Transport in England
The National Rail network of 10,072 route miles (16,116 km) in Great Britain carries over 18,000 passenger and 1,000 freight trains daily.
[5] Despite the growth in tonne kilometres, the environmental external costs of trucks and lorries in the UK have reportedly decreased.
A larger than average fleet turnover has ensured a swift introduction of new and cleaner vehicles in England and the rest of the UK.
Light rail and tram travel also continued to grow, to the highest level (0.3 million journeys) since comparable records began in 1983.
[8][9] Road is the most popular method of transport, carrying over 90% of motorised passenger travel and 65% of domestic freight.
England contains a vast majority of the UK's longest motorways, dating from the first built in 1958 (part of the M6) to the most recent (A1(M).
[18] On 29 April 2015, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the government must take immediate action to cut air pollution,[19] following a case brought by environmental lawyers at ClientEarth.
[29] Alternative methods of power for buses have been introduced in English cities to make transport less polluting and more sustainable in England.
[30][31] In 2021, Transport for London introduced 20 hydrogen double-deckers,[32] and in 2024 Reading Borough Council announced the introduction of a fleet of electrically-powered buses and associated infrastructure for the town.
High Speed 1 is operationally separate from the rest of the network, and is built to the same standard as the TGV system in France.
The network grew rapidly as a patchwork of literally hundreds of separate companies during the Victorian era, which eventually was consolidated into just four by 1922, as the boom in railways ended and they began to lose money.
Eventually, the entire system came under state control in 1948, under the British Transport Commission's Railway Executive.
Henry Maudsley's most influential invention was the screw-cutting lathe, a machine which created uniformity in screws and allowed for the application of interchangeable parts (a prerequisite for mass production): it was a revolutionary development necessary for the Industrial Revolution.
In England, the infrastructure (track, stations, depots and signalling chiefly) is owned and maintained by Network Rail.
Passenger services are operated by mostly public train-operating companies (TOCs), with private franchises awarded by the Department for Transport.
Examples include LNER, Avanti West Coast, East Midlands Railway, Hull Trains and Lumo.
The maximum scheduled speed on the regular network has historically been around 125 miles per hour (201 km/h) on the InterCity lines.
[39] The Network North programme consists of hundreds of transport projects mostly in Northern England and Midlands, including new high-speed lines linking up major cities and railway improvements.
[40] To cope with increasing passenger numbers and a growing network, there is a large ongoing programme of upgrades to the network, including Thameslink, Crossrail, electrification of lines, in-cab signalling, new inter-city trains and new high-speed lines.
The London Underground (commonly known as the Tube) is the oldest and one of the longest rapid transit systems in the world.
[41] During the age of steam locomotion, the railway industry in England strove to develop reliable technology for powering high-speed rail services between major cities.
[44] Government-backed plans to provide east-west high-speed services between cities in the North of England are also in development, as part of the Northern Powerhouse Rail project.
The most well known is the London Underground (commonly known as the Tube), the oldest rapid transit system in the world which opened 1863.
Although this is more of an elevated light metro system due to its lower passenger capacities; further, it is integrated with the London Underground in many ways.
One other system, the Tyne & Wear Metro which opened in 1980, serves Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, and has many similarities to a rapid transit system including underground stations, but is sometimes considered to be light rail.
London Heathrow, which handles over 80 million international passengers annually, is the largest airport in the UK.
England has a well-developed network of organisations offering education and professional development in the transport and logistics sectors.
