Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what change in numbers of (a) non-stop and (b) stopping trains per hour along the East Coast Mainline is needed to support journey time savings of 25 minutes to the North East.

In line with normal project development, detailed timetabling work for the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) will be conducted later. Once developed, an updated East Coast Main Line (ECML) timetable specification would be expected to be subject to public consultation.

As set out in the published Mott Macdonald report upon which the IRP ECML journey times are based, the fastest journey times between London and Leeds and London and Edinburgh assume two stops and one stop, respectively, whilst the fastest journey time from London to Newcastle assumes no intermediate stops. Not every train would adopt these patterns, with intermediate stations served by separate services.