The delayed Cambridge South station will finally open in late June – and become the first station to be given full Great British Railways branding, the government has announced.
The station sits beside the city’s Biomedical Campus, Europe’s largest medical research centre, and will connect it with direct trains to London, Brighton and Stansted airport, as well as up to nine trains an hour to the centre of Cambridge itself.
Services will begin calling at Cambridge South on Sunday 28 June, the Department for Transport said, with 1.8 million passengers expected annually.
The DfT said the adjacent Biomedical Campus was forecast to contribute £18.2bn to the UK economy by 2050, with employees likely to double to 40,000, boosted in part by the new transport links.
The station, the city’s third, was supposed to open in 2025 but was delayed, partly due to the collapse of a contractor responsible for fitting out the electrics.
The rail minister, Peter Hendy, said Cambridge South, which was built with £250m of government investment and a small private sector contribution, would “open up access to jobs, homes and world-class facilities for people across the region, boosting the growth of the Biomedical Campus as one of the most important engines of growth in the country”.
He added: “As the first new Great British Railways branded station, the opening is an important milestone for our railways and a sign of the real change public ownership will deliver.”
Jeremy Westlake, chief executive for Network Rail, said the station would “significantly improve travel and connectivity for campus staff, visitors, and the wider community for many years to come”.
He added: “Thousands of people have worked tirelessly on this fantastic project to build a modern, accessible and sustainable station that reflects the excellence of the work that is being undertaken in Europe’s largest biomedical facility.”
The station’s permanent signage will be in GBR brand colours – a design drawn up by a small group of ministers and advisers within the DfT to save money, with uncertain results. The station will also be displaying the more professionally acclaimed new Railway Clock.
It will also eventually serve the East West Rail line which is being built across to Oxford, although the delayed start of initial services between Milton Keynes and Oxford and uncertainty about the exact route is likely to mean direct trains between the two university cities will not start in 2030 as hoped.
Meanwhile, HS2 Ltd has announced contracts to develop the high-speed railway’s control centre and rolling stock depot in Birmingham.
It said the new hub at Washwood Heath, to be built under an £856m contract won by a joint venture of Taylor Woodrow and Aureos Rail, would support more than 1,000 jobs.
The contract award was assessed by an independent review panel, as the government and HS2 attempt to ensure efficient delivery and costs on the project, whose overall budget is being reassessed.
Hendy said it was another milestone in getting HS2 back on track, and that the railway would “create thousands of jobs across the West Midlands – from the construction teams transforming this former industrial site, to the skilled workforce who will operate this state-of-the-art facility for decades to come.”