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It will come as little surprise to those of us who use the railways on a regular basis that the government is not really interested in improving the network beyond what exists today. While the government continues to consider railway investment as ‘subsidy’ and ‘cost’ there is little hope of this ever changing in times of such great need.
There are to be no rail reopenings considered except at local authority level for the next seven years, the electrification decision has been postponed again, there will be no decision on a new north-south high speed line until 2012 at the earliest, and there is little forward thinking and guidance from the Department for Transport in these matters. It, therefore, comes, also, as no surprise that ‘investment’ in roads is talked about quite a lot.
The Times ran a very interesting article detailing this phenomenum: the road network is growing fifteen times faster than the railway network. According to The Times, “In five of the past eleven years, no track was added to the domestic rail network, and in the peak years for rail growth, in 2001 and 2002, the network grew by only six miles a year.” Reopenings have happened in Wales and Scotland, however. The Highways Agency has 40 new projects in the planning stages and the only seriously considered railway project is Crossrail which only benefits London and the surrounding area.
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