Full go-ahead for pioneering East Coast Digital Programme

I am delighted to confirm that the Government has today announced over £1bn investment in the East Coast Digital Programme, marking the approval of our Full Business Case.

This is a major leap forward in creating a 21st century railway on our Victorian infrastructure. Digital signalling represents a major modernisation to a safer, higher performing, more resilient, more efficient, better skilled, more productive, and greener railway, delivering passenger and user benefits in the areas of safety, punctuality and resilience, and taxpayer benefits in the areas of reduction in infrastructure unit and whole life cost.

The programme will transform the capability of the East Coast Main Line (ECML), one of our primary socio-economic arteries. It is the strategic catalyst for the network plan unlocking investment in other routes and building the industry experience and capability. It is also setting the path for major investments and how the industry can work differently together in Great British Railways supporting the Williams-Shapps reforms.

This is a pivotal moment for our industry.

Following the Cambrian pilot in 2010, the industry had fundamentally struggled to mobilise for the delivery of digital signalling. It is one of the most complex endeavours we can undertake as it touches every aspect of how we run our railway requiring the deep integration of track and train and the migration of railway operations across many organisations.

We embarked on this journey in 2018 at a time of low trust and high uncertainty in our industry and few thought that this would be possible. We had to make the case and to create a viable way that was credible. To solve for digital signalling, we had to solve for how the industry worked together.

As a result, we had to create a pioneering industry and commercial partnership that allowed us to create an open boundary and innovative environment which brought operators and suppliers closer together in a passenger and user centric model.

This model is now enabling some industry first delivery. We have built an industry plan and mobilised a unique partnership. On the Northern City Line between Finsbury Park and Moorgate, we devised a cross industry plan to de-risk and maximise benefits. That project has gone from nothing to commissioning a new system across track and train in under two years. Last month we operated the first European Train Control System (ETCS) test train on the route, the start of an ongoing intensive process of testing and approvals to start migration to ETCS operations and the removal of signals. We have upgraded facilities at the Rail Innovation and Development Centre (RIDC) in Melton to test rail vehicles fitted with ETCS. We are progressing the retrofitting of fleets, with the first two classes completed and tested now, and progressing with important fitments like the national freight fleet and the world first heritage pathfinder project. And we’re embarking on an extensive programme of training for thousands of colleagues who will be upskilled to work with digital technology.

This programme has to both deliver and in the process learn and build the capability for the rest of the network.

As set out by our cross-industry plan, the programme will progressively transition the route to operate under ETCS, eventually removing the need for lineside signals. We are working to be ready to start migration on ECML south around the time of the bicentenary of the world’s first public railways in 2025. This will mark a unique moment in our industry’s story. A celebration of the pioneers that came before us who invented the railway and all it has done for people around the world, and a reimagining of who we can be today, as pioneers of our time reinventing the railway for the 21st century.

I would like to take this opportunity to recognise and thank the cross-industry team who have worked with passion and tenacity to get this far on this mission.

Lastly, we have launched a new ECDP website today. We will continue to keep you updated and provide opportunities to engage with and learn more about the journey as we progress.