Calculating a cost for railway electrification - it might be £16bn

The clearest sign yet that electrification is returning to rail’s enhancements menu came in May, when a Network Rail presentation proposed wires for passenger services used by long-distance, high-speed CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, Chiltern, Great Western Railway, LNER and Avanti West Coast services.

The pledge came from NR Strategy and Planning Director Helen McAllister, in a presentation to the Railway Industry Association (RIA) on May 21.

Her presentation slides added: “Ultimately the proposals mean that corridors with major freight traffic to and from Felixstowe, Southampton, South Wales, the quarries in Western and the inland terminals in the Midlands are all electrified.”

Further details should come in July, when NR is expected to publish its Traction

Decarbonisation Network Study (TDNS). NR expects to follow this with a ‘programme business case’ in October that should explain the timescales for NR’s recommendations around electrification and the use of battery or hydrogen power.

A couple of days before RIA’s decarbonisation event, the Rail Alliance held a series of short seminars. This provided a contrast between government departments.

At the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), Head of Rail Mike Noakes talked positively but noted that Treasury investment criteria - the ‘ Green Book’ - did not place a value on carbon. He added that next year’s COP26 climate conference could provide a great opportunity to use battery trains to carry delegates to its venue.

DfT Senior Policy Advisor Jamie Bend provided no clues when I asked how the DfT foresaw rail decarbonisation taking effect. He merely said that a plan would come later this year. I didn’t expect him to reveal much, but his answer was so non-committal as to suggest the DfT is hedging its bets.

It surely isn’t, if Transport Minister Baroness Vere’s written answer on May 5 is anything approaching accurate: “Electrification will play a significant role in our programme to decarbonise the railway,”

My understanding (because NR redacted the slide with these figures in McAllister’s presentation slides it sent me) is that there are around 15,000 single-track kilometres (9,320 miles) of unelectrified railway. NR is suggesting that 11,000stkm needs to be electrified for freight and long-distance passenger, 700stkm can be run using trains equipped with batteries, and 1,000stkm using trains powered by hydrogen. This leaves 3,000stkm for which there is no clear choice.

RIA’s seminal March 2019 report into electrification suggested that simple schemes should cost £750,000 to £1 million per singletrack kilometre and more complex projects should not normally exceed £1.5m/stkm.

This puts NR’s wiring suggestion into a cost range of £8.25bn to £16.5bn. RIA Technical Director David Clarke suggested in the Rail Alliance seminar that wiring should be strung over 15 years from the start of Control Period 7 (April 2024). That would mean spending up to £1bn a year to produce the lowest carbon railway Britain has ever had.