Freight safety and growth

2025-26 Commitments

Powering freight safety and growth

To support freight's ambitious growth, we'll focus on safety and efficiency. We'll explore faster freight, improve network capability through new gauging standards, enhance driver welfare, and tackle wagon wheel defects with a predictive tool. View the roadmap and scroll to see our detailed plan.

The problem and our approach

Freight has had ambitions to grow for many years. In 2023 the government set a challenging growth target of 75% by 2050. This is such an ambitious target that it needs change or improvement in almost all parts of the sector. In 2024-25 we had already started to help the freight sector grow safely.

Our approach will continue to be based on a collaborative approach with the sector, as well as insights from existing research, standards, and safety data. This will enable us to prioritise work in the most important areas and where our expertise can make the greatest impact.

2025-26 Commitments

We will:

open new paths and remove barriers for freight. We will explore ways to make freight operations and access to the rail network better. This will include research into the technical and economic feasibility of faster freight paths, and better brake controls.
enhance the capability of the network for freight and help the easier introduction of more freight traffic. Current gauging methods are overly cautious, and this can lead to infrastructure alteration for the introduction of new vehicles. We will publish a standard on probabilistic gauging that has a new method to reduce the number of structures that require infrastructure alterations.
increase freight driver access to welfare facilities. Poor welfare provision can negatively impact an individual’s safety, health, and dignity. We will pilot a shared plan for welfare facilities with freight operating companies (FOCs), train operating companies (TOCs), and Network Rail. This will start a framework for giving freight drivers regular access to better welfare facilities.
improve the reliability of freight wagons by tackling wheel defects. These defects cause delays and compromise safety. We will deliver a decision support tool for FOCs to predict the need for wheel maintenance interventions based on their condition.