Elizabeth Truss
Main Page: Elizabeth Truss (Conservative - South West Norfolk)Department Debates - View all Elizabeth Truss's debates with the Department for Transport
(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Justine Greening
I believe we are making good progress, and the right hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that I am meeting Bombardier later today.
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)
In order to upgrade the service to half-hourly on the Fen line and the Norwich-Cambridge line, there needs to be an upgrade at the Ely North junction. Network Rail has conducted an economic study that suggests that this will have a positive benefit, and the Department for Transport wants to specify it in the next franchise. May I ask what progress has been made to move forward on this investment?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
I know that my hon. Friend is a strong campaigner for improvements to the rail lines that serve her constituency. This is something that we are looking at carefully. We have asked Network Rail to do important work on deciding how we might improve the frequency of the services in the way that she wishes to see, and whether the infrastructure needed to deliver that is within the budgets that have already been allocated to Network Rail. We will also look at what we might be able to do in the next control period, as part of our high-level output specification—HLOS—statement, which we will publish in the summer.