An interesting piece of research shared by the Northumberland Gazette shows that the town of Blyth, Northumberland may have missed out on around £13m of economic benefit.
The article builds upon work by the World of Railways, which looked into eight specific stations and through an economic model attempts to estimate an economic cost to the loss of rail connectivity.
As can be seen above, taking Blyth at £12.98m, and Ashington at £7.55m would mean a lost economic benefit together of around £20.53m by simple addition of the two figures.
In my own view, I think that the true figure would have likely been much higher, especially as other towns such as Bedlington were omitted from the analysis but would have clearly benefitted from the station remaining open.
For towns so heavily affected by the loss of heavy industries like mining, ship building and breaking, and even production of Aluminium in recent years, £20m of economic benefits (and almost certainly more if towns such as Newbiggin, Bedlington, Guide Post, and more were included) would certainly have eased the blow with the loss of these industries.
‘Real’ figures could be much higher
Although this is pure speculation on my part, I think the above assessment is probably a very, very conservative one, as the 2016 Tall Ships Race being hosted at Blyth, attended by around 500,000 people was on its own estimated to have had an ecomomic benefit to Northumberland of £13.5m on its own.
If Blyth has been connected to the rail network at the time of the 2016 Tall Ships event, especially with the proposed Northumberland Coast Loop connections offering direct links from North Northumberland and Scotland to the town, it is likely that events such as this may have had even higher attendance and local spending figures, further boosting its impact.
Obviously it is impossible to know a precise figure as had a rail link survived, it may not have had the fares set as low as they are today, probably being more comparable with those on the ECML at Morpeth and Cramlington, and the service patterns may have been different too; would it have been an hourly service or perhaps less for periods of time?
Nevertheless, it is a very interesting piece of research that has been carried out by World of Railways, and it will be interesting to see actual data analysis on the economic impact of the Northumberland Line in the years to come.
It would be also immensely interesting to see if any economic analysis has, or could be done to assess the relative benefit of being a town with a station on an InterCity route (such as Morpeth) compares to one on only a suburban branch such as Blyth/Ashington.
InterCity to Blyth?
My intuition would be that the economic benefit to Morpeth of being on an InterCity route (ECML) is a major positive to the economy of the town, and therefore that the Northumberland Coast Loop route would bring major benefits to Blyth and surrounding towns by placing it on a secondary InterCity route between Newcastle and Edinburgh.
Being on an InterCity route would really put Blyth on the map as it were, and could help existing businesses based in and around Blyth to thrive with easier national links, as well as helping to attract new ones by being just a single seat trip to Edinburgh or possibly even further afield beyond Newcastle.
Could an operator such as Grand Central for example extend their Sunderland – London services north to Edinburgh via Blyth, giving direct links not only to the Scottish capital, but also Wearside, Teesside, York, and London? The northern section of that route would give a ‘A19 corridor rail service‘ along the North Sea coast connecting the many industrial port towns en-route together and giving easier access by rail to places like Nissan which is a major employer for people in SE Northumberland who otherwise drive through the Tyne Tunnel.
As always, please feel free to drop a comment below with your thoughts!
