Our petition is due to finish on 5th October 2024, and presently stands at an amazing 730 signatures, but can YOU help it to reach 1000 before the deadline?
Please click here to view the Northumberland Coast Loop petition and add your support!
Thanks, RH.
Next year is Railway200, a celebration of 200 years since the opening of the Stockton and Darlington (S&D), widely viewed as the beginning of the ‘modern railway’.
However, there could be, as set out in this blog post, a case for Bedlington400+, and Tanfield 300 to tell the important story of more than 200 years of waggonway history building up to the opening of the S&D.
As set out in the above blog, railway history really started in North East England with Huntingdon Beaumont and his Bedlington Waggonways, technology he brought from his native Nottinghamshire, and led to the development of North East waggonways, pivotal to the development of the coalfield and the modern railways that spawned from waggonways.
Bedlington is soon again to become part of the national passenger network with the reopening of Bedlington Station due in 2025, alongside the wider Northumberland Line, which opens up a potential tourism opportunity.
If the Northumberland Coast Loop route is developed, it would put Bedlington on a direct through route between Edinburgh and Newcastle Upon Tyne, both major tourism centres in themselves, with options to extend beyond at either end for truly national visiting opportunities.
Bedlington rails, as one example were key to the success of the Stockton and Darlington, and the Railway200 celebrations focussing on this line, the story of Bedlington is also worth telling, and given its potentially easy access by rail from Newcastle, Edinburgh as wider UK, why not run special trains (railtours/scheeduled trains or a mix of both) to take tourists to this important rail site by rail? A connection from Darlington to Bedlington would be easily achievable, and could even use the ‘balloon loop’ layout from Newcastle, to Bedlington, to Morpeth to Newcastle to avoid need to reverse the train at the Bedlington end of the route.
Dial Cottage, the home of George Stephenson is also within easy reach of Northumberland Park station via the 352 North Tyne Rockets bus, and beyond Newcastle, trains continuing onto the Tyne Valley Line could access Wylam for George Stephenson’s Cottage (his place of birth), as well as Dunston for the Staiths and the Tanfield Railway (itself celebrating it’s 300th anniversary in 2025).
This could either be used for specific railtours (as per the two examples shown above) or as scheduled ‘ordinary’ trains just using the route to showcase the heritage of the area, alongside demonstrating the potential benefits of this route for improving local public transport.
If you’d like to support the Northumberland Coast Loop, please sign the petition here ahead of it closing on 5th October.
This recent article in the New Civil Engineer cites a campaign by Transport Action Network for the cancellation of the RIS2 road-building programme, which would include the dualling of the A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham.
In the document, the revised benefit/cost ratio (BCR) for the A1 scheme comes back at just 0.8, meaning for each £1 invested, a return of only 80p is expected. This gives the ‘upgrade’ a rating of ‘poor’ value for money. It also threatens areas of Ancient Woodlands.
Like many other organisations are now calling for, a national transport strategy needs to look at ALL modes of transport together, and investment into railways, active travel infrastructure and other forms of public transport often give a much better economic return, as well as actual reduction of emissions and road congestion.
As can be seen from the screenshot above, the A66 scheme would cost around £1.5bn with a BCR of 0.96, which means an ecomomic loss of approx £60,000,000; whilst the Portishead to Bristol rail scheme has a cost of £200m and a BCR of at least 2.0, meaning an economic gain of at least £200m above its cost.
Simple maths says that these investments are a bad idea.
The A1, taking the figure quoted above of £261.6m, and a BCR of 0.8 would mean an economic loss of £52,320,000 on this one scheme alone.
Road investment should be part of a wider national strategy, and schemes like the Northumberland Coast Loop (NCL) would likely have a much greater BCR (East Coast Main Line (ECML) schemes tend to have a BCR of approx 2.73).
Given that the A1 and the ECML/NCL routes are pretty much parallel routes between Newcastle and Berwick Upon Tweed, lets see them compared directly and what the economic returns would be?
I would like to call on our elected representatives such as local MP’s, North East Mayor Kim McGuinness and leader of Northumberland County Council Glen Sanderson to respond to this call for cancellation of the A1 scheme but to instead make significant investments into the ECML (and to investigate the potential of the Northumberland Coast Loop as an expansion of the soon to open Northumberland Line).
