Green light for new trains and rail electrification
Scotland, Wales, northern and south west England are to get a fleet of new trains and more reliable rail links to London, creating thousands of jobs, boosting the economy and improving services for passengers, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond announced today.
He gave the go-ahead for the £4.5bn Intercity Express Programme (IEP) and the £704m plans to electrify the Great Western Main Line (GWML) between Cardiff, Bristol and Didcot.
The Government announced today it has decided to resume the IEP procurement and proceed with the Agility Trains (Hitachi and John Laing) consortium’s plans for replacement for the nation’s fleet of ageing intercity high speed trains. This will mean 500 new carriages which will provide 11,000 more peak-time seats for passengers, every day on the GWML and ECML
Hitachi had previously announced its intention to build a new train factory in County Durham to build the new order, creating more than 500 new jobs and securing thousands of additional jobs in sub-supplier industries in north east England, giving a further boost to Britain’s manufacturing industry. This factory is expected to be operational by 2013.
The announcement to electrify the sections between Cardiff, Bristol and Didcot builds on November’s announcement of electrification between London Paddington, Didcot, Newbury and Oxford, and will give Wales its very first main line electrified railway, cutting 17 minutes from Cardiff to London journeys and 22 minutes from Bristol to London journeys. Electric trains are not only quicker, but quieter, smoother and more reliable than diesels. They are also cleaner – producing no emissions at their point of use.
Philip Hammond said:
“This is good news for jobs, passengers and the economy. Our decision to buy a new fleet of trains and electrify new lines will allow rail passengers along the Great Western and East Coast corridors to benefit from massive improvements to journey times, more seats and more reliable services.
“Alongside our plans for High Speed Rail, it completes a picture of massive upgrades to our intercity rail corridors over the coming years.
“Whilst this is, of course, subject to the Government continuing to be satisfied that the proposal offers value for money as the commercial negotiations are concluded and that the final arrangements are compliant with the United Kingdom’s EU obligations, I expect that the first of the new trains will be in service by 2016.”
“Extending electrification westwards to Bristol and Cardiff will also bring all the benefits of electric trains – faster acceleration, greater comfort and cleaner, greener travel – to rail passengers in Wales and the south west.
“We have also established that a strong high-level case may exist for electrifying some of the Valley lines north of Cardiff. My Department will now work with the Welsh Assembly Government to develop a business case for the electrification of the Cardiff Valley lines.”
The £4.5bn programme will see the building of a combination of around 100 electric trains and bi-mode – diesel and electric – intercity trains which will run to Great Western Main Line stations including Oxford, Swindon, Reading, Cardiff, Swansea, Bath and Bristol and to East Coast Main Line stations such as Peterborough, York, Doncaster, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness.
The train operating companies will contribute to the design and specification of the new fleet of IEP trains in greater detail than they had before. As soon as the trains become operational passengers will see improvements to reliability and comfort.
Comments (3)
Add Your CommentWhilst pleased with this latest news, I do have one concern and that is with regard to the building of the new trains. In many quarters, it is suspected that design work, initial engineering and manufacture of the majority of parts will be carried out by Hitachi in Japan, The supply of other components may very well be sub-contracted to established railway engineering companies in both Europe and the Far East. As a result, the new Agility Trains factory at Newton Aycliffe may merely become a “screwdriver” facility, assembling sub-sections that are manufactured outside the UK. Nevertheless, I hope that I am wrong in my assumption and the new factory will actually manufacture certain components and also, British engineering companies will be given the opportunity to become involved in, what may be, a domestic trainbuilding rennaissance.
Mike Breslin
Liverpool
4 March 2011, 20:49
The electrification programme is a positive move that will benefit wider parts of the country as well as delivering a new fleet of trains at a fraction of the cost of the High Speed Rail plan, which is based on flawed logic. What the Country does not need at a time when the Government is trying to rescue the public finances is a £30 billion rail link. Britain is a small country with its main centres located close to each other in comparison to mainland Europe – High Speed rail works abroad because of the distances. All we need here is better services in terms of cost and capacity. Even the economic case for HSR doesn’t stack up so let’s have electrification, better trains and better services – not HSR.
Damon Brown
Warwickshire
11 March 2011, 07:02
I agree with Damon Brown that HSR is too expensive at this time. This is not just in ecconomic terms, but also in climate terms.
Without an un-affordably huge invesment in renewable energy generation, there is a risk that HighSpeed trains will actually produce greater emissions than the sum total of cars removed from the road. The faster the trains go, the greater this risk, a new line in the 140-202mph (225-325kph) band would be significantly better for the enviroment than the 400kph line the government proposes. Electrification of existing diesel lines is an even greener alternative.
However, the government has even managed to throw away some of the enviromental advatages of the electrification programe. By not electrifing Cardiff – Swansea and ordering trains with diesel engines they are throwing away most of the advantages of electrification, including improved reliability and reduced weight.
The bi-mode trains will also fall into the trap of trying to achive the acceleration of electric trains, as has happened with the Virgin Voyager, Midland Meridians and First class 180s. The Intercity 125s on Great Western at the moment have slower acceleration than these newer diesels, but much better fuel ecconomy.
Electrification should be extended to Swansea and Cheltenham and the existing Intercity 125s should be retained on all services beyond Newbury on the route to the south-west, beyond Oxford on the route towards Hereford and East Coast services to unwired destonations in England. The remaining routes (Carmarthen, Pembroke Dock, Weston-Super-Mare, Aberdeen and Inverness) should be handled by diesel locomotives (refurbished from the fleets that are currently stored, to save an expensive order of new locos) hauling the electric trains from the last electrified station on each route.
Thomas Wheeler
North Pembrokeshire
24 March 2011, 22:16
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