THE biggest expansion of the railways since the Victorian era is being planned to relieve severe overcrowding on commuter routes across the South East.

Under the plans, platforms will be lengthened at dozens of stations and 1,500 carriages bought to create longer trains, each with at least 100 extra seats. More than 30 bottlenecks on the network will be removed, which will include building flyovers to replace flat junctions, and upgrading signals to reduce the gap between services. Transport for London (TfL) is drawing up a plan for the railways to cope with a rapidly expanding population. A version of the plan, seen by The Times, states: “Without effective intervention the situation will deteriorate . . . resulting in severe overcrowding across most of London’s rail corridors.”

More than a million jobs are forecast to be created in the South East by 2016 and the number of rail and Tube journeys is due to rise by 24 per cent. London’s population is on course to grow by 800,000 over the next decade, to 7.9 million. Thousands of rail commuters already have to stand for up to an hour in crowded carriages on the way to work. There were more than 100 million extra train journeys in the South East last year compared with 1999. At Cannon Street, a terminus serving the City of London, 60 per cent of trains arriving between 8am and 9am are already officially deemed to be badly overcrowded.

Three of the biggest train franchises, Southern, South West Trains and Silverlink, were identified by the Strategic Rail Authority last year as having “unacceptable” levels of overcrowding. TfL will shortly publish proposals for a multibillion-pound investment programme that will increase rail capacity by 30 per cent by 2025.

TfL, which is controlled by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, has primary responsibility only for the Tube and bus networks. But Mr Livingstone is keen to extend this to include rail services in Greater London. He wants to operate a fully integrated service, with bus timetables dovetailing with trains to give passengers a smoother journey.

The Department for Transport is planning to pass control of the North London Line to Mr Livingstone but is still debating how much more influence he should have.

Mr Livingstone is willing to use his revenue-raising powers, including the congestion charge, to help to boost investment in railways. But in return he wants greater control over the running of trains. The Rail Passengers’ Council said that the industry urgently needed TfL’s money but expressed concern over giving the mayor control of services, which ran well beyond London’s boundaries.

Anthony Smith, the council’s director, said: “Mr Livingstone has much greater powers to raise revenue than other authorities and any investment he channels into the railways will be very welcome. But if he gets control over services it must not be at the expense of commuters who start their journeys outside London.”

He said that the council would oppose any attempt to sacrifice fast, long-distance services and replace them with slow trains that made more stops in the London suburbs.

Adrian Lyons, director of the Railway Forum, the industry’s lobby group, said: “Effectively a city the size of Leeds is being bolted on to London in the next few years and the current network cannot possibly cope. TfL is offering an extraordinarily bold vision which would not only cater for the growth but make existing journeys quicker and more comfortable.”

Ian Brown, TfL’s rail director, said TfL could help to fund the improvements in capacity. But he believed that the increase in ticket sales from rising passenger numbers would support most of the investment.

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