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Rail White Paper – Delivering a Sustainable Railway
Author: eMB
Date: 01 Jul 2007
The West Anglia Routes Group will be responding to the Rail White Paper and High Level Output Specification prior to the January 2008 publication by the Secretary of State of a plan and timetable for the introduction of additional rolling stock.
The Government’s Rail White Paper 2007 – Delivering a Sustainable Railway, outlines the 30 Year Rail Strategy. It acknowledges the significant growth in rail travel over the past 50 years and that this trend will continue upwards, most probably even more sharply. The Govt. is committing investment now so that long term ambitions for the railway can be realised.
The immediate priorities for 2009-14, as outlined in the High Level Output Specification are to meet targets around:
- Improving safety by reducing number of accidents.
- Improving reliability and punctuality.
- Delivering capacity to meet demand.
To fulfill capacity targets, £10bn will be invested in enhancements to accommodate average growth in passenger demand of 22.5%. In the main, the identification and delivery of appropriate schemes to meet these targets is left to Network Rail.
In addition, it was announced that an additional 1,300 carriages will be provided to address growth in major cities.
For the West Anglia Routes key points included:
- The first areas where additional interventions might be required are on the London-Manchester corridor and on London’s busiest commuter routes.
- The West Anglia Routes have the highest target for increasing capacity at a massive 30.9% by 2013/14. The next highest target is 18.8% for the Midland Mainline and East Midlands routes.
