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'Bradford Cross Rail'

Bradford cross rail is an idea to link together the city’s two railway stations, Bradford Forster Square and Bradford Interchange. Both these stations are truncated versions of former station sites, the earlier Bradford Forster Square station and Bradford Exchange both of which were built in the nineteenth century by the Midland railway and the North Eastern railway respectively.

Linking the stations together was first suggested as early as 1845 however, it was not until 1911 that a serious plan was put forward and an enabling Act of Parliament ‘The Bradford Through Lines Act’ was passed. The area between the stations was heavily built-up with Victorian warehouses, shops and offices, so the 1911 plan would have involved a large amount of demolition. The start of World War One eventually put a stop to these plans.

By the late 1950’s and early 1960’ many of the Victorian buildings in central Bradford were demolished to make way for the urban vision of the then Bradford city engineer Stanley Wardley. Although the land between the two stations was cleared to make way for new office blocks and an urban ring road, the plans did not include a cross rail link. A slightly different vision did emerge in the 1970s when the Victorian Bradford Exchange station was demolished and a new integrated bus and rail station was built to the south called Bradford Interchange.

Many of Wardley’s highrise office blocks and shops did not prove successful in the long run and by the late 1980’s many of them lay empty. An initial plan was put forward to redevelop part of the city centre with a shopping development called the Broadway Centre. Forster Square station was truncated in 1990 and a new station was built some distance to the north of the original to help facilitate these plans. The aim was to build some of the new shopping centre in place of some of the demolished 1960s buildings with the rest of the centre taking up the site of the old station. By truncating the station it was hoped that passengers walking to the new platforms would encourage a greater amount of pedestrian flow around the shopping centre thus making it more viable. The recession of the early 1990s however, put paid to these plans and Broadway centre was never built.

Later by the 2000s, another plan emerged to build a new Westfield shopping centre in the middle of Bradford. This led to the wholesale urban clearance of many of the 1960s buildings to make way for the new centre. Although work started on laying the groundwork for the new shopping centre another recession again put paid to the initial plans. Although Westfield still plan to build a new smaller centre when financial conditions are more favourable. As most of the land between the stations is now clear of buildings this has led to further speculation about the viability of building a cross city heavy rail link. Bradford Council had discussed plans way back in the 1980s, but linking the stations was ultimately deemed to be too expensive. Today, even with the clearance of most of the land there is no official plan has been put forward by either the Bradford Council or the Westfield developers.

More recently, a group of local businessmen and councillors have put forward a plan to link the two stations. Inspired by other rail projects, such as the London Overground link in Shoreditch, the Bradford business plan involved building new Bradford central station linked by a viaduct and track bridging the distance (currently 0.44miles) and the gradient difference involved. The Bradford Cross Rail plan is aimed to stimulate business investment in Bradford, but due to the high costs and major engineering works involved it is not likely to be taken forward at any time soon.