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Transforming Birmingham New Street This is the first tranche of funding for the £550m New Street Gateway project to redevelop one of the UK’s busiest stations. Funding from the public and private sector will be invested to tackle overcrowding through a new station concourse, and greatly enhance the experience for passengers. Our plans will also support the continued economic prosperity of the city centre and region. • The new concourse will be over three times its current size and passengers will have better, modern facilities in a light and spacious station • The station was originally designed to handle 650 trains a day but now takes over 1,250 every day • Links to the city will be improved and the New Street Gateway will create 3,000 new jobs and deliver economic benefits of more than £1.7 billion • The Gateway scheme is backed by Birmingham City Council, Advantage West Midlands, Centro-WMPTA and the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce • Funding decisions on the remaining public sector funding contributions are expected later in the year Thameslink Programme This project is crucial to Network Rail’s plans to grow the railway, supporting economic growth in London and the South East. This vital £3.55bn project will tackle overcrowding on some of the UK’s busiest routes by enabling longer and more direct trains to run to more destinations. The scheme will be completed by the end of 2015, and has been carefully planned to deliver benefits for passengers before the Olympic Games. • The Thameslink Programme will be one of the biggest rail projects ever in the UK (taking an estimated 40 million hours to complete). • Passengers on the Thameslink route will benefit from 50% longer trains and new direct services (e.g. Cambridge to Gatwick). • The scheme will reduce overcrowding on the Underground, with three times as many trains travelling through London every hour (an increase from 8 to 24). • New stations will be built and bottlenecks removed at Blackfriars and London Bridge. • In addition to the £3.55bn investment in the Thameslink Programme, the Government has made funding available for new rolling stock on the Thameslink route. Unblocking the Great Western Main Line: This is a priority infrastructure investment which will tackle a major bottleneck on one of the busiest routes on the network. The key to unblocking this bottleneck is our £425m plans for Reading station. We will introduce new platforms, improve the layout of tracks, and install new signalling to greatly improve capacity and reliability for passengers travelling from as far afield as London, Exeter, Southampton, and Edinburgh: • Reading station was first opened in 1840, and has been remodelled several times to accommodate new train services • We will introduce at least four 12-car platforms to increase passenger and freight capacity on routes from London to the South West and Wales • The number of through platforms will also be increased to allow faster and more reliable services • Work will begin in 2009 and the first benefits will come in time for the Olympics