Transport and urban planning specialist Camilla Ween MCIHT said opportunities need to be identified for places on the existing railway network where stations could be added to support the development of these clusters.

“The idea is to link a whole series of towns and small settlements together by railway, all within about a 15 minute journey,” she said. “Effectively you can have a group of settlements, which together form a connected city.”

She explained that the concept would see a railway station at the urban core of each place, while providing green spaces, good conditions for walking and cycling and designing out car dependency.

“Almost all our growth currently is 100% car dependent,” Camilla told the webinar, pointing out that rail is a high capacity, low carbon option. She added that there is a “huge opportunity” around under used railway networks and closed lines.

“Thinking about repurposing existing routes that are operating at low capacity and bringing back into life some of those closed lines would be a really good idea.

“The key thing is to identify the point on the railway network where the opportunity to do this absolutely exists already.”

Camilla pointed to the success of the London Overground – which saw old lines within the capital upgraded and connected together into a network – as an example of what can be achieved through rail ‘metroisation’.

She called for a small pilot of the ‘connected city’ concept – after the Coronavirus pandemic – to trial physical delivery as well as the partnership arrangements that would be needed to make the idea work.

Camilla was speaking to a webinar on metroisation of the railways, hosted by the ConnectedCities initiative.

(Photograph: Transport for London)