RIA launches new Traction Decarb Data tool

2 July 2025

Ahead of the Rolling Stock Networking (RSN) event in Derby tomorrow (3 July) the Railway Industry Association (RIA) has launched the RIA Traction Decarb Tool – a new interactive resource containing rail decarbonisation and rolling stock data. It uses detailed information and data points from last year’s report ‘Delivering a lower cost, higher performing, net zero railway’. It will be a valuable resource as the Government and senior industry stakeholders build the Long Term Rail Strategy.

RIA has been campaigning on electrification and decarbonisation for more than five years and published a number of strategic reports on these topics. Today the association is sharing one of the tools which has informed and supported the development of its analysis and is announcing its next project.

Richard Carr, RIA Technical & Innovation Director, said: “RIA continues its longstanding advocacy for a long-term rolling stock and decarbonisation strategy. The data gleaned from last year’s ‘Delivering a lower cost, higher performing net zero railway’ report has allowed us to create the new RIA Traction Decarb Tool to support both members and the wider the industry.”

David Clarke, Senior Technical & Innovation Advisor commented: “RIA’s upcoming ‘Decarbonisation Delivery Challenge’ report will restate and reframe the economic and social benefits of a rolling programme of electrification and decarbonisation. We hope it will support the Department for Transport’s ongoing development of a rail decarbonisation and rolling stock strategy aligned to the Government’s wider growth missions.”

Notes to Editors

About RIA: The Railway Industry Association (RIA) champions a dynamic UK rail supply sector. Rail contributes £41 billion in economic value and £14 billion in tax revenue each year, as well as supporting over 640,000 jobs throughout the UK. For every job in rail, a further four jobs are supported elsewhere in the UK economy, and every job in the rail supply chain is 29% more productive than the UK average. RIA's 400+ members, including 60% SMEs, provide a diverse range of rail products and services. RIA advocates for rail's critical role in economic development, sustainability, and high-performance transport. Learn more at www.riagb.org.uk.
The RIA Traction Decarb Tool can be found here.
The route and service data has been updated due to timetable changes and the availability of TOC data on the Rail Data Marketplace. This changes the number of routes and uses 226 as the GB total but does not affect the ratios or proposed electrification.
To enable the calculations the GB map was overdrawn and broken into sections to allow modelling of every route from origin to destination. Section names come from the Sectional Appendix and from map points of interest.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com / Chrispo

RIA Bibliography

2019 Electrification Cost Challenge - The report responded to the problems of the Great Western Electrification and identified the lessons learnt. It demonstrated that electrification could be delivered efficiently and, indeed already was being delivered efficiently with 15 of the 20 projects examined being delivered within an efficient cost range.
2023 Rail Electrification - The Facts - A 'two-pager' detailing all the benefits of electrification which highlights that decarbonisation is only one benefit and, until recently the only reason to electrify was because it was a 'better/ cheaper way to run the railway'. There is more data in the earlier 2021 'Why Rail Electrification' report.
2023 Rolling Stock Report - This proposed urgently buying a fleet of BEMU to deliver immediate passenger/ AQ and carbon benefits and alleviate the order book gap. It also set out a longer term strategy for the national fleet that in addition to age and condition considered supply chain sustainability, air quality and decarbonisation whilst smoothing the previous 'boom and bust'.
2024 lower cost, higher performing, net zero railway report - This report aimed to 'draw a map' of what would and what would not need to be electrified to achieve net zero by 2050. To do this we modelled the whole network and its train services. Our conclusion was 'the plan of thirds' - one third is already electrified, one third can be decarbonised with BEMU and the remaining third which does need to be electrified. This work fed into the work now being led by Jonathan Williams at Network Rail. It brought together infrastructure and rolling stock in a plan that, if implemented would lower cost by breaking the 'boom and bust cycle.