Before jumping the gun, my advice to Mr Leslie Freitag’s letter regarding the Croxley Rail Link is to do some more research to discover why the scheme has been a ‘lame duck’ with no future since 1956 (An affordable rail link: Letters, February 18).

The Croxley Rail Link schemes date back as far as 1956, when it would have cost £500,000, and then was very sensibly stopped because it was too expensive. In 2011 the Croxley Rail Link raised its ugly head above the parapet once again with a price tag of £116 million and “not a penny more”. Costs inevitably then escalated to £384 million by 2018 and, at that figure, it was going to be the most expensive five miles of rail track ever. This resulted in TfL, Watford Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council withdrawing funding for a project where the figures just did not stack up on their own merits.

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However, Mr Freitag’s letter to the editor now suggests that local councils and county councils should start again, throwing more good money after bad on a link between the Met Line and Watford Junction. Mr Freitag asks was the £384 million price tag placed on the Croxley Rail Link in 2018 an honest figure? Then he goes off on a ‘wild goose chase’, that has no chance of success, by saying TfL cut the price of their new tube line to Battersea, so it is possible.

Mr Freitag’s regarding affordability of a Croxley Rail Link is quite frankly ‘scraping the barrel’. If Mr Freitag believes the Croxley Rail Link can be achieved on figures he has arrived at (i.e. £5.5 million on extra tall viaducts across the River Gade, the canal and the A412 road) then I hope he is standing by and ready with his pick and shovel. Mr Freitag is barking up the wrong tree if he thinks TfL will start shelling out more funding for a Croxley Rail Link. TfL wouldn’t touch the Croxley Rail Link with a barge pole now.

The Croxley Rail Link was a project that TfL took forward under mayoral direction with mayor Boris Johnson. At a London Assembly Budget and Performance Committee (July 11, 2019) Mr Colin Porter, former chair of the IIPAG, said “I can remember my predecessor saying that the Croxley Rail Link was a project waiting to go wrong seven years ago”. At the same London Assembly meeting Mr David Hughes (investment delivery planning director, TfL) said: “The Croxley Rail Link was a project that mayor Boris Johnson instructed TfL to take on because of the significant cost escalation and risks regarding the Croxley Rail Link project”. TfL, therefore, went to mayor Johnson and said “Look, we don’t think this project stacks up on its own merits” and it was the decision of the mayor for various reasons in play at the time that he would mayorally direct TfL to take on the Croxley Rail Link.

The whole saga was a sorry one, with millions of pounds thrown at it by TfL, Watford Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council with nothing in return to show for this ‘lame duck’ project. So once again I caution Mr Freitag not to go jumping the gun with his advice to our councils to start again at throwing good money on a link between the Met Line and Watford Junction.

Ernie MacKenzie

Gammons Lane, Watford