Action is needed in order to tackle the critical problem of rail congestion and lack of capacity on the West Midlands rail network. Further investment in our rail services is integral to ensuring that the West Midlands - and the national rail network - does not become even more congested. Rail is a crucial part of the solution to tackling the congestion that costs the West Midlands £2.2 billion a year.

Centro and partners have published a Draft of the West Midlands Region Rail Development Plan which covers network-wide issues such as reliability and access, as well as the development of services, facilities, and other infrastructure on a detailed line by line basis – essentially giving the detail needed to build into funding bids, and developmental work with partners and building on the work, currently being undertaken by Network Rail, to produce the West Midlands and Chiltern Route Utilisation Strategy. It covers the Metropolitan and surrounding Shire Counties to take in the complete West Midlands region.

An example of a scheme we feel brings benefits to both the region and the national network that is to re-open the Camp Hill Line in Birmingham to passenger services between Kings Norton/Tamworth and Bordesley and provide a connection into Birmingham Moor Street via new 'chords' at Bordesley.

This frees up train capacity in New Street Station itself as well as providing more services direct into Birmingham city centre.

Centro is working with partners Coventry City Council and Warwickshire County Council to develop a scheme to upgrade the Coventry Nuneaton rail line. The scheme will improve the frequency of train services, providing new stations at Coventry Arena (near the Ricoh Arena) and Bermuda Park in Nuneaton as well as station improvements at Coventry and Bedworth stations. It is anticipated that the number of people travelling on the Coventry to Nuneaton rail service will be increased by 700,000 passengers per annum. Work on the rail upgrade is scheduled to begin in 2013 and estimated to complete in 2014. A funding bid was submitted to Government in March 2010; click here for more details of the Coventry Nuneaton Rail Upgrade Programme Entry Bid.

For the Control Period 4 (CP4) period (1/4/2009 – 31/3/2014) the Government has summarised its requirements in the form of a High Level Output Specification (HLOS). The key requirements in the HLOS are:

• A 3% reduction in risk of death and injury to staff and passengers
• Achieve 92% punctuality on regional services
• Reduce cancellations and delays of over 30 minutes by 27% on regional services
• Provide for a 14% growth in passenger kilometres in the West Midlands
• Meet a 15.6% increase in peak hour arrivals in Birmingham (17,800 total arrivals predicted between 0800 and 0859), with an average maximum load factor of 55% (based on DfT loading standards)
• Provide £128m towards delivering additional passenger capacity at Birmingham New Street

Network Rail is now developing schemes to deliver the HLOS requirements, including platform extensions to cater for longer trains and, electrification between Longbridge and Bromsgrove and capacity enhancements to the Redditch Branch.