The government has announced plans to invest £9.4 billion on rail enhancements between April 1 2014 and March 31, 2019 as part of the High Level Output Specification (HLOS ) for Control Period 5.
The money includes £ 5. 2 billion of schemes that are already committed including Thameslink, Crossrail, electrification of the London to Cardiff, Manchester to Liverpool/Preston and Manchester to York routes.
Outlined in the HLOS are plans electrify the Midland Main Line between Bedford and Sheffield – Nick Clegg’s constituency being in Hallam – electrification of the Cardiff to Swansea route and the Welsh Valley lines along with electrifying cross-country routes paving the way for electric powered freight services to operate from the Midlands to Southampton docks. An infill electrification scheme between Walsall and Rugeley Trent Valley has also been announced.
Although such funding announcements have made transport secretary Justine Greening popular with the rail industry, it is widely known that number 10 and 11 are becoming increasingly frustrated with her continuing opposition to an extra runway at Heathrow airport. Ms Greening’s supporters fear that the expected cabinet reshuffle on September 3 may usher in a more airline industry friendly minister.
Another major rail project to benefit from HLOS is £322 million towards unfunded elements of the Northern Hub. The Northern Hub has already seen schemes worth £477 million approved.
The East Coast Main Line will benefit from a ring-fenced fund of £240 million to carry out improvements, especially at Peterborough, and the western section of the Varsity line will reopen as an electric railway.
It is hoped that such a big commitment to electrification will encourage further investment in electric locomotives and act as a catalyst for further electrification schemes in Control Period 6, which will run between 2019 and 2024.
Conversion of the Basingstoke to Southampton route from third rail to overhead electrification will act as a test bed to determine the business case for abolition of the third rail network south of the Thames.
Heralded as the biggest railway investment since Victorian time, the £9.4 billion is somewhat less than the £1.24 billion – approximately £30 billion in today’s money – modernisation plan from the mid 1950s, which marked the beginning of dieselisation and the abolition of steam.
Although such funding announcements have made transport secretary Justine Greening popular with the rail industry, it is widely known that number 10 and 11 are becoming increasingly frustrated with her continuing opposition to an extra runway at Heathrow airport. Ms Greening’s supporters fear that the expected cabinet reshuffle on September 3 may usher in a more airline industry friendly minister.
We Don’t need a third runway at Heathrow. But more money for the railways would be good.
And the sooner we get started on all these railway projects the better.
There is no need for a third runway at Heathrow. Many passengers have to travel to heathrow and other southern airports from the North to make transatlantic and other long haul flights because either there aren’t any flights from local northern airports or existing flights are over subscribed. There is plenty of demand and more than enough capacity in existing airports such as Leeds-Bradford and Doncaster to start long haul flights. I hope that this desperately needed investment in the rail industry, which is much more environmentally friendly than aircraft does in fact go ahead and is not conveniently shelved later as has so often happened in the past.
There is a perception within Government and other “shakers and movers” that visitors to the UK (business and tourists alike) only want to go to London and therefore, have no need to fly to anywhere outside the South East. As a consequense, there has always been official support for extra capacity at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, over and above further development at regional airports.