FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF FREIGHT SCHEMES WELCOMED BY NETWORK RAIL

Wednesday 28 Jun 2006

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF FREIGHT SCHEMES WELCOMED BY NETWORK RAIL

Region & Route:: National

A government announcement that six possible freight enhancement schemes are being taken forward for business case development, has been welcomed by Network Rail. Schemes earmarked for further work include:

Teesport/East Coast Main Line rail gauge enhancement (North East)
Reinstatement of Olive Mount rail chord, Liverpool (North West)
Humber ports/Immingham - East Coast Main Line rail capacity enhancement (Yorks & Humber)
Nuneaton - Peterborough rail gauge enhancement (East Midlands)
Gospel Oak - Barking rail gauge enhancement (London)
Southampton - West Coast Main Line rail gauge enhancement (South East)

Director of Operations & Customer Service, Robin Gisby, said: "This is good news for Network Rail and our freight customers. Each of these schemes would deliver better freight routes around the country, helping the freight companies to grow their businesses and get more freight off the roads and on to the railway. "We will now work with the Regional Development Agencies to build robust business cases for as many of these schemes as possible and work towards further boosting the growth in freight traffic, which has increased by more than 60% in the past ten years.”

Notes to editors

Eventual funding for the freight schemes would be made available through the Transport Innovation Fund, which is administered by the DfT and enables the department to direct resources towards the achievement of two key objectives: tackling congestion (Congestion TIF) and improving national productivity (Productivity TIF) The DfT has been looking to identify a limited number of transport schemes which could be taken forward quickly for an initial allocation of Productivity TIF, and has concluded that the above-mentioned strategic freight schemes should be taken forward for further business case development and and appraisal The Southampton scheme was one of a series of measures proposed in Network Rail’s South West Main Line Route Utilisation Strategy (RUS), which was launched earlier this year and which provided a number of options from which funders (such as the Department for Transport) could choose. The South West Main Line RUS can be found on Network Rail’s website

Contact information

Passengers / community members
Network Rail national helpline
03457 11 41 41

Latest travel advice
Please visit National Rail Enquiries

Journalists
Network Rail press office - National
020 3356 8700
mediarelations@networkrail.co.uk

About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

Media centre