UK: Project promoter East West Railway Co has begun environmental surveys to inform planning and design work for the Oxford to Cambridge route, and has contacted more than 600 landowners along the future alignment to ask for access in order to help understand local environmental conditions.
It has also published initial baseline maps as an interactive feature on the East West Rail Community Hub.
‘Most of these digital maps are only available to organisations with the resources and technical tools to read them’, said Programme Delivery Director Ian Parker. ’However, we’d like to make sure that local communities have access to the same baseline data as the team here. We hope that taking the unusual step of publishing this data will help strengthen conversations with residents and their representatives, who have been incredibly generous with their time and expertise throughout the process.’
The data from the surveys will underpin an environmental impact assessment which will be published when EWR Co submits its plans in 2022.
