Vision:
Expanding the rail network
- Last update: 28/11/2024
- Version: v2.0
Growing the rail network with new lines and stations is vital for improving coverage and resilience of the rail network, improving accessibility of public transport, driving sustainable modal shift and reconnecting communities across the country.
At Enroute, we strive to create a greener, economically-friendly, and community-influenced public and active transport network, encouraging modal shift from road and private car to sustainable modes of transport. We elaborate on our aims with our comprehensive vision for the transport network in 2050.
Our 2050 Vision draws on our work and the published work of other organisations. Whilst we highlight where our vision aligns with the views of other organisations, the 2050 Vision represents Enroute’s views and should not be taken to represent those of other organisations.
Why Rail?
Rail is a fast, convenient and energy-efficient means of transport. It forms a vital part of the sustainable public transport network, alongside buses and active travel, offering an alternative to the car (particularly for medium-to-long-distance and suburban-urban commuter journeys). The perceived and physical permanence of rail, and the centrality of stations to the villages, towns and cities they serve, give the railway a value above and beyond the mobility it provides. Investing in rail is a mark of confidence in our places and seriousness about our future. Stations form symbolic centres of villages, towns and cities, providing an anchor and a hub for local communities.
Reconnections
Enroute support the principle of expanding the rail network with new lines and stations, particularly to connect towns and communities across the country currently lacking access to the rail network. This will help increase rail’s overall modal share and tackle social and economic isolation in Britain’s ‘left behind’ areas. The community hubs provided by new stations will improve social cohesion and revive village and town centres.
Reconnection can be achieved through a combination of extending lines, creating new branch lines, adding stations to existing lines or improving bus links to new or improved stations. Use could in many cases be made of former rail alignments, where they are partially or wholly intact. Our friends at Campaign for Better Transport have comprehensively set out their Case for Expanding the Rail Network here.
Enroute believes the Restoring Your Railway (RYR) programme, launched by the previous Government in 2020, had strong potential for helping the expansion of the railway, by creating a dedicated fund that councils or other groups could apply for to fund project development, with technical support from Network Rail, and providing a strong political narrative around ‘reversing the Beeching Axe’ that could help drive public support for expanding the network. However, in our own report into RYR, we concluded that the initial funding pot for the programme (£500m) was inadequate, and that Government indecision has held back or delayed progress on a number of schemes, resulting in a very small number actually being delivered. We called for RYR to be reformed and expanded, but the new Government scrapped the programme in July 2024.
We call for the revival of RYR or the launching of an alternative, equivalent ‘Reconnections’ programme. Whilst Central Government should set the tone and provide resources and funding to encourage reconnection projects, decision-making powers should be devolved for Transport Authorities to lead on projects where they are most needed, with local support. We believe the framing of ‘restoring’ or ‘reconnecting’ has powerful political potential (notwithstanding whether ‘restoration’ is strictly accurate from an engineering point of view). We believe, through a new ‘Reconnections’ pot, the Government should match funding from Transport Authorities for new rail projects where reconnecting isolated communities can be demonstrated as a clear aim. We argue the development and decision-making process for such projects should be significantly simplified and accelerated. We believe commitment to a rolling programme of reconnection projects will help cut costs through economies of scale.
New Strategic Lines
New railway lines can serve wider strategic purposes, as well as benefitting local communities, such as bridging gaps in regional connectivity, improving capacity and resilience, and providing new routes for freight. Whilst we believe local-scale Transport Authorities should lead predominantly on ‘reconnection’ projects (see above), the Government (or devolved or larger sub-national bodies) should lead on development or funding of new lines that can be demonstrated to show wider strategic purpose. We believe all new strategic lines should be delivered with overhead electrification.
Our Vision for High Speed Rail includes a number of key new lines between major cities which we argue should be delivered as high-capacity, high-speed lines, such as the ‘cross-country spine’ from Birmingham, through the East Midlands and South Yorkshire, to Leeds and York. It also includes our vision for Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), from Liverpool, Chester and North Wales, through Manchester and Leeds, to York, Hull and the North East. Some lines, such as NPR, are included in the high-speed rail section due to their interlinkage with the wider network, but do not necessarily need to be delivered as high-speed to achieve their aims.
