The Government is tomorrow (Thursday July 22) expected to confirm two major electrification schemes, with decisions on other lines due later in the year.
With the weekly Cabinet meeting being held in Cardiff, Prime Minister Gordon Brown will announce that the Great Western main line will be electrified from London Paddington to Swansea, improving connections from the capital to South Wales.
That project will include Oxford and Newbury, while the Manchester to Liverpool line will also be electrified.
The announcements will be seen as a major victory for the new transport secretary Lord Adonis, who is credited with campaigning for major Government investment in the railway network, through electrification and high speed rail.
As Railnews has reported, electrification of the Great Western main line was a central feature of a new long-term strategy proposed by Network Rail in May.
In an introduction to the consultation document, chief executive Ian Coucher said: Our analysis shows the long-term benefits of electrifying key parts of the network, in terms of both reducing its ongoing cost to the country and improving its environmental performance, are significant.
The other key electrification identified in the document is the Midland main line to Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield, and the Government will make a decision on that project later in the year, along with routes between Manchester and Preston and Liverpool and Preston.
However the positive outcome for the Great Western main line and Manchester to Liverpool will lead to optimism that the further electrifications will also be agreed.
http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/westminster-watch/2009/07/22-brown-electrify-major-scheme.html
My mission as Transport Secretary is to modernise Britain's railways and public transport to the best European standards.
The country that invented the railways ought to be a 21st-century leader in rail both as a green technology and as a means of public transport joined up consistently with facilities for cars, buses and bikes, station by station. We should also be forging ahead with high-speed rail, and that is why we are developing a plan for a north-south line.
As I saw on my recent national rail tour, we now have a largely modern and punctual train fleet, carrying record passenger numbers.
But capacity and infrastructure lag behind, and station facilities are often poor. The problems are not always expensive to tackle. How is it that all of Londons rail terminals put together have cycle parking for only a quarter as many bikes as the small Dutch city of Leiden?
Failings like this need to be put right fast. Our continental friends do not take to their bikes and trains because it is in their genes. It is because of their superior facilities and organisation. Underlying this is a determination to give people better choices than simply to drive everywhere.
Big gaps in the infrastructure are more challenging, but today marks a farther advance with the Governments £1.1 billion electrification programme. Work to electrify the Great Western Main Line from London to South Wales and the intercity line from Manchester to Liverpool will begin immediately. Over the coming months we will look at the case for further main-line electrification, including the Midland Main Line from London to Sheffield.
The Great Western electrification will bring electric intercity trains into Paddington station and along Brunels classic railway for the first time. The eight-year project will extend the running of electric trains to Reading, Bristol and through the Severn Tunnel to Cardiff and Swansea, and will include commuter lines to Oxford and Newbury.
The Liverpool to Manchester line the worlds first intercity railway, a remarkable feat of early Victorian engineering on which Stephensons Rocket triumphed in the Rainhill locomotive trials of 1829 is another key route, and its electrification over the next four years will also make it possible to run through-electric trains from Manchester to Glasgow and Edinburgh.
This programme addresses the chronic underinvestment in electrification in the postwar decades, after catch-up investment in other basic infrastructure, including the West Coast Main Line from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow.
As long ago as 1955, Winston Churchills last Government hailed rail electrification as the ideal, since it meets the requirements of reliability, good acceleration, cleanliness and economy in operation. Yet while most of Europe moved rapidly to electrify their main line networks, Britain lagged behind. Only 33 per cent of the British rail network is electrified, compared to 100 per cent in Switzerland, 73 per cent in the Netherlands, 69 per cent in Italy, 57 per cent in Germany and 50 per cent in France.
Wales, incredibly, does not at present possess a single mile of electrified railway, a distinction that it shares with Albania and Moldova alone of European nations with railway systems.
The passenger and operational benefits of electrification are immense. Electric trains are far quieter, more reliable, less polluting and cheaper to buy and maintain than diesel trains, and this difference is increasing over time. These main-line electrifications will pay for themselves over the medium term in reduced train and track running, leasing and maintenance costs.
