Building East West Rail is only half the task. If stations are hard to reach, people will drive door-to-door and the railway will fail to deliver labour-market expansion or modal shift. First- and last-mile connectivity is therefore not ancillary infrastructure: it determines whether EWR becomes transformative or merely expensive.

EWR solves the middle efficiently – Oxford to Cambridge in 90 minutes, Bedford to Milton Keynes in 20. But journeys do not start or end at platforms. A researcher travelling from Bedfordshire to the Cambridge Biomedical Campus must reach Bedford station and then complete the final leg from Cambridge station. If either leg lacks viable walking, cycling, bus, or parking options, the rational choice is to drive the entire journey. In that case, the railway becomes irrelevant.

This problem recurs across the corridor: Harwell scientists reaching Oxford stations, Milton Keynes workers accessing dispersed employment sites, or Bicester Village shoppers reaching departure stations. The success of EWR hinges on how these access decisions are resolved.

As examined in Part 2, EWR will cut Oxford-Cambridge journey times by 45%, enabling regular collaboration between world-leading research institutions. But these benefits evaporate if accessing the railway requires a car.

The transport hierarchy framework

The Netherlands has demonstrated for decades that mode choice follows infrastructure, not ideology. Their transport hierarchy prioritises walking, then cycling, then public transport, with private cars last – not because they’re anti-car, but because urban space is finite.

Investment follows efficiency. A single car parking space occupies around 11.5m² and serves one vehicle. The same space accommodates ten bicycles or double it for bus stop serving hundreds. When cars dominate station access, congestion and poor accessibility are inevitable. When walking, cycling, and public transport are prioritised, car ownership becomes optional rather than compulsory.

The UK formally endorses this hierarchy but rarely implements it. Developments are approved with excess parking, minimal cycle provision, fragmented bus services, and low-quality cycling infrastructure. The result is predictable: 68% of trips under two miles are made by car.

EWR offers a rare opportunity to apply the hierarchy in practice. Stations should be designed in this sequence: walkable first, cyclable second, bus-connected third, with parking only where alternatives are genuinely unavailable. Success means end-to-end journeys without a car. Failure means any single weak link pushes travellers back into driving.

Active travel: walking and cycling

The Netherlands’ 27% cycling mode share is the result of enforced national standards, not culture. The CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic sets five principles – cohesion, directness, safety, comfort, and attractiveness – implemented consistently across jurisdictions. This produces continuous, protected networks where cycling feels safe for all ages.

The UK lacks equivalent national standards, creating fragmented, low-quality infrastructure that discourages cycling. Britain’s 2% cycling mode share reflects this failure.

Local authority fragmentation: Without a UK equivalent to CROW, each council implements its own approach. Routes mysteriously end at borough boundaries. London’s cycle networks terminate in Kensington & Chelsea after residents successfully campaigned against them, forcing cyclists into traffic exactly where protection matters most. The systemic cause: local authority control without national standards means politically difficult areas simply opt out.

Pavement-based design: UK councils frequently place cycle lanes on pavements, away from the road: Buildings → Cycle lane → Pavement → Road. Every house, shop, and driveway entrance crosses the cycle lane, creating constant conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists. This design is politically easier – it doesn’t take road space from cars – but fundamentally flawed.

Paint, not protection: Where cycle lanes exist on roads, they’re often just painted lines in car door zones. They switch sides arbitrarily, disappear at roundabouts and junctions where danger is highest, and provide no physical protection. The result: more dangerous than no infrastructure, giving false sense of safety whilst enabling close passes. Apply the 8-year-old test: would you let a child cycle this route alone? UK infrastructure typically fails. Dutch infrastructure is explicitly designed to pass it.

What EWR stations need

EWR stations must be designed as cycling destinations with Dutch-standard access networks.

At stations: Secure parking (500-1,000 spaces per major station, Cambridge South provides 1,000) with CCTV monitoring and card access. E-bike charging extends catchments to 10km radius. Bike hire schemes at all stations address the bikes-on-trains space problem – hire at destination, don’t carry. Positioning matters: cycle parking closer to platforms than car parking.

Access networks: CROW-standard protected cycle lanes on all approach roads within 5km catchments. Physical separation using curbs from both cars and pedestrians. Continuous routes without fragmentation or boundary gaps. Junction priority for cyclists – side roads give way. Routes must extend beyond station catchments to connect with existing networks.

