Media centre

Thursday 3 Nov 2005

NEW OPTIONS FOR MEETING RAILWAY GROWTH UNVEILED

Region & Route:

National

Network Rail today unveiled a series of options for meeting the growing demand on the busy lines into London’s Waterloo station. The draft Route Utilisation Strategy (RUS) presents, for consultation, 27 options that could accommodate greater passenger and freight demand in this part of the country, which is forecast to see passenger kilometres increase by 20% and freight traffic increase by 15-20% over the next 10 years.  The consultation identifies the present day pinch-points and invites stakeholders to consider a variety of potential solutions, which include:

• Adding services to the ‘peak shoulders’ (7am to 8am and 9am to 10am)
• Incentivising travel during the peak shoulders
• Doubling services to hourly on the Waterloo-Exeter line
• Easing congestion at key pinch-points in the area to deliver more, and more reliable services
• Getting more freight onto rail and off roads through track enhancement schemes

  Further rigorous analysis and appraisal will be done on the options to ensure that only those passing strict value for money and affordability tests are included in the final strategy.  John Armitt, Chief Executive, said: “This consultation looks at the challenges for the rail industry in meeting growing passenger and freight demand on the lines into Waterloo, and provides a range of ambitious, but realistic, options for meeting this challenge and allowing up to 23% passenger growth over the next 10 years.” “We look forward to hearing the views of a wide range of interested parties – not only from within the rail industry, but also from local authorities and regional development agencies.  Their input is crucial in helping to identify the best ways to accommodate growth on this key rail artery.” Network Rail, and its industry partners, have been working on the route strategy for over six months.  The team has built on the work done on previous strategies by the Strategic Rail Authority, and taken the process a step further, seeking new ways to accommodate and expand network capacity to deliver a better service for passengers. The industry and numerous stakeholders have identified a series of potential solutions and expansion plans for the route. The expert team has researched and analysed each, and has discarded many.  This resultant draft route strategy presents the 21 options that merit further scrutiny and which the industry believes will deliver the greatest benefit to the most rail passengers and freight customers. The consultation on these options will last until January 2006. Once completed, a final version of the route strategy will be submitted to the Office of Rail Regulation and the Department for Transport (DfT). Some of the options could be taken forward by the rail industry while others may need other interested parties’ (eg. Regional Development Agency, TfL, DfT) input before they could proceed. This route strategy is the first in a series that will start over the next 12 months taking an average of 12 to 18 months to complete. The options There are 27 options contained in this route strategy. Of these, 21 are recommended for further scrutiny and analysis, with six discounted for various reasons.  The 27 options include:

• Additional services – for example, a significant increase in capacity could be delivered by increasing services arriving at Waterloo between 7am and 8am from the present 46 (but passengers would need to be incentivised to travel at this time and additional rolling stock would be required)
• Longer trains and platforms – conversion of some suburban services (eg. Waterloo-Reading) from 8 to 10 carriages would deliver 25% increase in capacity
• ‘Peak management’ – incentivising travel during the hours either side of the morning peak hour (between 8am and 9am)

·         Redevelopment of Waterloo o        Short-term – relocate retail units on the concourse to free up space o        Medium-term – use the international station for domestic services post 2007 o        Long-term – complete redevelopment including a new, larger concourse with extra facilities, longer platforms and a new track layout ·         Remodel platforms 7 & 8 at Clapham Junction including lengthening platforms to take 12 carriages ·         A flyover or underpass at Woking would relieve this key pinch-point enabling more stopping and non-stopping services through this bottleneck ·        Encourage more freight off road onto rail by enhancing the rail infrastructure on the Southampton-Reading line to enable ‘big-box’ containers (9’6”) to operate ·         Reworking platform arrangements at Portsmouth Harbour with single train operating company platforms to relieve congestion and deliver performance improvements ·         Double the service levels to hourly on the Waterloo – Exeter route (West of England line) and quadruple service levels to half-hourly between Axminster – Exeter by building two sections, around eight miles, of double track on the single line section of the route between Axminster and Exeter