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Wednesday 31 Mar 2004

NETWORK RAIL PUBLISHES 2004 BUSINESS PLAN - A CLEAR PLAN FOR A BETTER RAILWAY -

Region & Route:

| Southern

Network Rail today unveiled its 2004 business plan, which highlights unprecedented investment and a clear plan for improving Britain’s railway. Over the next five years the company will spend some £26 billion to deliver a safe, reliable and value for money railway. The 2004 Business Plan is the first based on a fixed and certain level of income and gives the Business stability and a clear direction. It sets out a detailed blueprint for improving performance and reducing costs through a huge programme of action and activity. It demonstrates how Network Rail will spend £14 million each day on operating, maintaining, renewing and enhancing the network to deliver the maximum benefit for Britain’s rail users. More than £1 billion has been allocated to the railway in East Anglia over the next three years aiming to tackle the legacy of under investment and build on the improvements Network Rail has already made. Mark Phillips, Network Rail Regional Director said:   “This plan demonstrates our commitment to deliver a better train service to the passenger through the enormous amount of activity and investment that will be pumped into East Anglia’s ageing railway infrastructure over the next five years. With more than £1 billion being spent on the network over the next three years, our task must be to ensure that we get best value out of that investment and make every penny count in the delivery of a better, more reliable railway.” - more - Plan – 2 With major resignalling projects now complete across the region, we are turning our attention to improving the track.  We will be spending around £110m per annum renewing track, ballast and sleepers.  In 2004 - 05 we will replace 76 kilometres of track, a 22% increase on 2003 - 04.  Network Rail will also be committing £145m per annum to maintenance.  Routine maintenance is essential to the safe, reliable running of the railway. To ensure maintenance activities are efficient and good value for money, we will be bringing our maintenance contracts in-house before the end of the year.  This will lead to efficiencies with clear lines of responsibility, fewer overheads and more direct input into engineering decisions.  There are other performance-focused workstreams which look at how we have worked in the past and how we can use best practice in the future.  Every pound counts and so does every minute on track, so in East Anglia we have been concentrating on increasing the amount of work that is undertaken during every closure of the railway, maximising our resources whilst minimising disruption to passengers.  We have also developed, and continue to work on, a computer-based system (MIMS) which stores millions of asset records.  These records are updated and maintained by engineers and help us to work proactively, identifying potential areas of concern before they become problems.   Network Rail has improved its weather strategy and now focuses resources not just on autumn, but also on preparations for hot weather, which can buckle rails and affect overhead lines; and extreme cold weather, which can freeze equipment and weigh down overhead lines. Mr Phillips concluded: “The 2004 Business Plan marks the next phase of Network Rail’s task of rebuilding Britain’s railway. It gives us certainty about the future, where we can look forward to sustained high levels of investment and increased activity levels, that will lead to a more reliable, better railway for our customers and rail users.”