The coordination problem: EWR Co. cannot build CROW-standard access if each local authority implements different standards. This requires national design standards enforced across all six counties. Without this, cycling infrastructure will fragment at every boundary, replicating London’s failures.

Walking infrastructure: 15-minute walkable catchment (1.2km radius) requires direct routes. Accessibility demands wide pavements (minimum 2m), tactile paving, dropped kerbs, and level boarding. Comfort means well-lit routes with weather protection. Walking and cycling infrastructure reinforce each other – both require prioritizing people movement over car dominance.

Bus integration

As discussed in Part 2, station consolidation on the Marston Vale line explicitly depends on buses as mitigation for lost rail accessibility.

Buses only become a credible alternative to the car when integration removes friction. Cambridge’s Guided Busway illustrates the standard required: stops within roughly 30 metres of station entrances, covered waiting areas with real-time information for both trains and buses, services timed to meet trains, and high peak frequencies (around every 15 minutes). Through-ticketing via contactless payment and extensive bus-priority measures complete the picture. The outcome is consistently high ridership and low car dependence.

The UK system makes this level of integration unusually difficult to deliver. Outside London, bus deregulation places no obligation on operators to coordinate timetables, accept through-tickets, or align services with rail. East West Rail crosses six local authority areas, each with different governance arrangements and budgetary pressures. In this context, high-frequency bus services – particularly in semi-rural areas – are rarely commercially viable and depend on ongoing subsidy that many local authorities can no longer afford.

This problem is most obvious for the Marston Vale, where station consolidation proposals rely on buses as the primary mitigation for lost rail accessibility. A viable service connecting Millbrook, Lidlington, and Ridgmont at a 15-minute frequency would require substantial, long-term operating subsidy. The consultation material does not answer the central question: who funds these services once initial construction or launch funding expires?

Since 2010, an estimated £78 million has been removed from local authority bus funding in England and Wales, with more than 2,400 services reduced, altered, or withdrawn. In rural areas, around 18% of bus routes vanished between 2018/19 and 2023/24. Even bus services introduced explicitly as rail replacements have often been withdrawn once short-term subsidy ended and commercial viability failed to materialise.

Against this backdrop, East West Rail’s consultation commitments to “enhanced bus services”, “timed connections”, and “integration with local authorities and operators” should be treated with caution. Without statutory requirements and ring-fenced, long-term funding, such promises risk following a familiar trajectory: services launched with initial funding, thinned when that funding expires, and ultimately withdrawn as local authority budgets tighten.

If station consolidation proceeds, legislation should require replacement bus services to be maintained at specified minimum frequencies for the operational lifetime of the railway. Crucially, these services should be funded through East West Rail’s operational budget, not through time-limited local authority contributions. Without such a mechanism, integration remains aspirational rather than guaranteed.

Cambridge’s Guided Busway succeeds because it combines sustained political commitment, dedicated infrastructure, and integration designed in from the outset. East West Rail could replicate this model – but only if it treats ongoing operational funding as essential infrastructure, not an optional extra once the railway is built.

Greater local control: an integrated transport board

The Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster examined in Part 2 generates £135bn annually but cannot function as an integrated region without coordinated transport governance.

EWR’s first- and last-mile challenges stem from governance fragmentation, not technical limitations. The route crosses six local authorities – Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes, Central Bedfordshire, Bedford, Cambridgeshire – each with different cycle infrastructure standards, bus franchising approaches, station access priorities, and funding availability.

Currently, EWR Co. will deliver the railway whilst local authorities handle access – no mechanism exists for integrated planning. This means cycle infrastructure switching standards at county lines, bus services failing to cooperate with railway timetables, complicated through-ticketing negotiations, and station decisions made without regional input. As London’s cycle network demonstrates (terminating in Kensington & Chelsea), good intentions fragment at boundaries when no coordinating authority exists.

Rhine-Ruhr as a model

Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr (VRR) is Europe’s largest integrated transport board, covering 16 independent cities (including Düsseldorf, Essen, Dortmund, Duisburg, Bochum) and 7 districts in Germany. Founded in 1980, it covers a polycentric region of 7,305 km² (comparable to Oxford-Cambridge Arc) with 7.8 million inhabitants. Most importantly, it is one organisation responsible for planning and operating public transport across multiple local authorities.

