There’s growing pressure from within and outside the railway industry for the Government to take more positive views on both more electrification of existing routes and for more high-speed lines.
Parliamentary debates, reports and conferences are all calling for a start on planning for the future.
The calls can hardly be put down to ‘green cranks’ – even if anybody would seriously regard environmentalists in such terms nowadays.
Two industry heavyweights argue that two of the three reasons put forward in last July’s White Paper for delaying electrification are misleading.
Network Rail chief executive Iain Coucher and Adrian Shooter for the train operators have also told the Department for Transport that using fossil fuels directly to power trains ‘seems very short sighted’.
In a letter to the transport department, they conclude that from an industry perspective it would seem inconceivable to contemplate a 30-year strategy for a rail industry, especially one that is growing rapidly, which does not foresee much greater use of electric traction. “And if that is the case,” they say, “we need to start planning for it now.”
On the need for high-speed lines, while much of the clamour could be said to be following the elation on the completion and opening of High Speed 1, that line in itself makes a pointed case study on lead times. It took just over nine years from digging the first sod to full use (though the Kent domestic services, and indeed potential freight usage, have yet to start). Planning took more than a decade before that.
Two simple suggestions for transport secretary Ruth Kelly’s new year resolutions. Despite Gordon Brown’s rejection in September of a review of railway electrification, such a study must be made. And a more positive view must be taken too of how high-speed rail is to benefit the nation not too far into the future.