the inside track on the future of rail.

Crossrail, which is also known as the Elizabeth Line, is currently the biggest civil construction project in Europe. Costing £14.8 billion, the scheme will link Reading and Heathrow (west) with Shenfield and Abbey West (east). Ten new stations will be constructed, with each one cleverly designed with a distinct character that reflects the local heritage. 

It’s estimated to carry over 200 million passengers a year, increasing capacity to central London’s rail network by 10%. This will not only ease congestion but drastically cut down commute times into the city. Canary Wharf to Liverpool Street, for example, currently takes 22 minutes, but once the Elizabeth line is running this will decrease to eight minutes. 

The broad aims of the project are to reduce travelling times, increase central London capacity and improve employment opportunities (30,000 jobs are expected to be created by 2026). Trains will be air-conditioned with walk-through carriages and have 4G, wi-fi and capacity for 1,500 passengers.

HS2, the popular acronym for High Speed 2, is a planned high-speed rail network connecting London to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and the East Midlands.

The first phase of the £55bn railway is due to launch in December 2026, with trains travelling at high speed between London and Birmingham before continuing on the existing West Coast Main Line. By 2027, and the opening of the expansion of the network to Crewe, the journey between Glasgow and London will be reduced by 45 minutes compared to today’s journey time. The onward journeys to Manchester and Leeds could start being built in the middle of the next decade, with the line predicted to open by 2032-33.

The Department for Transport says there could be nearly 15,000 seats an hour on trains between London and the cities of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, travelling at speeds of up to 250mph – faster than any currently operating in Europe.

The plans could mean that the train journey from Leeds to Birmingham, as an example, which normally takes two hours, could go down to just 57 minutes. Furthermore, the construction of HS2 would create around 25,000 jobs up and down the country and has estimated economic benefits to the UK of £103bn.

The Great North Rail Project, often shortened to GNRP, is a scheme that aims to transform train travel for customers in the North. Network Rail expects hundreds more trains to run each day, planning for “more trains with more seats, running more quickly and more reliably”.

One of the key plans within the project is the Transpennine route upgrade. This involves the upgrade of the railway between Manchester Victoria to Leeds and Selby/York. The upgrade aims to deliver faster and more frequent rail services with space for more passengers by improving connections between key towns and cities across the north of England. 

UK Transport Secretary Chris Grayling commented that “travel will be transformed across the north as we invest £13bn to improve journeys, expand our motorways, scrap the outdated Pacer trains and spend £55bn on HS2 to cut journey times between our great northern cities.”

The electrification of the railway system is a big part of the Railway Upgrade Plan involving multiple projects across the country, such as the Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvement Plan (EGIP), the Gospel Oak to Barking route, the Great Western route, the Midland Mainline, sections of the Great North Rail Project and important rail routes in South Wales.

The carbon emissions of electric trains are 20-35% lower than diesel trains, which would dramatically improve air quality in city centres. Electric trains are also faster, quieter and are able to hold more seats than a diesel equivalent. This makes journey times shorter, increases passenger capacity, reduces noise pollution for lineside residents and decreases the cost it takes to operate the railway system. Less maintenance is needed because electric trains cause less wear to the track, making railway overall more reliable for passengers.

The Thameslink Programme is all about transforming north-south travel through London. The infrastructure and new trains investment plan aims to increase capacity on one of Europe’s busiest stretches of railway.

So far, there has been platform lengthening at several stations, 12-car long trains between Brighton and Bedford have been delivered, significant track work has been done as well as station upgrades for West Hampstead, Farringdon and Blackfriars stations.

The programme will help meet a massive rise in demand and increase the number of Thameslink route services through central London to one every two-three minutes at peak times. Passengers will have better travel options to more destinations by linking some services, e.g. from Cambridge and parts of the East Coast Mainline into the Thameslink network. This will help relieve congestion on the London Underground, especially the Northern line.