Just to prove we pay attention to more than just automotive news, we thought we’d let you know about the UK’s plans to invest £1.1billion in the first large electrification of its rail network since the late 1980s.
The routes affected will be the London to Swansea and Liverpool to Manchester lines. This in turn will produce the first electric main line trains running in Wales.
Work will start straightaway and for the Liverpool-Manchester route work is expected to be completed within four years. The London-Swansea route will take longer – it has a goal to be completed within eight years.
Once the work is complete, the proportion of electric train journeys in Britain will leap from 60 per cent to 67 per cent. Currently only around 33 per cent of Britain’s rail network is electrified but this work will offer a massive boost as there were around 21million passenger journeys on the Great Western line alone in the last financial year; not to mention more than one million passenger journeys on the Liverpool-Manchester railway.
The efforts to electrify the network are unlikely to end there, with the UK Government also to consider the case for further electrification, particularly in the Midland Main Line which runs between London, Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield; and the routes between both Manchester and Preston and Liverpool and Preston.
It’s easy to see why such a concerted charge is being made. Typically an electric train emits between 20 and 35 per cent less carbon per passenger mile than a diesel train.
