€15bn international rail freight plan abandoned

It has been revealed that one of Europe’s largest rail freight projects has been abandoned amidst political controversy. The €15bn plan involved the construction of a new railway from Northern France to Liverpool in the UK. It was intended that shuttles running on the tracks would carry unaccompanied trailers which at present are too high to travel on the UK’s existing rail network.

The scale of the plan required new legislation to be passed by the UK government. Even though the project organizer, Central Railway, has received provisional backing from a number of major bankers, the decision was made by the government not to support the bill through parliament. This has effectively ended the chances of the project getting off the ground. Government ministers made the decision that the chances that the UK taxpayer would end up baling out the project were too high. Ministers also stated that they were not convinced that sufficient financial backing had been in place.

The failure of the project is a major blow to the UK rail freight industry which could have re-captured some of the traffic which has inexorably migrated to road over the last few decades. Central Railway management estimated that it would have removed 5 million lorry journeys from UK roads each year, fulfilling part of the UK government’s environmental targets. The payments that it would have made to Eurotunnel would also have been a welcome source of revenue for the Channel Tunnel operator. Central Railway forecast that charges would have been sufficient to pay for the company’s existing interest repayments.