Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the locations are for his Department's piloting of digital signalling systems on the rail network.

The £450m for Digital Railway announced in the 2016 Autumn Statement will be used to deliver benefits to passengers and also to prepare the UK rail industry to deliver more digital railway schemes in the future. Nearly £85million is being spent on fitting and testing the on-board ETCS equipment for the first time in several classes of trains, a vital enabler for the Digital Railway Programme, whilst development funding has been allocated for potential digital schemes between Manchester and York and also on the South East Route and Moorgate Branch to help deliver the kind of improvements to train journeys that passengers expect and deserve. These schemes build on the progress already being made by other Digital Railway schemes at Romford and Cardiff, and as part of Thameslink and Crossrail. Passengers on the Thameslink route have started to see some of this technology with Automatic Train Operation (ATO) being introduced on services through the Thameslink ‘core’ between St Pancras International and Blackfriars stations.