Extreme heat and rainfall are already damaging Britain’s railways. Network Rail is investing in costly resilience measures and has climate change adaptation programmes in place. But the Climate Change Committee has warned that it may not be possible to protect everything we have today, everywhere, indefinitely. Infrastructure owners will need to plan for parallel facilities.
Our latest report asks what that means in practice. It takes the rail network linking Devon and Cornwall to the rest of the country, a region particularly exposed to climate impacts, and looks at the choices ahead from the perspective of the people and businesses who depend on it.
East of Exeter, the region is served by more than one rail line. Greengauge 21 proposes new, year-round, scheduled cross-connecting rail services that keep people moving when weather events close a section of line, without hastily arranged rail replacement buses. Travellers might arrive in London at Waterloo rather than Paddington, but they would complete their journey by train. This would require Great British Railways to plan across historic operating boundaries.
West of Exeter, only one rail route remains, and it runs along the foot of the sea cliffs at Dawlish and Teignmouth. The long-term answer is to reinstate the northern route between Okehampton and Tavistock, giving Plymouth and Cornwall the resilient second rail connection they need.
Until then, the report proposes scheduled express coaches running year-round on the M5, A38 and A30. They would be a dedicated, electric fleet built to InterCity standards, with air conditioning, level boarding, Wi-Fi and reclining seats. With Tiverton Parkway as the interchange between coach and rail, journeys from Plymouth and West Cornwall to London, Bristol and beyond would take no longer than today, and in some cases would be significantly faster.
There is precedent. Deutsche Bahn already runs an express bus link between Nuremberg and Prague as part of its national rail offer. Greengauge 21 argues that GBR should have the same freedom to plan across transport modes.
You can download the full report here: Greengauge 21 – When The Climate Changes