Media centre

Thursday 21 Nov 2013

Record investment of almost £1m a day in Anglia’s railway as Network Rail publishes its half-year results

Region & Route:

| Eastern: Anglia

| Eastern

| Southern

New bridges, new lifts, new overhead power lines, new track, new footbridges; all have featured as record investment of almost £1m a day has been ploughed into the Anglia region’s railway over the past six months.

Network Rail today published its half-year results (for the period 1 April to 31 October 2013) which revealed that £2.74bn was invested across Britain in improving and building a bigger, better railway – up 33% on the same period last year and 53% higher than just four years ago.

On the Anglia route – which takes in the railway in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, most of Cambrideshire and parts of Hertfordshire and east London – £164m was invested for the same period, 54% up on last year and equal to almost £1m each day. This figure includes around £117m to renew rail infrastructure to deliver a safe and reliable railway, as a further £46m in enhancements to help provide the capacity needed to deal with forecast growth in passenger numbers.

Richard Schofield, Anglia route managing director, Network Rail, said: "The railway in the south east continues to experience tremendous growth and we are responding to that demand through the biggest sustained investment programme since Victorian times.

“With a million more trains and half a billion more passengers than 10 years ago, Britain’s railways are all but full. We are squeezing all we can out of the existing network and the railway must improve and grow to deliver the step-change in capacity that Britain’s vital rail arteries need."

As Network Rail works to modernise the railway in Anglia and across the south east, over the past six months some significant investment milestones have been reached, including:

• The first passenger services started to use the new Hitchin flyover in June after Network Rail completed work to build the new stretch of track which will make the railway more reliable, reduce delays and provide extra capacity in future
• In October, a vital part of the Ipswich Chord project to build a new stretch of track that will help to take more freight off the roads and onto rail will was delivered when a new bridge was installed over Sproughton Road in Ipswich
• Network Rail has now closed over 100 level crossings in Anglia over the past four years and replaced with footbridges, cycleways and underpasses as part of its £130m investment programme to improve level crossing safety, with a further six in Essex and three in Hertfordshire currently underway
• Construction began in September to create a new passenger exit at the flagship Fenchurch Street station

As well as these major milestones over 5,000 projects have been completed nationally over the last four-and-a-half years (since the start of the current funding period called CP4 – 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2014). These smaller, but just as important, projects are 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

Over the six months to 31 October:

• Revenue remained static at £3.267bn (£3.167bn for same period, 2012)
• Operating profit remained static at £1.199bn (£1.227bn last year)
• Profit after tax was £870m (£563m last year. Increase owing to tax treatment)
• Net debt stands at £30.611bn (slightly up from £30.358bn at year end)
• Value of railway assets increase to £47.933bn (up from £46.411bn at year end)