Network Rail must develop a long-term plan for electrification or risk continued increased costs, patchy delivery and projects 'from hell', chairman Sir Peter Hendy has said.
Sir Peter revealed that he has raised the issue with the prime minister and the secretary of state for transport, suggesting that performance in England is poor compared to Scotland because of the lack of strategy.
He added that he hoped electrification will feature prominently in the Government's delayed transport decarbonisation strategy - now expected later this year.
'One of the things we identified, and I have said this to the secretary of state and the PM, is we don’t have a long-term plan. If you want effective electrification at reasonable costs you should set out a long-term plan; you should tell the supply chain what you are going to do and give them confidence in what is needed. You should do it year after year after year,' he said.
'The difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK, is the Scots through the devolved system have a long-term plan and separate funding arrangement where they have been doing progressive electrification and that has produced some very good results, not just in terms of the actual electrification but also in terms of the cost of doing it. We have a poorer record in the rest of the UK.'
The chairman was speaking at the recent spring conference for the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) and raised electrification in the context of ongoing decarbonisation efforts on the railway.
He conceded that Network Rail was catching up for lost time on this agenda and that previous efforts at electrification had not gone well.
'Being honest we have been late to this party and as chair I probably bear some responsibility but we have woken up. We now have an environmental sustainability committee of the board [Network Rail’s environmental sustainability advisory committee was established in 2019]. We have senior people devoting all their time to thinking about what we should do.
'The Great Western Electrification was the project from hell. It was never properly specified, it was politically authorised with insufficient costs attached to it. It went very badly, it cost far too much and it took far too long.'
