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Extreme weather conditions in the UK caused record railway delays last year as floods, gales and landslides heavily disrupted transport services.
According to punctuality figures from Network Rail, delays caused by bad weather between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024 increased 124 per cent from the minutes trains ran behind schedule 10 years ago.
In the 2023/24 financial year, there were 1,555,406 minutes of weather-related rail delays, compared with 694,339 minutes in the 2014/15 period.
Network Rail defines extreme weather as “exceptional weather conditions beyond our infrastructure design including temperatures below -5C or above 30C, storm winds which cause physical damage, eg gusts of more than 65mph, snow of depth greater than 15cm or rainfall greater than 150mm in a 24 hour period”.
The Office of Rail and Road’s (ORR) annual assessment of Network Rail for the past year found North West, Central and Eastern regions saw a “worsening of delay following a windy and exceptionally wet autumn and winter”.
“Network Rail must continue to improve its asset knowledge, delivering its agreed recovery plan for structures examinations and continuing to improve its management of drainage assets to better address challenges of extreme weather,” said the ORR.
Between 2024 and 2029, the rail operator has pledged to invest in adjusting the service to better cope with climate change.
Extra drainage engineers will be recruited to make drains more weather resilient with plans to rebuild more than 600,000 metres of drains to cope with much heavier rainfall and reduce flooding.
Network Rail said it will also install CCTV at high-risk flooding sites to “enable better and faster responses”.
Chief executive of Network Rail Andrew Hains said: “Climate change is, without doubt, the biggest challenge facing the railway. While we can never make it completely weatherproof, we are making huge strides to mitigate the worst Mother Nature throws at us to keep passengers and services safe and moving.
“That is why we set out plans earlier this year to invest £2.8 billion over the next five years to improve our railway and make it more resilient to extreme weather.”
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