Making the railways climate change proof
Scientists have now confirmed that 2023 was the warmest year on record. Driven by human-caused climate change and boosted by the natural El Niño weather event, warmer temperatures were felt pretty much worldwide.
Of course, this is not news in one sense, as most people and Governments around the world now accept that the planet is warming and that our behaviour is causing it. What’s new is that this is the first year that the entire earth has been at least 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer on average than during the late 19th-century, when modern record-keeping began.
But whilst many Governments across the world recognise we are facing a climate emergency and have brought in policies and legislation to limit climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions – the UK ‘lead the way’ as the first country to set a net zero target – many organisations, including the Climate Change Committee, warn that progress towards this goal is not moving anywhere near fast enough.
The effects of climate change are being felt globally, but here in the UK the recent storms and flooding which brought parts of the rail network to a standstill have a unique irony to them.
The railways are particularly susceptible to weather damage. High winds can cause damage to overhead lines and tracks can become unusable thanks to debris or fallen trees. And of course whilst the storm rages it may not be safe for repair work to be carried out, further delaying business as usual. Flooding blocks lines and silt and mud brought by flood waters onto tracks can leave lasting damage which can take days, weeks or even years to repair. When the track and parts of the station in Dawlish, Devon were washed away during a storm in 2014, it took almost a decade to fully restore the line and build a new seawall to protect it from future flooding.
And it’s not just ‘bad’ weather that our railways are susceptible to. Extreme heat, like we saw in the summer of 2022, can mean steel rails buckle or sag causing delays and cancellations.
Of course, the irony that one of the greenest ways to travel is being rendered unusable by climate change is not lost on many people. The Government has recognised the importance of the railways to the country by designating them ‘critical national infrastructure’ along with energy, telecommunications and water networks. But, as Network Rail has highlighted, parts of our Victorian network are now reaching ‘end of life’ and are in need of significant investment. Network Rail has set aside £1 billion to help adapt the network to climate change, but has warned that even with these adaptations, the railways are likely to get more unreliable because of weather-related damage.
This is bad news for passengers and the planet. We need a good, reliable rail network to help get people out of their cars and reduce congestion, air pollution and carbon emissions. Therein, as they say, lies the rub.
So what’s the answer? The new highspeed track between London and Birmingham is being built to withstand the effects of climate change and will be able to handle a one-in-1,000-year flood event. Of course, replacing all the current tracks with new highspeed lines isn’t possible, but, as we told the Daily Mail this week, the railways are crucial to the country so we need to ensure they are future proof.
Decades of under investment has left the rail network vulnerable to our changing climate. To ensure it can stand up to a future of extreme weather, the Government must invest more in our infrastructure, and to help prevent further climate damage it must do more to get people out of their cars and onto trains.
Photo courtesy of Edward Betts via Wikimedia Commons
