East West Rail

East West Rail (or the East West Main Line, EWML) is a strategic aim to establish a new main line railway between East Anglia and Oxfordshire. The immediate plan is to build (or rebuild) a line linking Oxford and Cambridge via Bicester, Milton Keynes (at Bletchley) and Bedford, largely using the trackbed of the former Varsity Line. Thus it provides a potential route between any or all of the Great Western, Cotswold, Chiltern, West Coast, Midland, East Coast, West Anglia and Great Eastern main lines, avoiding London. The government approved the western section (between Oxford and Bedford) in November 2011. The eastern section (east of Cambridge), the new Bedford–Cambridge route and the Oxford–Bedford improvements are categorised as a nationally significant infrastructure project.

The line was initially promoted (as the East West Rail Link) by the East-West Rail Consortium, a consortium of local authorities and interested bodies along the route. (That consortium is now called the East West Main Line Partnership.) In 2013 it was adopted by the Department for Transport and, in late 2017, the government announced that it would be delivered by a quango, the East West Railway Company, rather than by Network Rail.

The plan is divided into three sections:

• "Western section" between Oxford and Bedford on the former Varsity Line route, taking advantage of the recently reconstructed Oxford–Bicester line and the existing Bletchley–Bedford Marston Vale line (leaving just Bicester–Bletchley to be rebuilt).
• "Central section" from Bedford to Cambridge over a substantially new alignment; in May 2023, the Company announced its preferred route for statutory consultation.
• "Eastern section" from Cambridge to Norwich, Felixstowe and Ipswich on existing lines.