On 23 March, Great Britain launched a programme of investment worth more than £800 million (€1 billion) over the next three years, which will increase capacity and improve over half-a-million daily journeys. London Waterloo is Britain’s busiest railway station and the main station for one of the busiest railways in the country. The number of passenger journeys has more than doubled in the last 20 years to 234 million per year, and further growth of 40% by 2043 is forecast.
This is the biggest investment for decades and will provide a 30% increase in peak time capacity by 2019. It includes a bigger and better London Waterloo station, new fleet of Siemens built Class 707 trains, longer platforms at ten stations for longer trains on the Reading line, improvements to depots and maintenance facilities to look after the network’s biggest ever fleet of trains and new technology to make trains more efficient and help improve punctuality.
The majority of the station and infrastructure improvements are funded by the Department for Transport as part of Network Rail’s £40 billion Railway Upgrade Plan to deliver a bigger, better, more reliable railway for passengers. Investment is also being made in a fleet of 150 new train carriages to create extra capacity for South West Trains passengers.
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