A new rail station will open in Buckinghamshire in December - four years ahead of schedule.

The news follows an agreement between the Department for Transport and Chiltern Railways.

Aylesbury Vale Parkway station will provide much greater choice for existing residents and will be well established by the time people start to move into homes on the new Berryfields housing development.

“This is a great example of the public and private sector working in close partnership to deliver required infrastructure,” said Valerie Letheren of Buckinghamshire County Council.

Adrian Shooter of Chiltern Railways said: “Chiltern Railways invested significant time and effort, as has our delivery partner John Laing plc, in achieving the earliest possible opening date.”

There will be two trains an hour at peak times and one an hour at other times. The first train from Aylesbury to London will be 05.15 with the last train from London at around midnight.

The railway works are costing £8million, the station £2million and the 500-place car park £2million.

There will be a single bay platform for passenger trains, while freight trains to Calvert bypass the station to the west. The track between Aylesbury and the new station will be upgraded to continuous welded rail with a maximum line speed for diesel passenger trains of 60 mph.
The new station extends the existing London Marylebone to Aylesbury line by two miles but there has been talk of extending it beyond Parkway to Quainton, Bletchley and Oxford using portions of the former Oxford-Cambridge line. Railfuture has been campaigning for this line to reopen.
Work on the Berryfields development will also start this summer and around £10million is being spent on road “improvements”.