Rail investment from Network Rail / South West Trains Alliance soars as Network Rail publishes its full year results

Wednesday 11 Jun 2014

Rail investment from Network Rail / South West Trains Alliance soars as Network Rail publishes its full year results

Region & Route:: | Southern: Wessex; | Southern

Almost £430m was invested in infrastructure run by the Network Rail / South West Trains Alliance last year, Network Rail revealed today in its full year results for the 2013/14 financial year.

The investment equates to a 34.8 per cent rise on the previous year, and includes everything from extending platforms to new station buildings and renewing track.

Passenger growth on South West Trains has also continued to increase, rising 2.3 per cent in the past year – and by 50 per cent in the past decade.

John Halsall, infrastructure director for the Network Rail / South West Trains Alliance, said: “This record level of investment is matched by record passenger numbers and it is great that people are choosing to travel on our network. While we continue to build for the future, we are also absolutely focussed on improving day to day performance through continual upgrades of existing infrastructure and equipment.

“In the next five years we will also be investing more than £1.2bn in our rail network connecting Waterloo to Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire and beyond. This will form part of a wider programme to deliver an extra 115,000 seats a day into the capital by 2019.”

Nationally, Network Rail spent £6,884m, which equates to almost £20m a day.

In the wider south east, more than one billion passenger journeys are made on trains into London every year, equating to roughly three million passenger journeys each day.

Investment highlights from the Network Rail / South West Trains Alliance include:

Platform lengthening at 65 stations across the route
Introduction of first ten-car trains on Windsor-Waterloo line
Return to use of platform 20 in Waterloo International
New station building at Wokingham
New footbridges built at Alton and Farnham stations to improve accessibility
New footbridge built at North Sheen level crossing
170 improved customer information screens at stations across the route
£40m resignalling of the Poole-Wool line
Resignalling around Farnham
Renewal of track around and through Southampton Central

Notes to editors

The South West Trains-Network Rail Alliance was formed on 29 April 2012 with the aim of delivering an improved service for passengers with faster, more customer-focused decision-making. It is also a step towards delivering a more efficient and cost effective railway for the long term.
· A single joint management team now look after train services and infrastructure across the South West Trains / Wessex route.
· The Alliance is the first of its kind in the UK.
· Train services operated by the Alliance are some of the busiest commuter train services in the UK. Over 2,000 passenger and freight services run on the network every day and the route covers 643 miles of track, with 1375 sets of points and 4394 signals.

National financial highlights

Capital expenditure was £6,884m (2012/13: £5,050m) contributing to an increased asset value of £51,641m (£46,411m last year)

Revenue was £6,333m (£6,197m in 2012/13)

Profit after tax was £943m (up 22% from £775m) with all profits reinvested

Operating profit was £1,908m (£2,217m last year)

Net debt at year end was £32,988m (£30,358m) with a gearing ratio of 65%, comfortably within the regulator’s 75% limit

Nationally, more than over 5,000 projects have been completed over the course of the last five years (control period 4 – CP4 – 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2014). These smaller, but just as important projects aimed at making incremental improvements to the railway for the benefit of passengers, and have seen:

Over 2,000 miles of track renewed

Improvements at over 500 stations across the country

Almost 200 lifts installed at stations

Over 140 platforms lengthened across London and the South East

*The Office of Rail Regulation issued a rail statistics bulleting on 5 June detailing that 1,587m passenger journeys were made in 2013/14. The equivalent number for 1994/5 was 761m

Passenger journeys increased to 1,587m in 2013/14, compared to 1,501m in 2012/13. A 5.7% increase

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 - South East route
020 3357 7969
southeastroutecomms@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.

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