Record investment in the railway serving the West Midlands and North West as Network Rail publishes its half-year results

Published on : Friday, November 22, 2013

New-Birmingham-New-Street-more-accessibleAround £2.5m a day have been invested in improving the railway serving the West Midlands and North West over the last six months, new figures show. New stations, new concourses, electrification, new stretches of track and investment in reliability have all featured as part of the £446m invested in Network Rail’s London North Western route which connects the South East to the West Midlands, North West and Scotland.
The figures were revealed as Network Rail today published its half-year results (for the period 1 April to 30 September 2013) which revealed that £2.74bn was invested in improving and building a bigger, better railway – 33% up on the same period last year and 53% higher than just four years ago.
Dyan Crowther, route managing director said: “The railway continues to experience tremendous growth and we now carry over 1m passengers every day on the London North Western route. We are responding to that demand with new stations such as Birmingham New Street and unprecedented investment to improve the railway across the north of England.
“However with over 4000 trains running every day on our route, the West Coast Main Line is all but full. We are focusing on reducing delays to make the most of the capacity we do have and untangling the bottleneck at Stafford, however HS2, must be built to deliver the step-change in capacity that the West Coast Main Line needs.”
Over the past six months investment on the London North Western route has seen:
The successful opening of the first half of the £600m redevelopment of Birmingham New Street station. The old station has been replaced with a bigger, brighter concourse with modern facilities and better access for passengers.
The successful completion of a project to replace three miles of track and four junctions to help increase line speeds and make journeys more reliable and punctual for passengers using the West Coast Main Line through Lancashire
A more reliable and affordable railway for the people of Manchester, Liverpool and the North West as we continue with the £400m project to electrify railway in the region, the first stretch of electrified line between Manchester and Liverpool will open to rail services before the end of 2013.
The £44m rebuild of Manchester Victoria station is progressing well with the new roof set to be completed in 2014.
Plans taken forward for consultation to deliver the Northern Hub, £600m worth of improvements which will create space for 700 more trains a day across the north of England and deliver over £4bn worth of economic benefits to the region.
Work underway to electrify the Chase Line north of Birmingham which will help stimulate economic growth by allowing a better, cleaner, greener rail service for passengers.
Improved accessibility at our stations across the route, including a £12m rebuild of Salford Crescent station to provide better access and facilities for passengers.
Investing over £40m to improve punctuality on the southern end of the West Coast Main Line by tackling the most common causes of delay.
As well as this investment on the London North Western route, nationally, over 5,000 projects have been completed over the last four and a half years (since the start of our current funding period called CP4 – 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2014). These smaller, but just as important projects 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 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)
Dyan Crowther concluded: “We continue to invest record amounts to deliver a bigger, better railway for passengers and businesses across Britain. We are also driving down the cost of running Britain’s railway to help make it more affordable in the years ahead. Train performance is still at high levels by historical standards, but has fallen behind our targets as we struggle to get more and more out of an ever overloaded network.”
Source:- Network Rail

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