Home > Publications > PR13 guide > Our decisions

Our decisions

Download a PDF version of the guide ( 913 Kb)

The decisions we’ve made in Periodic Review 2013 will help the railway to grow in a sustainable way and will minimise the costs to taxpayers and, passengers and freight customers.

Our approach has been tough on costs and stretching on improving service and safety. This means that the Westminster and Scottish government’s plans for rail are affordable and can be delivered for a lower cost than Network Rail indicated in its Strategic Business Plan.

Network Rail has delivered many improvements to the railway, but we’ve challenged them to go further. We have introduced more effective incentives to encourage the company to expand the capacity of the network so that yet more people can travel by train.

• Ensuring value for money
• Investing for the future
• Driving high performance
• Managing the rail infrastructure
• Making the railways safe for all
• Building a greener railway

Ensuring value for money

The governments want Network Rail to be more financially sustainable – reducing the cost of running the Network without compromising levels of performance or safety.

• ORR has examined Network Rail’s plans right down to route level, focusing on the biggest spending areas such as improvement projects and investment in replacing infrastructure such as track, buildings and bridges.
• Although Network Rail’s own plans identified savings, our analysis shows further efficiencies of £1.9bn can be made on the running costs of the railways over the next five years. There may also be additional potential savings to be made on railway improvement projects once the full costs are available.
• We’re setting a target of nine out of ten trains arriving on time across the network by the end of 2019 and asking Network Rail to work with the operating companies to focus on the worst performing routes.
• We’ll require Network Rail to be more transparent about how taxpayers’ money is spent and what it achieves, giving a much clearer view of exactly how much is spent on each rail route, on what and the expected outcomes.
• We’ll also report on how all parts of the industry are performing and what we’ve done to address poor performance.

Investing for the future

The governments expect up to 15% more traffic by 2019, much of it on commuter services. It therefore wants Network Rail to increase capacity at major city stations, as well as electrifying more of the rail network in order to improve efficiency, increase capacity and reduce environmental impact.

• Some projects are either committed or have been specified by government – examples include Crossrail, the electrification of the Welsh Valleys line and the Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Project.
• £7bn of the projects proposed by Network Rail, such as the East-West rail programme, and the Highland Mainline in Scotland are in the early stages of planning. Without more detail, we can’t be sure the planned scope and timings are appropriate.
• So before we approve these projects, we’re asking Network Rail to work up the details of their plans with the train operating companies – and to consult with passengers and other stakeholders. We’ll then agree the costs once the benefits to the network and capacity are clear.
• We’re working closely with Network Rail and train operators to ensure they have the right processes to deliver the projects. That way we can make sure that customers and taxpayers get value for money.

1. Aberdeen to Inverness improvements: improved train services and new stations at Dalcross and Kintore.
2. Highland Main Line improvements: more frequent and faster journey times on the route.
3. Edinburgh to Glasgow improvements: faster journeys and longer trains providing greater capacity between Scotland’s two major cities.
4. Borders Railway: construction of a line connecting Edinburgh to Tweedbank for the first time since 1969.
5. East Coast improvements: faster journeys and more train capacity from line improvements between the North East and London.
6. The ‘Northern Hub’: track and capacity upgrades across Manchester city centre, Manchester Airport and across to Liverpool, as well as electrification of the North Trans-Pennine route between York and Manchester.
7. North West electrification: between Manchester and Liverpool, Preston and the Pennines and Walsall to Rugeley.
8. Midland Main Line: electrification and capacity improvements including remodelling at Derby.
9. More commuter capacity: longer platforms and track upgrades creating enough capacity for 140,000 extra daily rail commutes at peak times in cities such as London, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.
10. Great Western Main Line: electrification from London to Oxford, Newbury and Bristol. Capacity works around Reading and Bristol.
11. An electrified East West railway: providing new links for passengers and freight between Bletchley and Oxford which will also allow Oxford to Marylebone services to be introduced.
12. Major station improvements: including completion of the schemes at Reading and Birmingham New Street and capacity works at Bristol Temple Meads and London Waterloo.
13. An electric spine: an electrified route for passenger and freight services from the South Coast via Oxford and the Midlands to South Yorkshire.
14. Thameslink: increasing capacity and improving journey times on the existing cross-London route between Bedford and Brighton.
15. Crossrail: a major new cross-London route which will improve journey times and reduce congestion across the capital, linking Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west with Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.
16. Welsh electrification: Cardiff Valleys and Valley lines plus the mainline from Bristol to Cardiff and Swansea.

