Railways: Reliability

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

As my noble friend said, LNER is hoping to introduce new services to Lincoln from September. As he also said, this is dependent on Network Rail approving its timetable bid. The lesson we learned from the introduction of the May timetables last year, which caused such significant disruption, was that the industry needs to ensure that it is positively able to deliver the services to which it is committed. I know that Network Rail is working hard on that, and I thank my noble friend and the people of Lincoln for their patience in this matter.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, what is the Government’s response to Network Rail’s proposal to close the trans-Pennine line from Manchester for 39 weeks each year for the next four years? How will that help reliability?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, we are working on proposals for the upgrade to the trans-Pennine route. It is a significant project worth nearly £3 billion and it will bring alternative routes. We are working through that and will publish details shortly.