NETWORK RAIL'S expected announcement of a feasibility study into five possible high-speed rail lines has been warmly welcomed by Britain's biggest rail union, whose annual conference opens in Nottingham this afternoon.

RMT warns that environmental pressures dictate that the go-ahead must be given 'sooner rather than later' on high-speed rail - as well as electrification of existing lines - and that ministers should step back from a 'premature' decision on expansion of Heathrow.

"This is a welcome announcement and comes not a moment too soon," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said in Nottingham today.

"The future lies in high-speed rail and electrification of the existing network, because the environment and the economy are crying out for a decisive shift away from never-ending expansion of road and air travel, and because the oil crisis is not going to go away.

"There is ample evidence to show that high-speed rail is the viable alternative that can accommodate the growing transport demand and help in the battle to reduce carbon emissions, and RMT will shortly publish a report that makes that case in relation to Heathrow," Bob Crow said.

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Network Rail forecasts overcrowded trains, longer journeys and no new lines

The Times: June 24, 2008
Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

Passengers face acute overcrowding on key railway routes because capacity will be exhausted many years before any new lines could be built, according to Network Rail.

The infrastructure company is to commission a study into the costs and benefits of new lines on five inter-city routes. But it admitted that a high-speed network was unlikely to be built soon because of funding constraints and environmental concerns.

The company is expected to focus on a few short stretches of track operating at conventional speed to relieve the worst pinch points on long-distance routes, including London to Peterborough, Rugby and Swindon.

Iain Coucher, the chief executive of Network Rail, said that the Government’s plan for expanding rail capacity by 22.5 per cent by 2014 would be inadequate on some routes, which are growing by 10 per cent a year.

He said: “Clearly some routes will grow more than that and there may be a problem. The most congested parts of the network are about 80 miles out of London. People used to be prepared to travel for 45 minutes and now it’s an hour and a quarter.”

The high cost of housing in London and fuel prices were two of the factors contributing to the continuing strong growth in demand for rail travel. In the past decade passenger numbers have grown by 45 per cent and the amount of freight carried by trains has grown by 60 per cent. But constraints on the capacity of the network have meant that the number of trains has risen by only about 20 per cent.

The Government is planning to reduce public funding of the railways by £1.5 billion a year and has said that passengers will have to pay three quarters of the cost of the network by 2014. The cost is currently split evenly between the farepayer and the taxpayer.

Mr Coucher said that existing government measures to meet demand, such as altering fares to encourage people to travel off-peak, would be inadequate in the longer term.

The study will consider new lines to relieve pressure on the East Coast, West Coast, Midlands and Great Western main lines and the Chiltern route between London and Birmingham. It is not due to consider any routes south of the Thames. Mr Coucher admitted that this could be an oversight and that they might have to be brought into the scope of the study. He added that Network Rail “was not wedded to high speed”. Tom Harris, the Rail Minister, played down the prospect of 220mph trains recently, saying that they would consume almost double the energy of 125mph trains, the current top speed of domestic services.

The study, which is due to be published in July next year, will not consider specific routes and is unlikely to set a clear timetable for expansion. It will set out whether there is a business case for new lines and which routes would deliver the greatest benefits. Asked when construction could start, Mr Coucher said: “I have no idea.”

It will be the third publicly funded study into the feasibility of high-speed lines in a decade. Neither of the previous studies resulted in a government commitment to fund a line. The Strategic Rail Authority produced a £33 billion plan for a London to Scotland high-speed line in 2004 and the Eddington Transport Study, which was published in 2006, found that high-speed rail would attract many of the eight million passengers a year who fly between London and Scotland and would reduce carbon emissions by up to 330,000 tonnes a year.

This month the Rail Regulator, who was under pressure from the Government to reduce spending, ordered Network Rail to abandon 20 schemes to ease overcrowding, which would have cost £365 million.

David Frost, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: “We now need to ensure that there is a real commitment to add new capacity to the network.”

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, said: “The rail network is in desperate need of expansion if we don’t want to force frustrated passengers back into their cars and on to aeroplanes. Instead, the Government has proposed cutting back public funding for the railways, condemning travellers to delay and overcrowding.”

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High-speed rails

Financial Times: June 24 2008

For the first time in more than a century, the UK is considering building a new mainline railway. The public body responsible for railway infrastructure, Network Rail, has announced it is commissioning a review into the future of its five main rail lines. This opens up the possibility of supplementing the network with high-speed rail links like the French TGV trains or the Japanese Shinkansen network.

Great Britain, however, is not France or Japan. It is a small island dominated by a small number of cities that are relatively close together. Even without high-speed links, the government's 2006 review of transport found that British cities have relatively good intercity links compared with their rivals. The study made clear that Britain does not need bullet trains.

Problems are mounting because of severe overcrowding on lines around London, Birmingham and Leeds. Rather than considering sweeping new lines, these congested pinch-points must be the first target for any new investment in intercity routes.

The other target for investment is the commuter train system, and it should be the priority for fresh funding. London has seen a 32 per cent increase in commuter numbers in the past decade, and there have been even larger increases in demand for commuter trains in Leeds, Bristol, Manchester and Birmingham. An obsessive focus on intercity travel will distract from the vital priority of ensuring that these cities continue to lead the econ-omic renaissance of Britain's regions. The TGV in France is a technological triumph, but the price of building the super-fast train was that France was left with a wretched commuter network. Britain cannot afford a similar mistake.

The debate on the train network illustrates broader problems with public infrastructure in the UK. Public capital spending is kept in check by a fiscal rule that takes no account of whether assets are being bought. The effectiveness and the lifespan of the investment are given no weight. The only thing that matters for meeting the rule is headline cost.

Since there is no serious culture of cost/benefit analysis in the Treasury, the result is that useful, dull projects are doomed to lose out to less worthy, but more exciting prestige projects.

It is good news that Network Rail is commissioning a serious review, but it must make decisions based on the needs of both intercity travellers and commuters, and executives must ignore political pressure to provide excitement. No one wants a high-speed white elephant.