Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the stretches of single track railway between Waterloo and Exeter on the movement of passengers and freight on that line.

Network Rail’s 2015 Wessex Route Study identified the single track sections on the route between Salisbury and Exeter and platform capacity at Salisbury as some of the factors constraining journey times, increasing the number of services and overall line resilience between Exeter and Waterloo.

However, the Route Study concluded that the forecast levels of growth between Salisbury and Exeter did not warrant inclusion of additional sections of double track as a priority in the next Control Period (CP6).