CHILTERN Railways has secured the right to run trains between Oxfordshire and London until 2021 after the Government yesterday backed the firm’s plans to create a second route from Oxford to London.

As previously reported in the Oxford Mail, the firm plans to spend £250m on creating the new route from Oxford to London Marylebone, via Bicester, along with track improvements to speed up its services between London, Banbury and Birmingham.

The Oxford service is due to start running in 2013.

Improvements to the Oxford-Bicester line will cut Rail journey times from 25 minutes now to just 14 minutes from 2013.

Oxford-London Marylebone journey times should be 66 minutes once the new line is open, compared with about 55 minutes on First Great Western’s express services to London Paddington.

A new parkway station will also be built at Water Eaton park-and-ride, near Kidlington, while Bicester Town station is set to be closed for up to seven months to be rebuilt.

Chiltern’s investment plans were praised by Transport Secretary Lord Adonis yesterday, as he announced a seven-and-a-half year extension to the franchise, until December 31, 2021, in return for the improvements.

The decision means the Chiltern franchise will run the full 20 years projected when it began in 2002. The firm has to meet a series of investment targets in order to secure the full franchise term.

Lord Adonis said: “Today we gave the go-ahead to Chiltern Railways to take forward plans for a completely new service from Oxford to Marylebone, including a new parkway station.

“These will be huge improvements in the transport infrastructure for Oxford, not only providing alternative routes from Oxford to London, but providing a station serving north Oxford and the area around Oxford, by providing regular fast trains to London.

“It will particularly benefit residents of North Oxford and areas of Oxford who have not had good rail connections in the past. It will also help to get cars off the road and people on to trains.”

The new link line in Bicester and the other improvements to the route will be funded by a £250m loan from Network Rail, which will be paid back over 30 years.

Chiltern’s chairman Adrian Shooter, who led the firm into the private sector in 1996 when British Rail was broken up, pledged there would be no fare increases to pay for the scheme.

He claimed it would be paid for by extra revenue generated by more people travelling by rail, including customers of Oxford-London coach services, who would be attracted by the quicker journeys by train.

Mr Shooter said the work would be carried out in two phases, with speed improvements on the existing route, allowing more 100mph running, being completed before work starts on the Oxford link.

Lord Adonis will decide in the spring whether to hold a public inquiry into the Oxford-Bicester scheme.

Any inquiry would take place by the autumn.

Chris Bates, of the Cherwell Rail Users’ Group, welcomed the franchise extension.

He said: “It’s good news for rail users and for Chiltern it’s well deserved.

“Hopefully, any new Government will see longer franchises work better than short-term ones.”