Our new £4bn, 10-year signalling framework is an exciting landmark on our path to digitalise the railway. It will help us work in a simpler and better way to bring you more reliable and more frequent trains across Britain in the long term.
We’ve already taken big steps towards digital signalling with projects like the East Coast Digital Programme. But digitalising the whole railway – and the thousands of signals used for it – is a complex job.
European Train Control System or ETCS
We’re looking to gradually introduce European Train Control System (ETCS) signalling technology. ETCS replaces traditional lineside signals with a digital technology on a screen inside train drivers’ cabs.
ETCS will improve your journeys in several significant ways. It will allow trains to run closer together safely so that more trains and therefore more journeys can run on the same route. It will also boost reliability by giving us the ability to recover services more quickly when disruption occurs. And there’s less need for disruptive engineering and maintenance works thanks to it requiring less physical equipment.
Allocating budget for signalling tech
One of the first steps in digitalising signalling is deciding how much of our budget we’ll spend on digital signalling systems and how much we’ll spend on conventional signalling.
We expect to allocate £3bn of our £4bn budget in the next 10 years on suppliers that will provide digital signalling technology. This will help us ensure we have the right resources and tech to start digitalising our network.
But digitalising our vast and complex railway – which covers 20,000 miles of track – is going to take significant time, as we’ll need to do it in phrases.
This is why we must continue to maintain the conventional signals in the meantime. These are lineside signals , which most of our railway still runs on. For that reason, conventional signalling will account for £1bn of our budget.
Overall, allocating most of our budget to digital signalling suppliers reaffirms our commitment to digitalising the railway in the long term.
Other projects using ETCS
We already have some signalling projects underway to digitalise parts of the railway.
East Coast Digital Programme
The East Coast Digital Programme is a landmark project bringing ETCS to an intercity mainline in Britain. The £1.4bn programme will introduce digital signalling on the southern part of the East Coast Main Line between London King’s Cross and Grantham.
We expect the first trains to run on the East Coast Main Line using this digital signalling technology by the end of next year.
The Transpennine Route Upgrade
The Transpennine Route Upgrade will also introduce digital signalling on the Transpennine route between York and Manchester via Leeds and Huddersfield. The multi-billion-pound upgrade will mean faster and more reliable services.
The project is on track to complete fully between 2036 to 2041, and we’ll realise most of the benefits by the early 2030s.
