Sustainable Transport Northamptonshire

The organisation was founded by Harry Burr, firstly just called Weedon Station Project, before South Northants Link was introduced in September 2020.[6] The Weedon Station Project's website was created in May 2020 to support the campaigning for a new station in the village, serving Daventry as a Daventry Parkway. It made the press pretty quickly, and within months, we were already on regional radio and in local online news.[6]

In June, Harry had a meeting with Daventry MP and Minister of State for Rail at the Department for Transport, Chris Heaton-Harris.[7] A few weeks after this meeting, Harry introduced Campaign for Improving Rail Northamptonshire, however, only a few days after CFIR (as it was also known) was announced, it received a new name, Sustainable Transport Northamptonshire, as, according to Harry, he wanted to not only focus on rail but also other modes of transport such as BRT.[6]

The old Weedon Railway Station

In August, Sustainable Transport Northamptonshire introduced a new project called South Northants Link.[8] It was clearly in the works, and was a very rough draft. The line's goal is to connect the towns of Northampton, Leamington Spa and Banbury together, but on the way connecting the rail-deserts of Daventry, Towcester, Brackley, Silverstone, Southam and Upton.

In October, Sustainable Transport Northamptonshire announced a new company structure, consisting of Sustainable Transport Holdings at the top, then Sustainable Transport Northamptonshire, and Sustainable Transport Outer Midlands being below Holdings. However, in December, Sustainable Transport Holdings made a soft announcement, that, along with its upcoming rebrand, Sustainable Transport Outer Midlands would be renamed to Outer Regions, to cover the entirety of England instead of just the West and East Midlands.

In January, after a meeting, Harry totally changed the South Northants Link website, and instead of just 1 mode of transport (heavy rail), he published 4 different appendixes to his document, for one of the following modes each:[8]

• A: Heavy rail
• B: Light rail
• C: Tram-train
• D: Bus-rapid-transit

Weedon Station Project

By far Sustainable Transport Northamptonshire's most successful campaign so far, Weedon Station Project is the campaign to reopen the station in the large village of Weedon to serve the large town of Daventry with a population of 25,000, which currently doesn't have a rail link. Much support from local businesses and campaigning groups have been gathered, including from Railfuture and certain local parishes.[5]

Weedon Station Project have recently launched a sub-campaign called Daventry Shuttle, according to them, it's a "5.4 mile concept for a 15min shuttle train between Daventry Town and the new Weedon Station/Daventry Parkway, similar to the Stourbridge Shuttle in West Midlands, with simple fares and simple season ticketing"[9]

The station is most likely to be built on the A45 road bridge on the village high street, and will take advantage of freed capacity on the West Coast Main Line after HS2 Phase 1 is complete.

South Northants Link

Another one of Sustainable Transport Northamptonshire's projects is South Northants Link, a new transport link connecting the towns of Northampton, Banbury and Leamington Spa together on a new transport link. As mentioned in the History section, this new link could be Heavy Rail, Light Rail, Tram-train, or Bus Rapid Transit[10]

The line will use old and currently used alignments such as on the Weedon-Marton Junction line. The exact draft route isn't available to the public, but Sustainable Transport Northamptonshire publish tube-style maps on their websites,[11] and more exact maps on their website too, to give a better idea to people who are interested in the line.