A record £3.4 billion was invested in expanding and growing the British rail network over the past 12 months. This information comes from the full-year results published by Network Rail today.

Investments were used to build new stations, new facilities and new railway lines, all of which have been used over the past year to benefit millions of passengers and business.

The expenditure, which has doubled in the last five years from £1.6 billion in 2009/10, is part of an invest of over £120 million a week, which includes almost £3 billion over the year replacing worn out assets.

Network Rail 2014/15 Financial Report

Over the same 12-month period, the number of people travelling by rail grew 67.3m to a new record high in modern times of 1.65bn. Passenger numbers have now more than doubled in the past 20 years and although this increase has meant that we are not hitting punctuality targets, more passengers are arriving on time than ever before.

Patrick Butcher, finance director, said: 'The railways continue to grow in popularity and we continue to invest heavily to respond to that demand. While progress is being made in improving performance, safety, asset reliability and delivering more renewals and projects, our rate of acceleration in these areas isn’t yet where we want it to be.

'With more than a million more trains on the network than ten years ago, there are inevitable challenges. We are determined to do more to improve and action is being taken to quicken the pace of change.'

Read the report here.

Source: RailWay-News