HOW WILL ST ALBANS BE AFFECTED BY NEW HIGH SPEED RAIL LINK PLANS? (St Albans Liberal Democrats)

St Albans Liberal Democrats <info@stalbanslibdems.org.uk>

HOW WILL ST ALBANS BE AFFECTED BY NEW HIGH SPEED RAIL LINK PLANS?

October 30, 2008 1:33 PM

Sandy and Nick Clegg at St Albans City Train Station earlier this year discussing commuter concerns.

Is it time for a brand new approach to the way major infrastructure projects are handled?

A new north-south rail link looks on the cards with the Government announcement today that they are to consider a brand new high speed rail link from St Pancras to the north following the recent Conservative commitment to construct such a link.

"It looks more and more likely that a new rail line will be built - either a revolutionary Maglev or a more traditional high speed link like the Channel Tunnel Rail Link," said Sandy Walkington, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for St Albans.

"Liberal Democrats have long supported the construction of high speed rail lines. I welcome the fact that all the parties now seem to have been converted to the benefits of shifting transport from air and road to rail.

"But we now urgently need to know the potential impact on St Albans and its countryside. With the Midland Main Line and the West Coast Main Line already passing through the constituency and the East Coast Main Line only just over the boundary, it seem likely that we will be smack in the path of any new rail route out of St Pancras unless there is makes a huge diversion to the east.

"This will have absolutely massive implications for our city and for local home-owners as different routes are debated and discussed. It will totally dwarf the planning blight caused by the Railfreight Terminal proposals, where local residents could not sell their homes. It will also have a substantial environmental impact on our countryside - visually (particularly if the Maglev concept is taken up with a magnetic track raised on concrete piers) but also from the noise of high speed trains.

"None of these is a reason not to proceed. High speed rail is certainly preferable to airport runway expansion, it is far more environmentally sustainable," Sandy Walkington said. "But they are reasons why we need an urgent debate about how these sorts of major strategic infrastructure proposals are taken forward.

"We could do well to follow the French example and offer affected property-owners an uplift on the market value of their property if it is to be compulsorily purchased or is otherwise affected. The current penny-pinching British approach means that compulsory purchase at district valuer prices rarely even compensates people for the actual value of their homes. It makes local opposition and long drawn out, hugely expensive public inquiries inevitable. Then we need an accelerated public inquiry process to minimise the period of uncertainty. And there must be re-assurance on how the impacts of construction work are handled and what will be done to mitigate train noise.

"St Albans always seems to be in the eye of the storm. We have the M25, the M10 and the current M1 widening. We cannot help our strategic positioning. But we need reassurance that the Government of whatever political persuasion will take seriously any locally negative impacts of this kind of infrastructure build, and offer some radical thinking."