Tuesday 10 Dec 2024
Transpennine Route Upgrade report outlines sustainable success
- Region & Route:
- Eastern
- | North West & Central: North West
The Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) has released its first Sustainable Development Report, showcasing significant achievements in sustainability from April 2019 to March 2024. The £10.7bn rail programme, spanning Manchester to York, aims to leave a long-lasting legacy across the North, combining environmental protection, economic growth and community engagement.
Key milestones include achieving BREEAM Infrastructure ‘Excellent’ ratings for projects such as the Leeds Station Capacity Project and works between Manchester Victoria and Stalybridge, where initiatives like sourcing 90% of materials responsibly and donating Victorian-style canopy columns to Bolton Heritage Railway were recognised.
The TRU Sustainable Development Strategy – Our Guiding Compass – outlines four pillars that steer the programme through sustainable activity: Northern jobs, enhancing the environment, customer satisfaction, and communities.
Sustainability credentials across these four pillars include:
Northern Jobs
- 270 apprentices employed, on track to 590 target by programme completion.
- On target for 60% of the project workforce living within 25 miles of the route and 80% within 40 miles.
- 66% of spend outside the TRU framework is going to local suppliers within 25 miles of the route.
Enhanced Environment
- Equivalent of 25 football fields of land, across 6 separate plots of land, proposed for new habitat creation.
- 20,000 tonnes of soil and 13,000 tonnes of excess aggregate has been reused to date, minimising waste.
- Carbon training implemented across the programme, with a programme aim of reducing 230,000 tonnes CO2e by 2035, saving six million tonnes of CO2e over a sixty-year period.
- Both TransPennine Express and Northern are already operating electric passenger services between Manchester Victoria and Stalybridge, with the full route to be electrified.
Customer Satisfaction
- The programme will provide step-free access to a minimum of 99% of the customers using the stations along the route.
- Morley and Garforth stations have already been made fully accessible.
- TransPennine Express and Northern being fully embedded into the Enterprise means they lead the customer delivery team, using a ‘plan, do, review’ approach following customer feedback.
Community Engagement
- 11,450 hours of volunteering by TRU employees for community and charitable organisations has been carried out.
- 44,500 children are being engaged with through over 570 different events.
- Development of ‘Cones’ children’s book, by author Chris Madeley, engaging young children to raise awareness of the different jobs in rail and construction.
- By programme completion, TRU will have engaged with over 100,000 young people and delivered 25,000 hours of volunteering.
- 1.4bn in social value delivered to the North, exceeding targets.
Jo Griffiths, TRU Programme Director, said:
"We launched ‘Our Guiding Compass’ to challenge the programme to integrate best-in-class sustainable development principles throughout our design and construction phases - a focus shared across the whole Enterprise.
“By adopting an Enterprise-wide approach to delivering TRU, we are already seeing benefits in supporting our customers throughout our work.
“We’ve also challenged station designs and enhancing connecting services to improve accessibility and connectivity."
Anna Humphries, TRU Head of Sustainability, said:
“TRU has been striving to be industry leading in Sustainability since 2019 and we have seen great success to date, delivering value to our local communities through extensive engagement with schools and creating employment opportunities for young people across the route.
“I and the rest of the leadership team are extremely proud of what we have delivered to date – an industry leading approach to sustainability which we are sharing back into Network Rail and across the rail and construction sectors.
“TRU has a long journey ahead, but our strategy and our partners are setting us up to deliver a sustainable railway fit for all of our communities and for the future.”
The full TRU Sustainable Development Report can be viewed here: Sustainable Development Report 2024 - Transpennine Route Upgrade
Notes to Editors
TRU will bring passengers:
• More trains to choose from and more seats. Our improvements will enable more
trains to run between Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York with up to six fast
services every hour between Leeds and Manchester and up to two stopping
services for local connectivity.
• Faster journeys so you can travel to your favourite towns and cities more quickly.
Our fastest journey times are forecast to be 63-66 minutes between Manchester
and York and 41-42 minutes between Manchester and Leeds.
• More reliable journeys with trains that run on-time
• Better stations across the Transpennine route, bringing passengers a better travel
experience through improved, more accessible stations
• Greener travel, reducing our carbon footprint and improving air quality. Our plans
aim to save up to 87,000 tonnes of carbon emissions each year – supporting the
government’s Net Zero objectives. We’re also developing a proposal to move more
goods by rail (up to 15 more freight trains each day.)
• Together, these freight trains are expected to remove over 1,000 lorries off the road each day.
TRU will bring local communities:
• Jobs for local people. Our workforce will be local, with 80% employment from
within a 40-mile radius of the route, and 60% employment from within a 25-mile
radius. With a current workforce of around 2000 people, we estimate that could
double over the course of the programme. We’ll employ an apprentice for every
£4million spent.
• Improved natural environments near the railway through 10% biodiversity net
gain across the route. This will create or enhance habitats for wildlife.
The multi-billion-pound Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) will bring this line into the
21st century with 70-miles of fully electric, digital railway. Our plans include:
• Electrifying the whole route between Manchester and York via Huddersfield and
Leeds
• Installing a new digital signalling system along the Transpennine route
• Doubling the number of tracks from two to four between Huddersfield and
Westtown in Dewsbury.
• Station improvements along the route to enhance customer experience, comfort
and accessibility
• Improving the railway on diversionary routes to allow more trains to run, to help
keep passengers and freight moving while the core Transpennine route is closed to
deliver essential upgrades. This will provide capacity and reliability improvements
for future too.
Contact information
Passengers / community members
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03457 11 41 41
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Journalists
Ewan Bayliss
Communications Executive
Network Rail
ewan.bayliss@networkrail.co.uk
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