Railways: Line Resilience Debate

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Department: Department for Transport

Railways: Line Resilience

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts
Monday 10th March 2014

(10 years, 9 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Kramer Portrait Baroness Kramer
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I always hesitate to say anything other than yes to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. As he will be well aware, we have a timetable for the long-term resilience project. We have completed the projects that were timetabled for 2013-14, such as the Whiteball tunnel, and others are timetabled for future years. However, the essence of what the noble Lord is talking about in terms of having a programme to make sure that we achieve resilience will be done over the next few months. The study that Network Rail is doing will lead to an interim report being published in July, which will result in a very important discussion in this House.

Lord Bradshaw Portrait Lord Bradshaw (LD)
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Will my noble friend also take into account in her consideration the fact that, in finding an alternative route, the opportunity probably exists to cut 20 or 25 minutes off the journey time from Cornwall, which would be a massive improvement, akin to that achieved by HS2 between London and Birmingham? Perhaps she would have a look at that.