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Nigel Rennie from Binfield said: "The idea of having a direct link to Heathrow would be wonderful, but there is the minor problem of no rail line. "
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What Bracknell Thinks: Should Bracknell be included in Crossrail?

By Hugh Fort
May 10, 2012

Members of Bracknell Forest Council have vowed to fight for the borough to be included in the high-speed Crossrail project.

Terminals for the route, which will take commuters into the centre of London in just half an hour, include Maidenhead.

‘We must be part of Crossrail plan’

It is thought the project could boost the UK economy by around £42 billion.

We asked our panel whether Bracknell should be included and what they thought of the town’s current rail network, which takes about an hour to get to London.

Nigel Rennie from Binfield: “What a curious council we have. Is the plan to divert a branch line from Reading via Bracknell to Maidenhead, or perhaps we could re-employ the suspended bus service to take passengers from Bracknell to Maidenhead to catch the train?

“The train service we have is adequate albeit heavily overcrowded at rush hour. The idea of having a direct link to Heathrow would be wonderful, but there is the minor problem of no rail line.

“It would be more real world to improve our existing station that gives the appearance of a temporary afterthought from the 1960s.

“Any high speed train would blow away the loose-laid slabs that remind the traveller of crazy paving gone wrong.

“Bracknell has the potential of being a nice rural town. It was an attractive market town in the not too distant past, which was transformed in the 1960s into a new town, now it is more akin to a ghost town.

“I doubt it will ever become the vast metropolis that this council has set its sights on”

Jo Illot from Crowthorne: “Bracknell should be included because with the amount of business in and coming to the area it will be a great benefit to business personnel travelling to London for meetings etcetera.

“I think this could bring in more businesses to fill the enormous amount of empty office space in the town – with a greater commute option and hopefully the redevelopment, I think it would help no end.

“I think the current train link is shockingly slow... over an hour and it gets extremely crowded at rush hour times.

Jonathan Greenyer, an artist and author from Winkfield: “High speed links to Bracknell will significantly help business and if they do something good in Bracknell town centre after demolishing it, it will boost trade, there too. Make train ticket prices fair and simple too.

"Why is it that if trains run anyway whether they are full or empty; a ticket can be 10 times more expensive bought on the day of travel, yet there are many seats still available?”

Mark Robson of the Insight Group in Bracknell: “Bracknell Council should have been involved in this before.

“Maidenhead have involvement and within the year they will see a reduced Maidenhead to London time with a knock- on investment in housing by commuters that want to spend less time travelling, which in turn will revitalise the town centre as retailers look to capitalise on the new wealth coming to the area.

"The current rail link from Bracknell to London is embarrassing because of its tediousness – 60 minutes to travel to London?”

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Most recent user comments 5 of 5

@A|Tell - as I said in the sister article to this, Airtrack did not get canned in favour of CrossRail. CrossRail was already being built when Airtrack was last discussed. Most of the routes proposed for Airtrack are completely separate to those for CrossRail. They only meet at Heathrow. No need to confuse the topic.

mavdo, Wokingham
16/05/2012 at 15:22

Its a shame that Airtrack got cancelled in favour of Crossrail. It could have brought benefits to the line. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathrow_Airtrack

there were worries over traffic problems caused by running extra trains across level crossings in Mortlake and Egham. http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/6010

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13042740

http://bracknellblog.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/heathrow-airtrack-more-trains-through.html

AlTell, Bracknell
16/05/2012 at 14:33

It is insane that the council is wasting money on trying to be part of cross rail, when it is obvious that it never will be, the amount of line needed to link to maidenhead is huge and would make cross rail be a strait line through london with a huge 90 degree diversion about 20% of the length to Bracknell.

Why is the council wasting our money on this instead of keeping youth centres open?

Wiztwas, Binfield
11/05/2012 at 08:44

Aside from Mr Rennie, this is another bunch of people who clearly don't understand what crossrail is. It is NOT a high speed service, and it stops at Maidenhead from where there is no direct rail LINE to Bracknell let alone a rail service, plus the electrification is different to that proposed on the Paddington line so whole new trains would be needed unless you plan to build a brand new rail line direct between the two places. This is all prohibitively expensive. It will be faster and cheaper to link to Maidenhead by bus.

But the real problem they seem to fail to grasp is that the Reading to Waterloo line does not have the capability or capacity to host a high speed service like the Paddington one does. Firstly, the trains themselves can't travel any faster due to fairly low speed limits - 60mph North of Feltham, and 70mph on the rest, plus tougher restrictions through every station, even if not stopping, and at tight bends and junctions, like the 20mph bend at Staines and the 30mph junction at Wokingham etc. Yes, it take less time if the trains didn't stop so often, but even stopping nowhere after Bracknell, a train with continuous green signals could only make it in about 40-45 mins.

Secondly, there are only two lines on this route for most of the journey. Trains already run along them about every 5-7 minutes with extra ones added at peak. You can't just run another train and say it will overtake the slower services unless such a thing is timetabled to places where this is possible, and there aren't many of them (eg Twickenham to St Margarets Northbound only and lines North of Putney). So there isn't the capacity to provide this unless at least one of the other services to the likes of Weybridge, Hounslow loop, Wimbledon loop or Windsor are reduced. Unless there is a bigger gap, a "fast" service will be held up behind one of these at some point, and the benefit of it disappears.

I agree that Wokingham and Bracknell would benefit from a faster train to London, but the complications in providing that service are immense and belittled or ignored by commentators such as this.

mavdo, Wokingham
10/05/2012 at 14:05

It is stupid that Crossrail doesn't go as far as Reading which is a major interchange station. This would obviously benefit Bracknell, in particular people who want to use the intermediate stops. However Crossrail is not a high speed link and trains will stop at about a dozen stations between Maidenhead and Paddington. The advantage of it is being able to proceed into central London and beyond without changing on to the tube or buses.