The Reading station and track upgrade is increasingly showing the rail industry at its best.
The immensely complex work during the Christmas 2010 blockade has recently been held up by Passenger Focus as a flagship example of ‘best practice’ for communicating with passengers during such disruption, while it has also been announced that the whole project will finish a year early, in 2015 instead of 2016.
Network Rail’s Robbie Burns and Bill Henry have done incredibly well to shave so much time and potential disruption off the huge project, and thus to improve passenger services both for the people of Reading and those living along the entire Great Western corridor who will benefit from faster journeys and reduced delays.
Henry, an American whose previous involvement in the West Coast Main Line upgrade has no doubt taught him valuable lessons, is to be thanked by all those of us who have found ourselves sat outside Reading station waiting for a platform.
In saying that, it remains to be seen how the new station itself feels in practice once it opens; Network Rail’s record here is rather shakier, with some amazing examples of architectural and passenger-focused refurbishments, but others seen in a rather different light, including Newport station in South Wales, which has been the subject of a number of criticisms.
If they get Reading right, the whole project will prove a major example of how to plan, design and implement a major infrastructure scheme.
