LONDON — The British government has abandoned its commitment to implement a £3bn rail safety project by 2010, according to BBC News.
The joint inquiry into the Ladbroke Grove and Southall rail accidents set the deadline for all trains travelling above 100mph to be protected by the European Train Control System (ETCS).
ETCS – which is one type of advanced automatic train protection (ATP) warning system – automatically stops trains that have passed red signals.
But the industry fears it will not be in use until 2015, according to The Guardian and The Independent.
After the Ladbroke Grove crash, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said “money was no object” in implementing an ATP scheme.
But there is reportedly no provision for it in the government’s £65bn 10-year transport plan.
And ministers are waiting for an opportune moment to announce the delay, according to the newspapers.
But the Department of Transport insists that ministers have yet to decide which ATP system to implement.
“Once a decision has been made, it will be brought within the provisions of the 10-year plan,” a spokeswoman told BBC News Online.
Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Don Foster is calling on the government to have a debate with opposition parties “to find a realistic timetable for introducing ATP”.
But, he told The Guardian, the chances of meeting the deadline remained “remote”.
And rail consultant Peter Rayner, a former British Rail senior manager and safety expert, told the paper any delay would be “immoral”.
Without the new safety equipment, the network will be unable to take many more trains – an expansion necessary to meet the government’s target of a 50% increase in the number of passengers by 2010.
An ATP system governing the speed of trains and keeping them apart would allow more frequent services on high-speed lines.
Thirty-one people died in the 1999 Ladbroke Grove crash, when a Great Western express hit a Thames commuter train which had gone past a red signal.
‘Absolutely appalled’
Following this disaster, and a similar one at nearby Southall two years earlier in which seven people died, Lord Cullen and Prof Uff launched the joint inquiry into train protection.
Safety on Trains Action Group Chairwoman, Maureen Kavanagh, who lost her son, Peter, in the Southall disaster, is “absolutely appalled” by Transport Secretary Stephen Byers’ lack of commitment.
“I do not know what Byers will do when there is another disaster,” she told The Independent.
“There is sure to be one.”
Ms Kavanagh concluded: “We will continue to fight for the introduction of ATP.”