The rail industry decarbonisation taskforce have recommended additional electrification (roughly 4,250 route kilometres) to support the nation's net-zero carbon target. However, I have not been able to find any details of which routes they would be targeting. Does anyone have more information on this?
In the absence of any details, I thought I would try and work out what 4,250km of additional electrification looks like on the map. To this end I took to RailMiles and, starting with some key routes, tried to map this out. Attached is the map so far and a spreadsheet of the results from RailMiles. On the map, routes in blue are those currently electrified with OHLE or that I have assumed would/should be electrified outside of the 4,250km target. The routes in purple total 4251.277 kilometres of new OHLE (these sections are marked with green backgrounds on the spreadsheet). However that still left a number of routes that I thought should also be electrified, so I thought I would measure these in part to see how much this would increase the total and also to inform a debate on here about which should be included in the 4,250km. These additional routes are shown in red on both the map and the spreadsheet, they include Guildford-Reigate and the Uckfield branch which could be 3rd rail rather than OHLE. I did not get very far with the red routes before deciding I had neither sufficient time to spend on this nor sufficient knowledge of traffic levels (particularly freight and in the north of England). Anyone want to add to the spreadsheet for me?
In some cases I have measured connecting chords at triangular junctions, in others I have taken measurements from the station rather than a junction and assumed that the extra distance will cover the assocatied chords (eg. I assumed that measuring from both Basingstoke and Southampton to Salisbury would cover the south-to-east chord of the triangle to the east of Salisbury).
In the absence of any details, I thought I would try and work out what 4,250km of additional electrification looks like on the map. To this end I took to RailMiles and, starting with some key routes, tried to map this out. Attached is the map so far and a spreadsheet of the results from RailMiles. On the map, routes in blue are those currently electrified with OHLE or that I have assumed would/should be electrified outside of the 4,250km target. The routes in purple total 4251.277 kilometres of new OHLE (these sections are marked with green backgrounds on the spreadsheet). However that still left a number of routes that I thought should also be electrified, so I thought I would measure these in part to see how much this would increase the total and also to inform a debate on here about which should be included in the 4,250km. These additional routes are shown in red on both the map and the spreadsheet, they include Guildford-Reigate and the Uckfield branch which could be 3rd rail rather than OHLE. I did not get very far with the red routes before deciding I had neither sufficient time to spend on this nor sufficient knowledge of traffic levels (particularly freight and in the north of England). Anyone want to add to the spreadsheet for me?
In some cases I have measured connecting chords at triangular junctions, in others I have taken measurements from the station rather than a junction and assumed that the extra distance will cover the assocatied chords (eg. I assumed that measuring from both Basingstoke and Southampton to Salisbury would cover the south-to-east chord of the triangle to the east of Salisbury).
