Our plan for rail in Britain

Our plan is underway

Every year 1.3 billion journeys are made on Britain's railway and demand is increasing. Our plan would see the industry deliver an additional 180,000 seats at peak times compared with today.

We're lengthening platforms, untangling tracks, introducing electrification and building world-class stations. Rail services will be faster, more frequent, greener and have extra space for passengers. We're helping Britain run better.

1. Nov 2007 - New St Pancras International station opened
2. Dec 2008 - Major improvements to West Coast Main Line completed
3. May 2011 - Olympic park transport links completed
4. Dec 2011 - First longer trains run on Thameslink route
5. Dec 2011 - New Tube station opens at Blackfriars 
6. Spring 2012 - New concourse at King's Cross opens 
7. Summer 2012 - Work at Blackfriars and Farringdon complete
8. Autumn 2013 - King's Cross redevelopment complete
9. Spring 2015 - Bottleneck around Reading completely removed
10. Spring 2015 - Birmingham New Street station redevelopment complete
11. Summer 2016 - EGIP completed (subject to funding)
12. 2018 - Thameslink completed
13. 2018 - Crossrail completed and into service
14. 2020 - Great Western upgrade completed

Benefits

We are focussed on 4 key benefits and every project delivers at least one of them.

• Faster - we're reducing journey times
• More frequent - infrastructure improvements allow more trains to run every hour
• Greener - we're electrifying lines to make train travel cleaner and greener; by increasing rail freight (which is 75% greener than road freight) we're removing lorries from our roads
• More comfortable - we're lengthening platforms to allow longer trains with more seats, and modernising stations to make your journey more comfortable

Projects

We have exciting projects going on all across Britain, as part of our plan.

• North 
• London and SE 
• West