We are delighted that the Oxford Cambridge Expressway was finally cancelled on 18th March 2021, about one year after it was officially paused in 2020. Other parts of the Ox-Cam Arc plans are, however, still in play. Cancellation of the Expressway does NOT mean cancellation of those one million houses, and all the habitat destruction they will involve.

Here we give a brief history of expressway plans.

In late 2018 a possible ‘corridor’ for the Oxford to Cambridge Expressway was announced

Corridor B, with options to go west or east of Oxford, is shown in Fig 1.

This broad corridor—not a specific route—runs from where the M4 meets the A34, north of Newbury, all the way to Cambridge.

2019, the year a number of Expressway ‘routes’ were to be announced

Highways England planned to publish a number of specific route options in autumn 2019, and deliver them for public consultation before the end of the year.

But everything got delayed because…

At the end of 2019 there was a general election. Parliament was dissolved, so nothing could be published, but Grant Shapps, Transport Secretary, promised a ‘priority review’ of the expressway after the election.

And after the 2019 election?

Nothing happened. We persisted in asking to be part of the promised ‘priority review’, but heard nothing. We presented our petition to cancel the expressway to 10 Downing Street in February 2020, but still heard nothing.

2020, the expressway is officially ‘paused’.

In the March 2020 budget the Government confirmed the Ox-Cam Arc area as a “key economic priority” and announced plans “to develop, with local partners, a long-term Spatial Framework to support strategic planning in the OxCam Arc. This will support the area’s future economic success and the delivery of the new homes required by this growth up to 2050 and beyond.”

At the same time the Department for Transport released its Road Investment Strategy 2 (RIS 2) for the period 2020-2025 in which it confirmed the overall ambition for the Arc, but then announced that “We are now pausing further development of the (expressway) scheme while we undertake further work on other potential road projects that could support the Government’s ambition for the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, and benefit people who live and work there, including exploring opportunities to alleviate congestion around the Arc’s major economic centres such as Milton Keynes.”

Time to celebrate?

Some falsely interpreted the pausing of the expressway as its cancellation. But we all remember that HS2 was also officially ‘paused’ for review in 2019. The review, carried out by the ex-Chair of HS2, rather unsurprisingly came to the conclusion that HS2 should go ahead as planned.

So, what happened next?

During 2020 the Highways England team working on the expressway was ‘stood down’. We suspect that some in the Highways England team were helping develop an alternative vision for road connectivity across the Ox-Cam area, because…………

……meanwhile, in another part of the Department for Transport,

England’s Economic Heartland (EEH) was developing a Regional Transport Strategy involving up to 13 different road ‘corridors’ criss-crossing the entire Arc area. One of these corridors is between Oxford and Milton Keynes (the target for the expressway). EEH held public consultations on its plans in 2019 and 2020 and released its final version in 2021 that you can read about here.

What to expect in 2021

We believe the full expressway is well and truly finished although some suspect we might get sections of the expressway by stealth, for example around the South of Oxford City.

England’s Economic Heartland’s priorities for 2021 are the two road corridors, Oxford to Milton Keynes and Oxford, Northampton, Peterborough (Corridors A and B on our web page here)

As that section of our website explains, all EEH’s road corridors are being improved and developed ‘only to meet existing needs’, according to an EEH spokesperson.

If this is correct, as the more than 860,000 houses associated with EEH plans are being built, the additional road congestion that any cars from those houses might cause must somehow be reduced just to maintain the status quo, itself hardly free of congestion.

EEH’s plans also involve the total decarbonisation of the entire vehicle fleet in the area by 2040, a huge challenge without any additional cars. All those extra cars will make that challenge even more difficult.

Arc plans seem to be at a critical juncture. The Chancellor devoted only minimal funding in the Spending Review to develop the Arc Spatial Framework, and other regions of the country are demanding more investment for themselves. More than one developer at meetings in late 2020 said that the year 2021 will be a ‘critical year for the Arc’. It will be.

Check our news and updates page regularly for announcements in 2021

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