Gordon Brown and transport secretary Andrew Adonis have disclosed that work will start immediately to electrify major parts of the UK rail network.
Prime minister Gordon Brown and transport secretary Andrew Adonis have disclosed that work is to start immediately to electrify major parts of the UK rail network.
A £1.1bn government investment will lead to the electrification of the London to Swansea and Liverpool to Manchester lines. The news will mean that electric main line trains will run in Wales for the first time.
Currently, only 33 per cent of the rail network is electrified, including most of the south east of England, and the main lines from London to Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as the Merseyrail network around Liverpool and the Glasgow suburban network.
The Liverpool-Manchester electrification will be completed within four years and the London-Swansea electrification within eight years, although stages in between will be completed earlier.
Electrification, combined with other improvements to track and signalling on the line, will mean that minimum journey times between Liverpool and Manchester will be reduced from 44 to 30 minutes and between London and Swansea by 19 minutes.
The Great Western electrification will include the lines to Oxford and Newbury and allow the ageing Intercity 125 fleet to be replaced by electric Super Express intercity trains, and by hybrid diesel/ electric Super Express trains.
The government also plans to consider further electrification of the network in the coming months, particularly the Midland Main Line (between London, Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield) and routes between Manchester and Preston and Liverpool and Preston.
The government also announced that a new rolling stock deployment plan, taking into account the new electrification, will be published in the autumn.
Network Rail will carry out the electrification work. Chief executive Iain Coucher said: ’Today is a good start, but there is much further to go. Network Rail has been pushing for electrification for a long time. Indeed in 2007 – along with the Association of Train Operating Companies – we urged the Department for Transport to take the issue seriously.’
Today’s announcement has prompted the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE) to query the government on where funding for rail electrification will come from.
Nelson Ogunshakin, ACE chief executive, said: ‘We welcome today’s announcement as a signal of intent to modernise the UK’s railways. However, the government must make it clear how these important works are to be paid for.
‘Network Rail has already set out a detailed and costed plan of works for the next five years, which they believe is already underfunded. While we would obviously welcome further announcements of major investment, we would be wary of raiding other projects in order to pay for it.
‘The government claims that the upgrades will be self-funding, but significant savings will have to be achieved to repay the necessary borrowing. We know that affordable project financing is still difficult to obtain.’
The announcement regarding the electrification of the Great Western line is welcomed although the decision is flawed at a number of levels. It does little to develop a true electrified railway network and is effectively another radial line linking London to regional cities. It does little for freight and one wonders why this route was given the nod in favour of other routes (principally the MML which has a large population and freight catchment and potentially offers more immediate linkage to existing electrified routes). Other small scale infill electrification should not be discounted in favour of grandiose schemes.
The whole electrification initiative has been beset by 25 years of delay and prevarication by the DfT & the Treasury. A failure to use electrification and the “sparks” effect that follows the completion of schemes as a means of regional regeneration is worrying. The power generators, suppliers, Network Rail as the infrastructure beneficiary plus ATOC and the actual passenger and freight train operators might consider some innovative methods of financing the projects such that the front end capital cost is spread over the life of the projects (power by the hour/tonne km/passenger km?). Already the knives seem to be out questioning the ability to finance a rolling programme of projects. The road lobby never seems to have this problem.
Regards,
Phil Mortimer
It is noteworthy that the announcement fails to endorse the Route Utilisation Study recommendations for electrification of the Midland Main line or the Berks and Hants line. Spin seems to be at work in the claimed reduction in journey times for Liverpool to Manchester since the Newton le Willows route chosen is no longer the favoured passenger route. My guess is that this route has been chosen to obviate electrification of the Bolton route from Preston to Manchester or the St Helens route from Liverpool to Wigan.
I welcome the electrification of the great western Railway and further electrifications that will be implemented over the next few months. At last logic and common sense have come back to this country in this regard. However I think it is right that the Great Western has taken priority over the Midland Mainline as the rolling stock on the GWML is much older and must be replaced soon. This shows how unwise many operators including the previous owners of the MML were to invest in new diesel trains. Moreover in the history of railway electrification in Britain there has never been two large mainline electrifications happening at the same time. I hope too that even this fact will change soon as this country needs to expand its electrified railway network desperately.
I would guess that the Great Western has been given priority over the Midland as it is a simpler scheme. Brunel’s generous loading gauge will reduce the amount of civils work needed for Electrification clearances. Also HST’s operate all mainline passenger services on the GWML and electrification is linked to the replacement of these with Electric IEP’s. The Manchester Liverpool scheme is sensible as most of the complex bits of this line – Junctions at Liverpool and Manchester and the connection to the WCML at Newton Le Willows are already wired. All that’s needed is a bit of plain track wiring to connect things up. This will indeed obviate the need for wiring the Preston, Bolton, Manchester or Wigan, Liverpool routes and represents a sensible bit of rationalisation.