If existing routes were upgraded, they could offer faster speeds and extra freight capacity at lower cost than a new line, couldn’t they?
The Rail White Paper ruled out building new tracks immediately alongside existing lines, based on advice from Network Rail and London & Continental Railways, who pointed out the adverse impact of disruption to existing services. When the East Coast Main Line upgrade was put on hold in 2002/3, its costs were estimated at about £4bn. Given what we now know of the real costs of line-of-route upgrades and the scale of works planned, this cost estimate has to be regarded as being on the low side. Implementation of line-of-route upgrades, except where it is a relatively simple matter of adding additional tracks (as in the Trent Valley of the West Coast project), is not only expensive, but highly disruptive. The West Coast will have spent seven years without a proper weekend passenger service, for example. Our busiest routes have many junctions, very few of which are grade-separated and they need to be replaced in route upgrades and this is unavoidably expensive and disruptive. Higher speeds,
