Tweet Check
RAIL’s service aims to answer your questions, debunk the myths, and get to the unvarnished truth behind some of the most common claims and queries we spot on social media.
High wire act
RAIL’s verdict: The election campaign is now finally over. But with pledges to electrify large parts of the network appearing in several party manifestos ( RAIL 893), we thought that the following claim made by then-Cabinet Minister for Northern Powerhouse Jake Berry on November 25 warranted further investigation.
Berry claimed that the previous Labour governments led by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown electrified just ten miles of track between 1997-2010.
In comparison, he said, the most recent Conservative and Conservative-led administrations have electrified 248 miles in the last nine years.
Our verdict is that 45 route miles were, in fact, electrified during Labour’s time in office, largely comprising the West Coast Main Line diversionary route between Kidsgrove and Crewe (2003) and a short section of the Great Western Main Line for Heathrow Express (1998).
Some 466 route miles have subsequently been electrified since 2010, although it can be said that a great many of these schemes (including the flagship Great Western Electrification Project) were at least initiated by Labour, before being delivered after the party left office.
As an aside, there’s also no mention by Berry of the many more miles of electrification that have been cancelled since 2010, including plans to electrify more than 100 miles of the Midland Main Line north of Kettering, as well as routes to Swansea and Windermere.
Numbers game
RAIL’s verdict: Here’s another statistical challenge that was thrown our way by Ian Derbyshire, who asks for a large range of comparative figures to be compiled for the years before and since the railways were privatised in the mid-1990s.
It’s going to take a while to source all of the requested information - including fares rises, freight tonnages, cost to the taxpayer and so forth. But here’s a little appetiser, sourced with a little help from track engineer and RAIL contributor Gareth Dennis.
Assuming that 1995-96 was the last year of the nationalised railway, total route mileage has slightly decreased in the past 23 years, from 10,356 miles to 9,824 (due largely to changes of ownership).
Meanwhile, according to the Office of Rail and Road, there were 1.7 billion total passenger journeys in 2018-19, compared with approximately 800 million in 1995-96.
Annual journeys per head have also increased, from just under
15 to approximately 27 in the intervening period. The total number of vehicles in passenger use was 10,400 in 1996, which has subsequently risen to its current level of more than 14,000.