A recent Chronicle article sets out an apparent ‘huge desire’ from Northumberland residents to see the A1 dualled, but is there really such a huge call for it?
Going back to 8th March 2012, a petition by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, later MP for Berwick Upon Tweed to ‘DUAL THE A1 FROM MORPETH TO THE SCOTTISH BORDER‘ closed after six months of being open, having attracted only 624 signatures in those six months. Since then, there have been several promises by a range of Governments to dual sections of the road and none have come to fruition.
At the most recent election, it is also important to note that the winning candidate for the new North Northumberland seat, David Smith MP of Labour stood on a neutral platform for dualling the A1, while the former MP for Berwick, amongst other candidates stood for dualling, suggesting that the voters in North Northumberland don’t actually want the A1 dualled that strongly.
In contrast, the Northumberland Coast Loop petition, at the time of writing, has 697 signatures since its launch on 5th October 2023, which suggests stronger support for the Northumberland Coast Loop than dualling the A1.
During his passionate and well-delivered maiden speech on September 4th 2024, David Smith, MP for North Northumberland made multiple references to the East Coast Main Line which runs through his constituency, with major stations at Morpeth, Alnmouth and Berwick all recieving a mention, with its magnificent views of one of the most beautiful places in England, with not a single reference made to the A1.
Dualling the A1 should, perhaps be laid to rest as a project of the past, to meet our climate objectives as set out today in a speech by David Lammy from Kew Gardens, we surely cannot commit to dualling when CO² emissions of 1.44m tonnes would be attached to it?
The UK, and many other nations are increasingly moving to a green economy, manufacture of renewable energy infrastructure is a key part of the future for the Blyth Estuary area, surely the transport network serving that area should also be as green as possible?
The Northumberland Line is a welcome first step, but the Northumberland Coast Loop could be the next stage in better connectivity around a much wider area of Northumberland.
Based on strong evidence from the East Coast Mainline Authorities, expansion of the role of the ECML and connected lines is a much more assured path to economic growth, with figures from their document suggesting per £1 invested, it generates upto £2.73 in wider economic benefits (see image below).
The A1, by contrast, would bring far less investment back, and indeed risks a loss being made with a benefit-cost ratio as low as 0.8, which means for each £1 invested, it may result in as little as 80p returned.
If you’d like to support our petition before it closes, please visit it here and add you signature: Northumberland Coast Loop Petition.
This article from the Northumberland Gazette discusses the upcoming decoration of a 42m high Giant Redwood being decorated at Cragside this Christmas, probably the largest Christmas tree in the UK. Given that this very popular National Trust site generates many trips year round, but especially for what is likely to be a spectacular in-person Christmas event, sustainability of transport to it should be discussed.
A feature of the decoration of this tree is the low impact, with the cleanest possible power sources to light the tree and avoiding fumes. This is very fitting with the overall ‘green energy’ ethos of Cragside, which was developed by William and Margaret Armstrong; with William being a pioneer of clean energy, and who famously advocated for renewable energy sources, quite different from many of his peers at the height of the Victorian engineering age.
William Armstrong would, if he were alive today, arguably advocate for cleaner modes of transport for visitors to access Cragside, and this is actually within reasonable reach using existing technology today, it just needs a little bit more of a cohesive plan, which I’ll outline here.
Using Google Maps, a trip from a city such as Edinburgh to Cragside, using public transport as it stands could take as little as 2hrs 3mins (compared to 2hrs 8mins to drive), using the East Coast Main Line to Alnmouth Station, although this is very much like a ‘swiss cheese model’ of everything aligning up well, with a lot of variation at other journey times.
This highlights the need for a regular ‘drumbeat’ service (sometimes referred to as a ‘taktfahrplan’ or clockface schedule) on the both the East Coast Main Line and local buses to ensure trips such as this would have a consistent timing and not vary by up to an hour of additional travel time as can be seen below.
The fastest trip is selected below (2hrs 3mins overall) as perhaps the ideal route to follow (faster than driving)
While the above is good, it could be easily be improved by developing the bus connection. At present, it would mean boarding the X20 Max to Alnwick Bus Station, then transferring to the 471 to then reach Cragside, it works but it could be better.
The 471, rather than terminating in Alnwick Bus Station, could and arguably should be extended beyond Alnwick to Alnmouth Station. This would avoid the need to change buses, making it a ‘one change’ service, which improves the convenience of the service as a connection, while also having the additional benefit of better connectivity between Alnwick and Alnmouth stations, as an extended 471 could run alongside the X20 between Alnwick and Alnmouth.
