Britain's creaking rail network is to receive a £1bn ($1.9bn) boost with the addition of 1,000 new carriages - although not until 2014.
The UK press is crammed, much like the trains, with daily tales of commuter misery, generally in the crowded south east, but also in major urban centres across the country, as travellers opt to forgo snarled up motorways and ever-rising fuel costs.
Quite why the government - which will spend around £1m per carriage on the seven-year project - has waited so long is not obvious, but the commuter as a huge voting pool was clearly becoming increasingly irritated with severe overcrowding.
”We have worked very hard to secure extra capacity and this is one of the solutions,” a spokesman for the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) told ABTN. "It is not like pitching up and buying a second-hand car ” you have to persuade the government.”
The procurement process for the vast number of carriages - the Intercity Express Programme (IEP) - will now get underway with the first test trains deployed on the East Coast Main Line from 2012. This has been included in the Invitation to Tender for the new Inter City East Coast franchise.
”The rail industry and passenger groups have been involved in developing the work to this stage,” said Secretary of State for Transport, Douglas Alexander. ”It is now the rail industry”s role to demonstrate what they can do to meet these requirements and deliver these new trains.”
ATOC cited some figures to show just how fast passengers are transferring to rail; Britain now has the fastest growing railway network in Europe, with passenger kilometres rising 44% in 2005/06 and journeys by 42.1% compared with ten years earlier.
And a small snapshot of the train”s increased popularity is the number of passengers opting to use rail on the London-Manchester route ” up from 40% in April, 2004 to 60% in April, 2007.
The over-crowding issue is one, however, that ATOC believes the government must keep up to speed with: ”There is more to be done [but] this is a good stop gap,” the spokesman said. ”We need more capacity.”