Driving high performance

The governments have said that they want an average of 92.5% of trains to arrive on time across all 10 routes by 2020. They want no more than 2.2% of trains to be cancelled or arrive more than 30 minutes late.

1. Punctuality targets are measured on a public performance measure basis (PPM). PPM is a measure of the percentage of trains arriving at their final destination within ten minutes of the advertised time for long distance trains, and within five minutes for London and South East trains.

• We’ll require Network Rail to achieve an average of 92.5% of trains on time across the network by 2019, with annual performance targets beginning with 92.2% in 2014/15.
• We want those routes which are already above 92.5% to maintain their performance and we’ll require no individual train operator to fall below 90% by the end of 2019.
• But because of the uncertainty over the impact that improvement projects will have on train reliability, we are giving Network Rail and the franchised train operators flexibility to decide reliability targets for specific routes – so long as the national average targets are met and they do not fall below 90%.
• We’ll also require Network Rail to keep cancellations and significantly late trains at 2.2% or below in each of the five years to 2019.
• To make sure that industry stays on track to achieve these targets by the end of the review period, we’ll monitor performance closely and step in early to prevent things from going wrong.
• Although the Government has not set targets for freight, we have developed a new Freight Delivery Metric in agreement with the industry, which measures the percentage of commercial trains arriving within 15 minutes of scheduled time. We’ll require Network Rail’s minimum performance to be 92.5% of freight trains arriving within 15 minutes and we’ll work with the freight industry and Network Rail to monitor this.
• There are also plans to improve the information provided to passengers to help them plan their journeys. Additionally, a significant fund to improve stations will bring better access for disabled people and older passengers.

Managing the rail infrastructure

The governments have asked Network Rail to rapidly improve its understanding of all the assets it owns – including around 30,000 bridges, 2,500 stations and 20,000 miles of track. Up to date accurate data about the health of assets enables Network Rail to carry out proactive maintenance to prevent disruption and delays and ensure the safety of the network.

• In order to speed up the improvements, we’re proposing a number of targets at the national level covering areas such as the company’s overall capability in asset management, the quality of the data it gathers, the success of internal asset management programmes, as well as the condition, performance and failure of each asset type.
• We’re setting clear targets for Network Rail about the way it manages its assets because we want to see fast progress in this area.

Making the railway safe for all

Since 2002, there have been considerable improvements in safety on the railways. The UK now has one of the safest railway networks in Europe for passengers and workers. Network Rail is legally required to do everything reasonably practical to continue to improve safety on the railways. Government has allocated ring-fenced funding of £67m to reduce the risk of accidents at level crossings.

• To help achieve the governments’ safety requirements, we’ll continue to monitor efficiency savings closely to ensure that they never come at the expense of safety. For example, we’ll expect Network Rail’s expenditure on maintenance to stay at close to current levels in the first few years of the period.
• We will require more clarity from Network Rail on how progress on safety will be measured and tracked. For example, we need much greater detail about how it will cut train accident risk by 50%.
• We’ll continue to monitor Network Rail’s safety performance using a wide range of indicators and through our rail safety management maturity model, RM3.
• In particular, we’ll monitor Network Rail to ensure it meets its commitments to reduce level crossing risk using the ring fenced funds and to eliminate all industry-caused fatalities and major injuries to passengers, workers and members of the public.
• We expect Network Rail to take a proportionate, risk-based approach to safety that does not put the public or workers in harm’s way.

Building a greener railway

The governments want the railway to become more environmentally sustainable and have asked Network Rail to measure and reduce the amount of carbon embedded in new infrastructure and to publish regular, accurate data on carbon emissions and energy efficiency for both traction (train-related) and off-track operations such as offices and stations.

• To ensure Network Rail sets stretching carbon reduction targets – and achieves them – ORR will subject each aspect of the company’s programme to independent review.
• We’ll check that Network Rail’s improvement works, including electrification projects, maximise reductions in the amount of carbon embedded in the rail infrastructure.
• We’ll oversee implementation of Network Rail’s delivery plan to ensure that it reports regularly on both train-related and off-track carbon emissions and energy efficiency.
• We’ll review Network Rail’s progress on climate change adaptation and the company’s wider environmental impacts on a project by project basis.