Opening of Wantage Road Bridge

This morning, I was delighted to cut the ribbon to open the new A338 Wantage Road bridge over the railway line at Grove.  Plans to close the road for up to 6 months had originally been made back in January 2014, but was turned down by Oxfordshire County Council due to the 18 mile detour it would mean for drivers on this busy route.  I do remember a great deal of protests by local commuters at the time.

I have kept residents informed of progress on the work using this blog and updates in the Grove Community Newsletter, including the recent closures at weekends where works were being done to re-align the bridge after raising it to accommodate the electrification of the railway below. Thanks to all those involved in the project, we now have a brand new bridge as an entrance to Grove and Wantage on the main highway which will be there for years to come.

The next step I am campaigning for, is to re-open Grove railway station after it was closed during the Beeching cuts in the 1960's.  The new Local Transport Plan put together by the County Council has given it the green light, but the recent re-alignment of this new bridge means that the site will have to be moved. 

The original planning permission for the station site lapsed in 2011, so new plans and a business case need to be submitted to take this forward.  I attended the County Council Cabinet last week to speak on this important subject. It may take as long as the year 2030 to get this plan moving, but with more housing development scheduled in the area and no signs of improvement to our public transport system, the sooner we can see this happen, the better it will be for our community as hopefully, there will be less cars on our already congested roads.