The Other Bat Tunnel
HS2 spent £100m on a tunnel for bats. Now Oxford-Cambridge Rail is doing it too.
Today Rachel Reeves delivered her seismic speech on growth. It included some very welcome steps. Ending the dithering of decades over Heathrow expansion, and reviving the promise of the Oxford Cambridge Arc (now to be called the less catchy Oxford Cambridge Growth Corridor).
Despite the fact that the proposed new road (expressway) linking Oxford, Milton Keynes, and Cambridge will still not be built (that particular piece of infrastructure was killed off by Grant Shapps and a number of unhappy Tory MPs during Boris Johnson’s time as Prime Minister), the railway is getting a big go ahead sign.
Oxford will join Cambridge in getting a growth commission - perhaps we will see Oxford New Town alongside Cambridge New Town, as new quarters to each city, bursting at the seams with growth potential.
Sadly, however, as an obsessive of the Oxford Cambridge Arc for many years, I have kept tabs on the rail project. And if HS2’s £100m bat tunnel annoyed you, just wait until you hear about the East West Rail Chapel Hill Bat Tunnel.
Not another one.
Firstly, let me explain the area a little. When you hear the word ‘hill’ you may instinctively think of significant elevation. Not in Cambridge you don’t. Having grown up in the area, I can assure you: it’s flat.
To press this point, when at Cambridge my grandfather was a member of the Gog Magog Mountain Rescue Society - a joke drinking society given the topography of Cambridge and the surrounding area. If you walk the Gog Magog Hills you will barely notice the incline. No one was going to need rescuing. So under the ‘mountain rescue’ name, the students would turn up at a bar and have an excellent session of drinking.
An engineering challenge for a train line Chapel Hill is not.
There is even less justification for tunnelling through notoriously flat-as-a-pancake Cambridgeshire than there is tunnelling through the gently rolling Chilterns.
In 2012, the Coalition government increased the amount of eye wateringly expensive tunnelling along the HS2 by 55% from the original plans. This was not because the tunnels were necessary, this was to hide the trains from view.
“Fresh mitigation” measures ensured that less than two of the 13 miles of the Chilterns HS2 runs through would be at or above surface level.
Tunnels are a choice.
Which all brings us back to East West Rail, the consultation for which launched in November last year, following the funding allocated in Rachel Reeves’ budget of the previous month.
It isn’t until page 308 until Chapel Hill rears its ugly head. Not due to engineering problems, but for two reasons alone. Visual impacts of the train line, and the impacts on bats. Nimbyism, pure and simple:
The crossing of Chapel Hill was noted in the consultation as one of the key constraints in this area of the route. The following concerns were raised in response to the consultation:
Visual impact on heritage assets including Chapel Hill and Money Hill.
Impacts on wildlife because of the project, including barbastelle bats and the Eversden and Wimpole Woods Special Area of Conservation (SAC).
Barbastelle bats are of course the source of the HS2 bat tunnel. A bat one thought to number just 1,500 but today with a population estimated at 21,600, thanks to a clever piece of kit called the Sussex Autobat, which mimics bat calls and has found 15 times the number of bats than the bat experts were expecting. Despite this, barbastelles remain protected by legacy EU law, and those opposed to new infrastructure leap upon their furry backs and skinny wings to hold it all up.
The solution posed by East West Rail? A bat flight corridor.
Yes, given the bats the consultation doesn’t even consider the possibility of simply not digging a massive tunnel. Instead, we are offered a delightful and expensive list of options.
Option 1 Cut and cover tunnel (set as the baseline option)
Option 2 – Short mined tunnel
Option 3 – Intermediate mined tunnel
Option 4 – Long mined tunnel
Given a cut and cover tunnel is set as the baseline, no true cost benefit analysis is carried out. We enjoy page after page of tunnel compared to tunnel. In the end the document recommends Option 3. Which pleasingly means the villagers of Haslingfield whose houses back on to Church Street won’t have to look at a train half a mile from their back gardens. Oh, and something to do with bats.
So there we are. Scratch the surface of a new rail project and what do we find? Infrastructure for bats. Pointless tunnels for no structural reason. And locals who will be angry at the project despite every expensive element of ‘visual impact mitigation’ the planners have been dumb enough to fall for.
We talk endlessly about Britain's infrastructure failures. But when even the flattest of rail routes needs a tunnel, is it any wonder we can’t get things built?
Of course, environmental protections matter. But the Chapel Hill Bat Tunnel isn’t about conservation it’s about performative mitigation at an eye-watering cost, for a bat that isn’t even as rare as we thought it was.
Well done everyone.