VRR sets unified fares across all modes (trains, trams, buses, S-Bahn), redistributes ticket revenue to operators, coordinates regional train specifications, and establishes infrastructure standards for stations and access. Municipal councils send representatives to elect VRR’s administrative council, preserving democratic accountability whilst enabling regional coordination. Local authorities retain control of local streets; VRR coordinates only cross-boundary transport. The network handled 1 billion trips in 2004.

A single ticket covers the entire region regardless of operator or mode. Buses are timed to meet trains. Infrastructure quality remains consistent across boundaries. Cross-subsidisation allows profitable routes to support essential but loss-making services (they understood what 1960s British Rail didn’t…). Services are planned for actual travel patterns, not administrative convenience.

What Oxford-Cambridge needs

An East West Rail Transport Authority modeled on VRR could deliver: unified contactless payment across trains, buses, and cycle hire with daily/weekly price capping; integrated timetabling with buses meeting EWR services and guaranteed connections; CROW-standard cycling infrastructure enforced uniformly across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire; bus routes designed for regional destinations crossing county boundaries; and, most importantly, long-term ring-fenced operational funding enabling cross-subsidy between profitable and essential services.

For Marston Vale, this represents the difference between consultation promises and statutory guarantees. Without integrated authority, “enhanced bus services” disappear once initial funding expires. With it, legislated service levels – 15-minute frequency to Millbrook, Lidlington, Ridgmont – become enforceable commitments backed by ring-fenced operational budgets, not voluntary annual contributions from cash-strapped councils.

UK governance gap

England has precedent for metropolitan transport authorities. TfL is an obvious example, though its funding model has grown increasingly less certain. Greater Manchester Combined Authority, established in 2011, holds powers over public transport, housing, regeneration, and planning. Transport for Greater Manchester completed bus franchising in January 2025, bringing all routes under unified control. Fifteen combined authorities now exist across England – but all serve metropolitan areas (Greater Manchester, West Midlands, West Yorkshire), not linear corridors.

Combined authorities were designed for cohesive urban regions with single cores. EWR is a 100+ km linear corridor connecting multiple urban centres across six county boundaries. No UK statutory mechanism exists for corridor-based transport governance.

A statutory East West Rail Transport Authority with powers limited to EWR-related transport – station access within 5km catchments, bus services connecting to EWR, through-ticketing, and cycling infrastructure standards will assure EWR’s success. It would be governed by representatives from six local authorities plus EWR Co. and central government and funded through local contributions, central government grant, and EWR operational revenue. The alternative: fragmentation continues, promises evaporate, infrastructure quality fragments, and expensive railway infrastructure delivers suboptimal outcomes.

With devolution in the central region of EWR now on the backburner, this is the only way of ensuring EWR actually meets its promises of being a railway that harnesses growth in the supercluster’s economy.

Make it easy: constrained or sustained growth

Beeching’s cuts demonstrated the cost of treating networks as spreadsheets. EWR’s success – or failure – will demonstrate whether we’ve learned that lesson.

The Supercluster economy – 19,000 companies, 550,000 jobs, £135 billion turnover – can finally function as an integrated region rather than isolated centres.

But building the tracks alone won’t assure success. If cycling infrastructure fragments at county lines, if buses disappear when initial funding expires, if stations remain car-dependent, EWR delivers suboptimal outcomes.

The fix isn’t complicated: CROW-standard cycling enforced across six counties, legislated bus frequencies funded through operational budgets, and an East West Rail Transport Authority coordinating what local authorities cannot. VRR proves corridor governance works. Combined authorities show England can do regional coordination. The mechanism just needs adapting.

With Universal Studios opening in 2031 and a significant chunk of its 8.5 million annual visitors depending on this infrastructure, the consequences of half-measures will be broadcast to the world.

As of January 2026, EWR has no set completion date and work hasn’t started east of Bletchley.

This concludes the three-part series on East West Rail. Next in my infrastructure series: Universal Studios Great Britain and the transport infrastructure required to serve 8.5–12 million annual visitors. My previous article on Smart Motorways discussed their failure, the mismatch between intentions and execution, and how to make them live up to their name.