REBUILDING an Oxford railway bridge, which caused months of traffic problems, is helping to combat congestion on the A34.

The number of containers being carried by Rail between Southampton, the West Midlands and the North has surged since the Old Abingdon Road bridge at Redbridge was completed.

The bridge rebuilding was the last phase of a project to provide improved headroom along the route, allowing freight trains to carry taller shipping containers, known as hi-cubes, on standard wagons, instead of low-floor wagons.

The road was closed from November last year until April this year, while the old bridge was demolished and its replacement built.

The aim of the work is to get up to 50,000 lorryloads of freight a year off the roads, especially the M40 and A34 between Birmingham, Oxfordshire and Southampton. The project was budgeted to cost £71m but work was completed for £59m.

Britain’s two biggest rail freight firms, DB Schenker and Freight- liner, have both seen increased traffic through Banbury, Oxford and Didcot since the bridge was completed in April. A bridge at South Moreton, near Didcot, was also rebuilt.

Nigel Jones, head of planning at DB Schenker Rail, said: “Since the upgrade was completed in April, we have been able to remove 5,000 lorry journeys from the road network.

“The legacy of this completed upgrade will be even more containers on the railway, faster deliveries for customers, road congestion reduced and lower carbon emissions. Everybody involved in this project deserves to be proud of that.”

He said the scheme had been the “most significant upgrade” to the UK rail freight network for decades.

Extra wagons have been added to the company’s trains serving Southampton and more services will be launched in the next few months.

And the number of hi-cube containers carried through the county by Freightliner has jumped by 25 per cent in the past five months.

Two extra trains a day are now being run, linking Southampton with Leeds and Manchester.

Extra containers are being carried to destinations including Cardiff on low-floor wagons which used to be concentrated on shuttle services via Oxford. They have been redeployed to carry hi-cubes where clearance bridge work has yet to be carried out.

Network Rail is about to launch a study of work that would be needed to increase capacity between Southampton and the West Midlands, with the aim of doubling the amount of freight carried by rail.