It’s Yorkshire day today! To celebrate this beautiful county, we’ve listed highlights of one of the most exciting projects we’re working on there.
The Transpennine Route Upgrade is a major programme of railway improvements that will give you better journeys along this line between York and Manchester via Leeds and Huddersfield.
Here’s a snapshot of it in numbers …
£ multi-billion
We’re investing billions into bringing this vital line into the 21st Century. It’s the biggest programme of improvement since it was first built in Victorian times.
70
The number of miles of fully electric, digital railway track we’re transforming for this project.
Four
We’re bringing you even more journeys by doubling the number of tracks from two to four between Huddersfield and Dewsbury.
Six
By increasing the number of tracks, we’re increasing the number of services along this line. There’ll be up to six fast services every hour between Leeds and Manchester and up to two stopping services for more local journeys. There’ll be more trains to choose from – and more seats.
42 to 70
The fastest journey times are forecast to be even quicker as well at 63 to 70 minutes between Manchester and York and 42 to 44 minutes between Manchester and Leeds.
23
The number of stations across this route. We’ll improve them further to bring you an even better passenger experience.
250,000
By electrifying the whole line we’re also aiming to reduce the carbon used to operate the railway here by 250,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) by 2035 and six million tonnes of CO2e over the next 60 years. That’s the equivalent of taking six million cars off the road for a year.
15
Transpennine Route Upgrade is looking at ways to run 15 more freight trains a day, to move more goods here. Together, we expect these freight trains to remove more than 1,000 lorries from the roads each day. It will ease road traffic and help improve air quality.
4,500
The approximate number of full-time people we estimate we’ll need at peak levels to deliver the Transpennine Route Upgrade. It will create more jobs and opportunities for local people – and boost the local community.
60
We’re employing locally through this programme with a target of 60% of staff from within 25 miles of the route and 80% from within 40 miles. We’ve already spent £420m with local businesses and £219m with Small Medium Enterprises – providing a big boost to the regional and national economy.
500+
As of June 2024, the project employed 269 apprentices. We estimate it will employ more than 500 apprentices in total throughout the programme.