This would, potentially be an extremely simple change to implement, but one that would make access to Cragside (as well as Rothbury) easier to access for distant places without use of cars, opening it up to more visitors (many people have no access to a car/unable to drive), as well as reducing issues like congestion or parking for vehicles, and would sit well with the sustainable aims of Cragside and the Armstrongs, and not far from the ‘green travel tips’ explored recently in the National Trust Magazine itself (Spring 2024).
Another recent article in the Northumberland Gazette raises concerns about dualling of the A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham potentially being cancelled once again.
In one of our recent blog posts, we set out the case for expanding the capacity of the East Coast Main Line (ECML) rather than dualling in detail, but in a nutshell here are the key arguments against the A1 and in favour of the ECML.
Economic
The benefit to cost ratio of dualling the A1 is in a range of 0.8 to 1.2, meaning for each £1 spent, you might expect somewhere between 80p and £1.20 in economic return. That means there is a real risk that you could actually lose money on the ‘investment’ into it, and at best you make a very modest return.
By comparison, figures from the ECMA (a consortium of local authorities along the East Coast Main Line) comissioned a study which stated that overall, for every £1 invested in the ECML, it generated a £2.73 economic return, nearly tripling what was originally invested.
The investment into the Northumberland Line is a clear example of railway investment benefitting an area already quite well served by dual carriageways (A189 Spine Road), with house builders such as Miller Homes stating this publically due to improved connections into Newcastle. The A189 has existed for decades, and the areas surrounding it have struggled economically in that time, the return of the railway is hopefully the beginning of a brighter future for the area, and in our view, is relatively easily expanded upin using existing lines.
Investing into the Hepscott Line for example, which links Pegswood and Bedlington together could allow a direct northbound connection from Blyth, Bedlington, and North Tyneside to North Northumberland, and Scotland. It would be upgrading an existing route, already regularly used for the North Blyth- Fort William ‘Alcan’ freight, so should be quite a cost-effective route to utilise.
Economically, rail investment pound for pound would, from the evidence provided by rail advocacy grouos, appear generate a much greater return on investment and be a more sure way to boost the local economy rather than road schemes which could potentially be loss making.
Even multi-lane motorways like the M6, A1(M) and many more still suffer from traffic problems, so dualling alone won’t magically ‘solve traffic’.
Safety
As stated in more detail in the previous post, the effect on safety is limited by dualling a road, as research by Space 4 Gosforth has shown, the accident rates on dualled sections are very similar to those on the single carriageway sections. It also doesn’t improve safety on other roads where people have tragically lost lives or been seriously injured.
Again, rail travel is far safer; with nationally no passenger fatalities since the tragic accident at Stonehaven, Scotland in August 2020, and on the ECML in Northumberland, the last fatal accident being the derailment of the ‘Aberdonian’ in May 1969. Moving more people by rail and other modes of transport is far safer than driving.
Even bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive state openly that ‘Driving for work is one of the most dangerous things workers will do.‘, and infers modal shift away from roads ‘Eliminate or reduce long road journeys by combining with other ways of working or other forms of transport. For example, move goods in bulk by train and then arrange for local distribution by van or lorry, or arrange meetings using conference calls or video links.‘
So again, investing into the ECML would allow more railfreight to go by rail rather than road, as well as more people travelling by rail, improving safety. The investment into the Northumberland Coast Loop, alongside the wider ECML upgrades coukd allow for greater modal shift of people travelling between SE Northumberland/North Tyneside and North Northumberland/Scotland by reducing journey times and making it a ‘one seat ride’
Sustainability
Movement of both people and goods by rail is one if the most efficient modes of transport possible and one of the cleanest, even considering the continued uses of some diesel trains at present, though many on the ECML are 100% electric.
Going forward, investment into improving the electrical capacity (a known constraint between Newcastle and Edinburgh) would allow for longer and heavier electric trains that can have more seats or tons of freight per train.
In comparison, just the 11 miles of Morpeth to Ellingham dualling is forecast to release 1.44m tonnes of CO² over 60 years, which goes against Net Zero commitments made both locally by Northumberland County Council, and nationally by the UK Government.
