For a town that is growing as quickly as Guildford, the question of how people are actually going to get around is never too far from the surface. Thousands of new homes are either planned or already on the way. With them come thousands of new residents who will need a realistic alternative to sitting in traffic every day. It is against that backdrop that Guildford’s MP, Zöe Franklin, has once again made the case for a third railway station to be built in the town, arguing that the infrastructure simply has to keep pace with the housing.
Reviving Guildford West Station
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Franklin has urged the government to revive long-standing plans for a Guildford West station, which would be located in the Park Barn area of the town. She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the western part of Guildford is ‘growing rapidly’ and that new housing developments ‘will bring thousands of new residents to an area that’s already under-served by public transport’.
Her wider point is that these things need to be joined up from the outset rather than bolted on later, warning that it becomes ‘a much bigger project’ once congestion and other problems have become ingrained. Supporters of the idea have long argued that a station in this part of town would improve connectivity to both the Royal Surrey County Hospital and the University of Surrey, neither of which is especially easy to reach by rail at present.
An Idea That Keeps Coming Around
If the proposal sounds familiar, that is because it is anything but new. Plans for a station in this part of Guildford have been floated as far back as the 1990s and back in 2019 it was even reported that Guildford West could be on course to open by 2025, only for the project to once again fail to materialise. Were it ever built, the station would sit on the North Downs Line, which runs from Reading through Guildford and on towards Gatwick Airport.
Surrey County Council is said to have set aside hundreds of thousands of pounds for the scheme over the years and insists that its ambitions remain unchanged, though further national funding would be needed before anything could actually go ahead. Franklin, who was a Guildford Borough councillor before becoming an MP, says she has been backing the project for the best part of twenty years and now has ‘a louder voice’ with which to push it.
Franklin added that better rail links would also help to cut traffic emissions and widen the pool of workers able to take jobs in a town where housing costs price many of them out. Given the increase in global warming in recent years, anything that can look to reduce emissions can only be seen as a good thing for both the local area and the planet more widely.