These electrifications also serve the cause of joined-up transport planning, in contrast to the short-termism of the past. The Great Western electrification will be integrated with both the £425 million upgrade of Reading station and the £16 billion Crossrail project that, from 2017, will take commuter trains from Essex through a new Central London tunnel to Slough, Heathrow and Maidenhead, west of London. It would now be possible to extend Crossrail to Reading, which I will discuss with the Mayor of London. Electrification will also improve rail access to Heathrow from the west.
Electrification comes just as we are planning to replace the 30-year-old diesel InterCity 125 fleet, and to increase diesel train capacity on the Thames Valley commuter routes.
Todays decision will enable us to move directly to electric trains on most of these services, and we are also developing a hybrid diesel and electric traction Super Express Train, to enable through-running to destinations on the Great Western that will not be electrified within the current programme.
Rail electrification is central to the low-carbon plan set out by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, last week. An electric train emits around a third less carbon per passenger mile than a diesel train, and less than half as much as a private car and a quarter as much as a short-haul plane. Rail is a small proportion of total transport and, therefore, of transport emissions, but its capacity to reduce overall emissions is significant if we pursue a relentless policy of both electrification and expansion, including high-speed rail.
At present rail accounts for only 6.3 per cent of journeys, half the proportion of Switzerland and a fifth of that in Japan. There is no good reason why Britain should not aim for much higher proportions.
There is an important industrial policy dimension too. Britain not only invented rail technology; we capitalised on it to build a good proportion of the worlds first railways and steam engines, including the first Japanese railways in the 1870s.
Nothing but poverty of ambition and sustained investment holds us back from a leading part in the fast growing 21st-century international rail market. This week Nissan announced a £200 million investment in a new car battery factory in Sunderland, alongside the decision by Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, to designate the area as a Low Carbon Economic Area to benefit from central and local government support for low-carbon industries. We must be similarly determined to lead in rail. Britains railway engineers and pioneers should aspire to be the proud heirs of Brunel and Stephenson.
Andrew Adonis is Secretary of State for Transport
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6723747.ece
With the weekly Cabinet meeting being held in Cardiff, Prime Minister Gordon Brown will announce that the Great Western main line will be electrified from London Paddington to Swansea, improving connections from the capital to South Wales.
That project will include Oxford and Newbury, while the Manchester to Liverpool line will also be electrified.
The announcements will be seen as a major victory for the new transport secretary Lord Adonis, who is credited with campaigning for major Government investment in the railway network, through electrification and high speed rail.
As Railnews has reported, electrification of the Great Western main line was a central feature of a new long-term strategy proposed by Network Rail in May.
In an introduction to the consultation document, chief executive Ian Coucher said: Our analysis shows the long-term benefits of electrifying key parts of the network, in terms of both reducing its ongoing cost to the country and improving its environmental performance, are significant.
The other key electrification identified in the document is the Midland main line to Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield, and the Government will make a decision on that project later in the year, along with routes between Manchester and Preston and Liverpool and Preston.
However the positive outcome for the Great Western main line and Manchester to Liverpool will lead to optimism that the further electrifications will also be agreed.
http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/westminster-watch/2009/07/22-brown-electrify-major-scheme.html
My mission as Transport Secretary is to modernise Britain's railways and public transport to the best European standards.
The country that invented the railways ought to be a 21st-century leader in rail both as a green technology and as a means of public transport joined up consistently with facilities for cars, buses and bikes, station by station. We should also be forging ahead with high-speed rail, and that is why we are developing a plan for a north-south line.
As I saw on my recent national rail tour, we now have a largely modern and punctual train fleet, carrying record passenger numbers.
But capacity and infrastructure lag behind, and station facilities are often poor. The problems are not always expensive to tackle. How is it that all of Londons rail terminals put together have cycle parking for only a quarter as many bikes as the small Dutch city of Leiden?
Failings like this need to be put right fast. Our continental friends do not take to their bikes and trains because it is in their genes. It is because of their superior facilities and organisation. Underlying this is a determination to give people better choices than simply to drive everywhere.
