Future Developments
Plans were being promoted by Network Rail and Bedford Borough Council for the redevelopment of the station quarter.
Platform 1A will be extended through the existing building to accommodate 12-car trains; presently it is only long enough to handle four-car trains and is a terminating bay.
Therefore a new station building would be erected on the site of the former Victorian station, which was closed and bulldozed in 1978 when the current buildings opened. This area is now a council pay and display car park with an empty retail unit. An outline planning application for the work was submitted in April 2010, with the project complete by the end of 2011, and is under consideration by Beford Borough Council. By the end of February 2011, the former retail outlet had been demolished and the site stands empty looking through to the passing trains at the station.
The scheme would be part of an overall plan to regenerate Bedford town centre.
The station will be the eastern terminus of the East West Rail Link, a plan to reopen the railway between Oxford, Aylesbury Vale Parkway and Bedford, with possible eventual extension to Cambridge and East Anglia by the now closed Varsity Line. The scheme was given the go-ahead by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in his 2011 Autumn Statement by Chancellor George Osborne, with £270 million committed to the scheme, which is due for completion in 2017.
Read more about this topic: Bedford Railway Station
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