Let’s make rail the backbone of Britain’s housing strategy

Across the country, you can already glimpse what that future might look like. In Oxford, the £120m reopening of the Cowley Branch Line will reconnect research campuses and suburbs, with new stations at Cowley and Littlemore unlocking thousands of homes. In Essex, Beaulieu Park – the first new station on the Great Eastern Main Line in a century – will anchor an expanding community and cut car dependency across Chelmsford’s northern corridor. 

London shows how transport can spark rebirth. The Northern Line extension to Battersea unlocked the process of turning a derelict icon into a living neighbourhood. The long-planned Bakerloo Line extension could do the same for Old Kent Road, making best use of existing brownfield land to create a district of thousands of homes, jobs and schools. 

These projects are not merely about getting from A to B. They are about how we build. Transit-oriented development isn’t jargon; it’s common sense. People who live near good public transport walk more, spend more locally and drive less. A station doesn’t just shorten journeys; it shortens the distance between people and possibility.

The tragedy is that we know how to do this, but we rarely do. Our planning system still behaves like a committee of strangers. Housing, transport and infrastructure are siloed, each advancing at its own pace, tripping over the others. The result is years of delay, cost inflation and missed opportunity. 

Cost is the first scapegoat. Yes, rail and tram projects are expensive, but so are traffic jams, asthma and the social bill for isolation. Every pound spent on rail returns several in productivity, health and housing value. Treat infrastructure not as a sunk cost but as investment capital and suddenly the numbers start to add up. 

Then there is uncertainty. Developers and councils need confidence that government will hold its nerve. Too often, policy is like a signal box in a power cut – all flashing lights and no direction. What’s needed is a clear national framework that makes transport-linked housing essential infrastructure, giving local and combined authorities the means to plan and deliver it together. 

“Rail and tram projects are expensive, but so are traffic jams, asthma and the social bill for isolation”

And finally, co-ordination. Building a new station or tram stop currently involves a cast list longer than a Tolstoy novel: Network Rail, train operators, landowners, Homes England, local councils and the DfT. Everyone means well, but without a single conductor, the orchestra plays in chaos. We need joint delivery bodies – call them Rail-Linked Development Zones – with the power to acquire land, plan housing and build stations as one seamless act.

Here, then, is the ask: let’s make rail the backbone of Britain’s housing strategy. Every new development plan should begin with a map of connections; every new station should come with a blueprint for homes. Give local authorities the mandate, and the means, to plan infrastructure and development as one. Use land-value capture and joint-venture funding to ensure public money earns public returns. 

Because the alternative is more of what we already have: estates built for car dependency, towns cut off from jobs, a generation priced out and stranded. We don’t need another review or taskforce. We need a change of mindset. 

To invest in rail is to invest in the lives that run along it – in the chance for people to live well, travel lightly and belong somewhere again. 

Christopher Martin, director, Urban Movement