Feature CHRISTIAN WOLMAR
Words: Christian Wolmar Sub editor: Deborah Maby
disappoint when it was published in mid-July. The very fact that the announcement was accompanied by a press conference hosted by both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister showed that the Government values the railways highly and sees them as a key and popular investment.
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The plans for Control Period 5, the Network Rail investment schemes for 2014-19, are indeed ambitious. The headline-grabbing aspect is the expansion of electrification, putting Britain on a par with its European counterparts. So the Great Western line will now get wires to Swansea rather than Cardiff, with the scheme also extending up the Welsh valleys, and the Midland Main Line will be electrified all the way to Sheffield, with a spur to Nottingham. Less expected, an electric spine running up from Southampton through Reading and up to the Midlands is also envisaged, principally for freight.
There were other goodies, too. The Northern Hub, a series of measures to improve and speed up services around Manchester, has also been given the go-ahead, and in London, where much rail investment has been focussed in recent years, work on Crossrail and Thameslink remains a key commitment. Not only that, but platforms are to be lengthened at Waterloo to relieve overcrowding.
Of course, not everyone got what they wanted. Despite the focus on the regions, some people in the North still feel hard done by. Professor Paul Salveson, a long-time advocate for investment in this part of the country, welcomed the improvements but said: “No electrification for Hull, Scarborough or Teesside. Middlesbrough will presumably get a shuttle to York, if it’s lucky. Hull keeps an hourly diesel service to Manchester while Scarborough loses its direct service to Manchester and instead gets a meandering service to Blackpool.” Together with proposed cuts to ticket office opening hours and the likelihood that old rolling stock will be cascaded from the South to the North, this shows there are worrying trends among the good news, says Professor Salveson.
he long-awaited announcement on future investment in the railways – the ridiculously named High Level Output Specification – did not
Another odd omission was on the doorstep of the constituency of junior transport minister Norman Baker, who has long campaigned for the reopening of the Lewes-Uckfield line to relieve pressure on the Brighton Main Line: there was no sign of this in the investment plan. Neither does it mention the key Barking- Gospel Oak electrification, which would provide a key freight route for the massive freight terminal being built in the Thames estuary and had been widely expected to get the go-ahead, given that it is a relatively small scheme on a crucial line.
The announcement was couched in somewhat exaggerated terms by a Government that was desperate to announce some good news after a bad few weeks. Therefore, the boast that it was the “biggest railway investment since Victorian times” was a bit of hyperbole, since there have been several periods when there have been equivalent levels of investment, such as the Modernisation Plan of the mid- 1950s. While the ‘network grant’, which represents the main subsidy to the industry of £18.3 billion for the 2014-19 period is a bit more than the allocation of £17.6 billion during the current five-year period, that hardly represents a step change in investment levels. There is, in fact, little new money and the investment levels of about £2 billion per year are not historically high. Nevertheless, because there has been a lot of spend on the railways for quite a long period now; the focus can shift from maintenance and renewals to genuine enhancements.
There are, though, difficulties in implementing the improvements. Electrification is only part of what lines such as the Midland Main Line require. One Network Rail insider told RailCONNECT: “Electrifying the Midland Main Line is excellent news but to reduce journey times the signalling and the track have to be improved, too.” At the moment, it is unclear whether such an integrated investment programme is envisaged, or whether electrification will be carried out in isolation, which will be less advantageous.
Rolling stock is also a complicating issue. It is unclear how a programme will be determined to ensure that the franchises obtain the electric trains at the right time once the wires are up. And who would specify and pay for them? The best solution might be for a national rolling stock plan, but there are fears in the industry that the Department for Transport does not
For the first time since the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, the industry can feel secure in its future as a key form of transport for the 21st century
have the capability of undertaking such a complex scheme.
Nevertheless, despite these caveats, the rail industry is delighted with the announcement and all sides of the industry queued up to welcome it. In the view of the Association of Train Operating Companies the announcement signalled “the coalition government’s ongoing commitment to rail and enable[d] the industry to build on recent improvements to provide yet better services”, a sentiment with which Passenger Focus concurred, saying: “Passengers will welcome the scale and ambition of this investment. Our research shows that passengers’ main priorities for rail improvement include more trains arriving on time, more and longer trains and more chance of getting a seat – these announcements will help meet these aspirations.”
Nevertheless, Passenger Focus remains concerned about fares. Indeed, the Government is still ostensibly committed to a rise of 3 per cent above inflation in January (which will mean a rise of just under 5.5 per cent for regulated fares); but Justine Greening, the Transport Secretary, hinted at the briefing on the announcement that she would be arguing strongly for a lower rise, as was the case this year when it was confined to 1 per cent above inflation.
The worries over fare rises and the complexity of delivering these improvements should not detract from the fact that the announcement marked a key point in railway history, with all parties wedded to a programme of continued rail investment. For the first time since the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, the industry can feel secure in its future as a key form of transport for the 21st
century. That is an
amazing achievement for a mode of transport that had all but been written off in the last century.
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