The following are examples (non-exhaustive) of new lines we consider to have strategic value, and should therefore be prioritised for development and funding. Where we have drawn from external campaigns or proposals, links are provided:
- Northern Powerhouse Rail (Liverpool – Manchester – Leeds – Hull & York).
- East West Rail central section (Bedford to Cambridge).
- Leamside Line (Ferryhill to Newcastle via Washington).
- Skipton to Colne.
- Manchester to Sheffield (broadly following the Woodhead route, but likely to be substantially new infrastructure).
- Peak Line (Buxton to Matlock), providing a strategic link between the North West and the East Midlands, and increasing capacity for freight on the Hope Valley. See Campaign for the Peak Line and MEMRAP.
- North Pennine Line (Darlington to Penrith), as an alternative to dualling the A66.
- Dragon Line (North Wales to South Wales).
- Borders Railway Extension (Carlisle to Tweedbank), providing a new link across the border to Edinburgh.
- Dawlish bypass line: Either utilising the route via Okehampton and Tavistock, the route via the Teign Valley, or an entirely new alignment. This would ensure long-term resilience for the rail link to Devon and Cornwall from extreme weather. The current route via Dawlish should continue to be protected.
Case Study: East West Rail
East West Rail is a strategic new line that is already planned and partly under construction, ultimately linking Oxford and Cambridge. The section between Bicester and Bletchley, reusing previously mothballed infrastructure, is nearing completion, and we are pleased that funding has now been committed for the remaining section to Cambridge.
East West Rail is vital for the region, offering significant improvements in connectivity across the Oxford-Cambridge arc and a key orbital route avoiding London. Lessons must be learned and skills retained from the project to ensure future projects of this scale can be delivered more quickly, especially when existing alignments are already largely available for reuse.
Case Study: Leamside Line
The Leamside line is a mothballed route between Ferryhill and Newcastle/Sunderland, via Washington. Although tracks have been lifted, the alignment remains protected. There are ambitions to reopen this line as a secondary long-distance section for the East Coast Main Line, providing additional capacity and resilience, especially for freight. There are also local ambitions to use part of the line to extend the Tyne and Wear Metro to Washington. We believe the combination of local and strategic aims, pursued together and balanced appropriately, have the potential to strengthen its case for reopening.
In 2023, as part of the Network North announcement, a commitment to fund the reopening of the line was published on the Government website, only to be removed 24 hours later. Effective co-operation between central Government and local bodies on schemes such as the Leamside Line relies on trust, transparency and certainty.
Whole Systems Thinking
Whole systems thinking is needed when it comes to new rail projects, to ensure the addition of new infrastructure, as we call for above, does not put additional pressure on the wider network. This means some ‘reconnection’ or strategic projects may be dependent on parallel delivery of capacity improvements for congested parts of the network. Cost benefit analysis of packages of new schemes must recognise the synergies on offer between the two, offering benefits in excess of the sum of their parts. Unlocking these synergies also relies on more certainty for project pipelines. This would ensure expansion of the rail network results in an improvement in overall system capacity and resilience, resulting in more and better rail journeys for everyone.
The Ordsall Chord is a section of railway in Central Manchester, delivered in 2017, allowing trains to be routed via both Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria. It is a good demonstration of the challenges involved in balancing new infrastructure and network constraints, as due to congestion across central Manchester, its potential has not been fully exploited.
- Expanding the Railways: How to develop and deliver a proposal - Campaign for Better Transport, Railfuture, Department for Transport.
- The case for expanding the rail network - Campaign for Better Transport.
- Missing Links - Railfuture.
- Beeching in Reverse - Paul Salveson.
- 28th November 2024: Refreshed position published after development over summer 2024.
- 16th July 2024: Renamed this policy position from 'New rail projects' to 'Expanding the rail network'
- 14th December 2023: Initial publication
