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Put freight on high speed line, urges peer

[ March 20, 2013   //   ]

Former transport minister turned peer Lord Freeman pledged to help put freight onto the high speed rail line that is planned to link London and the north. At a Rail Freight Group House of Commons reception to mark 20 years of railway privatisation, Lord Freeman, who served as a transport minister during the rail privatisation era in the early 1990s, he told guest that he would “ask the Department for Transport to look at taking rail freight on the High Speed 2′ line in the small hours of the morning as part of a wider rail freight strategy that he was urging the DfT to adopt. But he also acknowledged that opening of HS2 – which would link London with Birmingham and, eventually, Manchester and Sheffield – would also free up capacity on the existing line, some of which should be used for freight.

At the same gathering, RFG chairman Tony Berkeley contrasted the rail freight industry’s 60% increase in business since privatisation with the 50% fall in France during the same period.

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