Hendy advocates merit of long-term national rail plan

A national rail investment plan “would be very helpful for the national railway network”, Network Rail Chairman Sir

Peter Hendy CBE told the Welsh Affairs Committee on February 25.

“Knowing what you want to do next enables the people who are charged with doing it to get the preparations done. I think that’s more important than who has the money and who owns the infrastructure,” he said.

“If everybody understands what you want to do next, then actually it’ll go better. It’ll probably be cheaper. And it’ll be delivered quicker.

“If you look at the Great Western electrification, which was a project from hell, it wasn’t properly specified, it wasn’t properly costed, and we delivered it very badly.

“The origins of that were that it was dreamt up in a very short space of time, it wasn’t part of anybody’s plan, nobody had prepared for it… the supply industry wasn’t ready to produce the stuff that was needed. It was a disaster. Passengers suffered and so did the public purse. I don’t want to ever be near something like that again.

“To do better than that, we have to be better at delivery, but we also have to have a plan. That is far more important than the money and where the asset sits.”

Hendy also suggested that changes to appraisal processes, to reflect wider economic benefits of schemes, could lead to some in Wales being moved further up the agenda, and that a UK equivalent of the TransEuropean Transport Network could improve transport connectivity across the country and between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.