLLOWING COMMENTS\2015.04.02.DRAFT HCC RAIL STRATEGY.DOCX Hertfordshire County Council Hertfordshire Rail Strategy The rail strategy issues are presented in full in Chapter 3. Conditional Outputs and Interventions Conditional outputs for the Hertfordshire Rail Strategy have been developed strictly on an evidence-led basis to address the issues identified in the baselining stage. This clearly sets out Hertfordshire’s aspirations for the level of rail services it needs to meet the overarching
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