UK: Great Western and east coast rail upgrades announced

[John Ashworth]

Great Western and east coast rail upgrades announced at last

£5.2bn investment will deliver 500 new intercity trains and electrification programme

* Dan Milmo
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 March 2011 20.41 GMT

There is light at the end of the tunnel for millions of long-suffering passengers on Britain's Great Western and east coast rail routes, after years of overcrowding, disruption and underfunding, with the announcement of a £5.2bn investment programme.

Commuters on the London-to-Cardiff route are the biggest winners under the scheme, outlined by the transport secretary, Philip Hammond, which will deliver a new generation of intercity trains. More than 15 minutes will be shaved from the two-hour journey time between the cities.

From 2016, rail users on the route will travel on a fleet of intercity carriages built by a Japanese-led consortium, powered by newly erected overhead lines.

Travellers on the east coast route will also benefit from replacements for ageing trains, to be introduced from 2018.

Hammond said that the much-delayed announcement, which comes in the same week as the launch of a consultation on a £32bn north-south high-speed rail network, confirmed the government's commitment to rail. "It completes a picture of massive upgrades to our intercity rail corridors over the coming years," he said.

However, the schemes, which were announced by the Labour administration, have shrunk under the government's austerity drive. The planned electrification programme will not be extended to the section of track between Cardiff and Swansea, and the intercity order is for 500 carriages rather than the 1,400 heralded by Labour ministers two years ago.

Maria Eagle, the shadow transport secretary, said: "There will be disappointment in Swansea on St David's Day that the plan we announced in government to modernise the entire route into south Wales has not been given the green light."

The new trains will replace the distinctive Intercity 125 diesel and Intercity 225 electric fleets that British Rail bought in the 1970s and 1980s. Subject to the completion of negotiations, they will be built by Agility Trains, a consortium formed by the Japanese trainmaker Hitachi and services group John Laing, which will create 500 jobs at a factory in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham.

Agility was criticised when it was first chosen as the preferred bidder after it admitted that some production would stay in Japan.

The £4.5bn project will be structured as a private finance initiative, with the consortium meeting the initial cost and the government paying back the cost of constructing and maintaining the trains over a 30-year period.

In recent months there has been speculation that Alstom, the French train manufacturer, will launch a legal challenge against any changes to the intercity order but the company declined to comment yesterday.

The electrification scheme will cost £704m and be funded by debt taken on by Network Rail, the government-backed owner of Britain's rail infrastructure.

Passenger Focus, the rail user watchdog, urged the Department for Transport to launch extensive testing of the new train interiors, which will be deployed on one of Britain's most crowded commuter routes, between Reading and London's Paddington station.

"We would encourage the DfT and the Agility Consortium to build mock-ups of these trains as soon as possible so we can further test the layouts and help deliver a train which sets new high standards for passengers," said Ashwin Kumar, rail director at Passenger Focus.

The managing director of First Great Western, the main operator on the London-to-Cardiff route, said the electrification programme would help revitalise one of Britain's most venerable pieces of rail infrastructure.