Big gaps in the infrastructure are more challenging, but today marks a farther advance with the Governments £1.1 billion electrification programme. Work to electrify the Great Western Main Line from London to South Wales and the intercity line from Manchester to Liverpool will begin immediately. Over the coming months we will look at the case for further main-line electrification, including the Midland Main Line from London to Sheffield.
The Great Western electrification will bring electric intercity trains into Paddington station and along Brunels classic railway for the first time. The eight-year project will extend the running of electric trains to Reading, Bristol and through the Severn Tunnel to Cardiff and Swansea, and will include commuter lines to Oxford and Newbury.
The Liverpool to Manchester line the worlds first intercity railway, a remarkable feat of early Victorian engineering on which Stephensons Rocket triumphed in the Rainhill locomotive trials of 1829 is another key route, and its electrification over the next four years will also make it possible to run through-electric trains from Manchester to Glasgow and Edinburgh.
This programme addresses the chronic underinvestment in electrification in the postwar decades, after catch-up investment in other basic infrastructure, including the West Coast Main Line from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow.
As long ago as 1955, Winston Churchills last Government hailed rail electrification as the ideal, since it meets the requirements of reliability, good acceleration, cleanliness and economy in operation. Yet while most of Europe moved rapidly to electrify their main line networks, Britain lagged behind. Only 33 per cent of the British rail network is electrified, compared to 100 per cent in Switzerland, 73 per cent in the Netherlands, 69 per cent in Italy, 57 per cent in Germany and 50 per cent in France.
Wales, incredibly, does not at present possess a single mile of electrified railway, a distinction that it shares with Albania and Moldova alone of European nations with railway systems.
The passenger and operational benefits of electrification are immense. Electric trains are far quieter, more reliable, less polluting and cheaper to buy and maintain than diesel trains, and this difference is increasing over time. These main-line electrifications will pay for themselves over the medium term in reduced train and track running, leasing and maintenance costs.
These electrifications also serve the cause of joined-up transport planning, in contrast to the short-termism of the past. The Great Western electrification will be integrated with both the £425 million upgrade of Reading station and the £16 billion Crossrail project that, from 2017, will take commuter trains from Essex through a new Central London tunnel to Slough, Heathrow and Maidenhead, west of London. It would now be possible to extend Crossrail to Reading, which I will discuss with the Mayor of London. Electrification will also improve rail access to Heathrow from the west.
Electrification comes just as we are planning to replace the 30-year-old diesel InterCity 125 fleet, and to increase diesel train capacity on the Thames Valley commuter routes.
Todays decision will enable us to move directly to electric trains on most of these services, and we are also developing a hybrid diesel and electric traction Super Express Train, to enable through-running to destinations on the Great Western that will not be electrified within the current programme.
Rail electrification is central to the low-carbon plan set out by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, last week. An electric train emits around a third less carbon per passenger mile than a diesel train, and less than half as much as a private car and a quarter as much as a short-haul plane. Rail is a small proportion of total transport and, therefore, of transport emissions, but its capacity to reduce overall emissions is significant if we pursue a relentless policy of both electrification and expansion, including high-speed rail.
At present rail accounts for only 6.3 per cent of journeys, half the proportion of Switzerland and a fifth of that in Japan. There is no good reason why Britain should not aim for much higher proportions.
There is an important industrial policy dimension too. Britain not only invented rail technology; we capitalised on it to build a good proportion of the worlds first railways and steam engines, including the first Japanese railways in the 1870s.
Nothing but poverty of ambition and sustained investment holds us back from a leading part in the fast growing 21st-century international rail market. This week Nissan announced a £200 million investment in a new car battery factory in Sunderland, alongside the decision by Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, to designate the area as a Low Carbon Economic Area to benefit from central and local government support for low-carbon industries. We must be similarly determined to lead in rail. Britains railway engineers and pioneers should aspire to be the proud heirs of Brunel and Stephenson.
Andrew Adonis is Secretary of State for Transport
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6723747.ece
