More than a thousand miles of high-speed railway line and new rail tunnels under the Irish Sea and the English Channel will be needed to cope with the continuing rapid growth in rail travel, according to the industry’s vision for the future network (link below.)
http://www.rmtbristol.org.uk/2008/04/explosion_in_rail_use_means_gr.html#moreThree new 200mph lines would fan out from London, halving journey times to all the big regional cities and to Scotland. A fourth new high-speed line would cross the Pennines, linking Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds.
Tracks could also be laid on top of tidal barrages being considered for the Severn, Solway and Morecambe estuaries. A dedicated freight train network would take millions of lorries off the roads and would remove a cause of huge delay for passenger trains.
The Association of Train Operating Companies has published a vision for the network in 2057, by which time, if the post-privatisation growth trend continues, the number of passengers will have more than trebled.
Rail passengers clocked up 30.1 billion miles (49 billion km) last year, the greatest distance travelled by train in peacetime and 10 billion more miles than a decade ago. The annual passenger growth rate is running at 7.8 per cent, with 1.2 billion journeys made last year.
The only years when the railways were busier were during the Second World War, when millions of troops were moved around the country. This is despite the network being a third smaller today than in 1945.
The association believes that the growth rate will decline slightly, but still forecasts that the network will be carrying 2.4 billion passengers by 2028.
It commissioned Jim Steer, the former strategy director of the Strategic Rail Authority, to consider how the network would need to expand to accommodate predicted demand.
Mr Steer’s report says that the first new high-speed line should run from London, via Heathrow, to Birmingham and Manchester. The second should run up the East Coast to Newcastle upon Tyne and Edinburgh, and the third to Bristol and Cardiff.
New and reopened lines operating at the conventional speed (about 100mph) would be needed to avoid bottlenecks on the existing network. Trains would run between Oxford and Cambridge, via Bedford, for the first time since 1967.
The disused line between Okehampton and Plymouth in Devon would be reopened to provide an alternative to Brunel’s route via the seawall at Dawlish, which faces an uncertain future because of rising sea levels.
Mr Steer said that the forecast by the Office for National Statistics of an 18 million increase in the population during the next 50 years, and environmental constraints on expanding roads and airports, meant that demand for rail travel would continue to grow even during an economic downturn.
He said:
“We need to think big and we need to start planning for expansion right now if we are to have any hope of coping with demand. Other countries, such as Japan, have had a long-term vision for their railways but we have tended only to think about the next five years.
“At some stage, Government will have to recognise the sheer implausibility of the [population] increase being predominantly accommodated in the wider South East, as it has been for the last 50 years.
“It is therefore likely to see high-speed rail as one of a number of key instruments to achieve this economic shift, while also reducing dependence on aviation for short-haul flights.”
The Government published what it claimed was a 30-year rail strategy last July, but the only commitments given were for modest expansion up to 2014.
Passenger groups voiced concerns that the cost of expanding the overstretched rail network will be paid for by yet more above-inflation ticket price rises. The most recent, which came into effect in January, saw some rail operators put up the cost of fares on some routes up by as much as 15 per cent.
Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, said:
"We need a fares policy that encourages rail and bus use, and that means cheaper tickets, not more expensive ones. If just 5 per cent of people travelling by car turn to rail it would require a 50 per cent increase in rail capacity, so the task is huge and it needs dramatic action."
Environmental groups also warned that rising ticket prices could remove the incentive to travel by train at a time when car use and short-haul flights are also at record highs.
"We're delighted that the demand for rail travel is increasing and that more and more people are choosing to use this greener form of transport but we do have concerns about the rising costs of using our railways,"
"We're also not convinced that the Government has adequate long-term plans to expand and fund a railway network that will meet future demand."
Concern was also expressed yesterday that, as demand for rail travel grows, the already chronic overcrowding on some sections of the network will only get worse. Anthony Smith, chief executive of Passenger Focus, the independent national rail consumer watchdog, said:
"These figures graphically underline the urgent need for more and longer trains. Passengers left standing on a crowded peak service will find this announcement hard to believe."
A Department for Transport spokesperson rejected any suggestion that the Government would fail to meet future demand :
"We are ahead of the curve and planning for growth,"
On top of the opening of the UK's first high-speed line and securing funding for Crossrail last year we announced £10bn investment focused on increasing capacity.
"We are planning a rail network which can carry 180 million more passengers over the next six years, growth of 22 per cent."
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