While the ‘loop’ section of the Northumberland Coast Loop between Morpeth North Junction and Benton Junction (taking in the Bedlington to Newcastle section of the Northumberland Line is currently unwired), that issue can overcome by bi-mode or tri-mode units, many of which are now battery-electric type for passenger services, and longer term wiring of the route has been identified by Network Rail, which could be brought forward to allow more trains to operate on electricity rather than diesel going forward.
There are also the wider environmental impacts of road traffic than just tailpipe emissions, even if road transport was to become 100% electric, those vehicles would still add to congestion, parking problems and the loss of space to urban sprawl and other connected issues.
Conclusion – Invest in the ECML/N.C.L.
Based on the above data and evidence, investment into the ECML & N.C.L. through Northumberland would be a much more sound investment from every angle than adding road capacity to the A1.
On our petition, the number is steadily rising and at time of writing stands at 684 signatures. A massive thank you to all who’ve supported it so far!
Currently looking into opportunities for some Northumberland Coast Loop Merch – more news on this front soon!
A recent article in the Northumberland Gazette announced the welcome idea of new Tyne ferry services but also suggests that once again, the dualling of the A1 to the Scottish Border is proposed.
Dualling the A1 to the Scottish Border was previously put forward in a failed petition back in 2011/12 which only gained 624 signatures, the proposer, Anne-Marie Trevelyan being later elected as MP for Berwick-Upon-Tweed in 2015 and serving until 2024 when the seat was eliminated and replaced by the new North Northumberland seat.
In that time, multiple promises to dual the road have been made, with the previous one notably just days before the announcement of the 2024 General Election. The winning candidate for the new seat of North Northumberland was David Smith of Labour, who notably did not commit to dualling in his election campaign, while the previous incumbent Anne-Marie Trevelyan did.
The main opposition to dualling is the environmental cost of the scheme, with figures for just the 11 miles of dualling proposed between Morpeth and Ellingham forecast to release 1.44m tonnes of CO² over 60 years by figures from Transport Action Network
Interestingly, in another article in recent weeks, the former Berwick Upon Tweed MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan, has stated that the ‘Conservatives need to go green’ too. In the article, there is the contradiction that dualling of the A1 is obviously bad for the climate, but that it is ‘pragmatic’ to dual for ‘safety and economic reasons’.
These views are clearly contested by groups such as Space4Gosforth, which states that injuries and deaths on already dualled sections per mile are very similar to single carriageway sections, and that focussing road safety spend on only the A1 would not tackle wider road safety problems on other roads. Increased traffic potentially will add to problems already faced rather than relieving them.
Similarly, the economic case for dualling is also questionable, as the calculation of economic benefit is largely an assumption that faster travel will bring economic growth, but that may omit the fact that widened roads quickly fill to capacity again, undoing the benefit rapidly. The A19 and Tyne Tunnels are an example of this where road capacity has filled in the years since the second tunnel opened.
The failure of the above petition, plus the lack of commitment at the election for the winning candidate suggests that the political appetite to dual the route is actually quite low, and given the evidence to suggest that dualling the A1 is going to come at a high environmental and financial cost, while far from guaranteed to produce a return economically or be a safety improvement at all, then shouldn’t other options be more fully explored?
The petition for the Northumberland Coast Loop rail route, for example, has more signatories than the 624 that the ‘Dual the A1’ petition recieved, and is one just part of several wider local campaigns to improve rail services along the Northumberland Coast, so politically, investing into the East Coast Main Line (ECML) would likely gather much more support than dualling the A1.
Secondly, organisations such as East Coast Main Line Authorities (ECMA) have an Invest East Coast campaign, a consortium of cross-party local councils, combined authorities and Scottish Regional Transport Partnerships have, since 2013, stated the case for the ECML investment, as it is a rail route that connects a £800bn per year economy
Investment into the East Coast Mainline is likely to deliver a much more assured economic benefit, is based around one of the the cleanest, greenest and most sustainable modes of transport (an electrified mainline railway), with route such the Northumberland Coast Loop being potentially part of the ‘…linear network, with a wide range of services converging with, and diverging form it.’, as mentioned above.
As for branchlines, one obvious candidate for added support would be the Aln Valley Railway, which this publication, (a recent addition to the N.C.L. library after a visit to Barter Books), which aspires to connecting the very popular town of Alnwick, home to Alnwick Castle, The Alnwick Garden & Lilidorei as well as Barter Books and other small attractions to the ECML.
