East-West desiqn now at GRIP 4

摘要

Next month should see the East-West Rail Consortium present Network Rail with complete engineering design of the work required to upgrade the Bicester Town -Bletchley route and the branch to Aylesbury for 90 mile/h running, initially on single track. With Bicester - Oxford to be upgraded under Chiltern's Evergreen 3 project (RB1358 p4), the cost of the East-West scheme is now around ￡200m.rnAt a stakeholder event on March 11, guests were told that Atkins had completed engineering design to stages 3 (option selection) and 4 (single option development) of INIR's GRIP process for assessing investment projects. This will be presented to NR in April for validation and acceptance, along with a business case demonstrating a benefitxost ratio of 'something over 2:1'.