The Northumberland Coast Loop would be a new passenger route that would branch from the ECML between Pegswood and Morpeth by taking the Morpeth North Curve towards Bedlington, then sharing the Northumberland Line from Bedlington to Newcastle Upon Tyne, offering new, direct connections to/from SE Northumberland towns such as Blyth and Bedlington, as well as North Tyneside and major centres of business such as Cobalt Business Park (one of the largest business parks in Europe).
If you’d like to support the Northumberland Coast Loop, please add your signature to the petition here, or share this blog post via your social media.
Thanks, RH.
This recent article by the BBC talks about how a new 70 space car park behind the Ruskin Museum in Coniston could be the start of the ruination of the Lake District by paving it over; arguably destroying the picturesque landscape of the area by doing so.
Northumberland, with a less developed but growing tourism industry could fare better, if the existing public transport network was used better (i.e. more stopping services between Berwick and Newcastle as argued for by Railfuture) as well as being enhanced by new connections to allow tourism visits without cars, which means avoiding the need for car parking to be provided in the first place.
There is very much the risk that in a rush to accomodate tourism, Northumberland could lose it’s very appeal by being paved over for parking, when realistic alternatives are very much available.
The Invest East Coast group of cross-party local authorities sets out the case for continued investment in this route, with 1/3 of the UK population within 20 minutes of an ECML station, and the route corridor accounting for 47% of the UK’S economic output.
Some of the plans are already in place, for example the connecting bus to Chathill station announced recently is a very welcome step forward, but two trains a day is still a fairly poor service when an hourly service was proven possible.
New stations at Belford, to serve major attractions such as Bamburgh, voted the Best Seaside Destination in the UK for four years running, and Beal, again with this station serving a potential market of 800,000 who visit Lindisfarne (Holy Island) each year, could all help to drive car-free or even cae-light tourism on the beautiful Northumberland Coast.
Reconnecting the Aln Valley Railway to Alnmouth (for Alnwick) station would similarly give the town of Alnwick, home to Alnwick Castle (350,000 visitors a year), The Alnwick Garden & Lilidorei (working towards 8 million visitors with the Garden passing 7 million in 2022), the highly popular Barter Books and many more smaller attractions improved access, which could be boosted in the shorter term by a dedicated bus link similar to the Northumberland Line. The Arriva X15 is touted as part of the existing ‘Bus Meets Train’ branding, but this could be made even better for such a popular tourist town in Northumberland?
The Northumberland Coast Loop could very much play a part in this: the Port of Tyne recently announced the 25th anniversary of the cruise terminal, with a record of 61 ships bringing 164,000 visitors to the port for onward destinations; why not use rail to get tourists to their destinations quickly and comfortably?
The soon to be completed Northumberland Park station would be the nearest mainline station to the dock, and could offer direct connections to destinations in Northumberland to both the north and the west along the East Coast Main Line (ECML) and Tyne Valley Line respectively, as well as allowing travel from populated urban centres like SE Northumberland and North Tyneside to directly travel to North Northumberland too.
If you’d like to support the Northumberland Coast Loop, please do so via the petition here, already signed by 681 at the time of writing.
Let Northumberland not mirror the mistakes made in the Lake District and make better use of the public transport network.
This BBC article about the vicar of Holy Island (Lindisfarne) being on a mission to turn the tide raises a few interesting issues.
Firstly, the annual visitor figures are up to an astounding 800,000 per year, with most presumably arriving by car at present, and causing issues as the island is so small, as the article says, you cannot really drive around on it.
One proposed solution to this is a park and ride facility being built on the mainland, but surely this would also work hand-in-hand with the long suggested reopening of Beal Station (Railfuture), which could allow both arrivals by car and by rail to feed into bus services to and from Lindisfarne?
The reopening of the station, alongside the building of a park and ride could be potentially combined with replacing Beal level crossing following an incident on 21st August 2024 (ITV News), where the tailback of traffic became stuck on the causeway.
With visitor numbers as high as this, reopening Beal station could have a potentially strong case, and would feed into the wider case for better local rail services on the northern section of East Coast Mainline between Newcastle and Berwick to serve these increasingly busy tourism areas (as the recent blog post about Chathill mentioned).
The Northumberland Coast Loop