Army Of Road And Rail Workers Dig For Britain In £2bn Lockdown Revamp

An army of workers has been upgrading the road and rail network while the country has been in lockdown, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said last night.

- Sam Lister

At the Downing Street press conference, he said around £2billion is being spent on improvements and many projects have been dramatically speeded up.

Transport for London (TfL) has secured £1.6bn in emergency funding to keep Tube and bus services running until September, it also emerged last night.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan had spoken out about how the body was close to running out of cash.

Mr Shapps said the Government had taken advantage of the virtual standstill caused by coronavirus to fix the nation’s infrastructure “so we can recover faster”. He said: “As people begin to travel once again, they should notice that while the country has been in downtime with the roads and railways quiet, we have been busy getting on with essential work, fixing the nation’s infrastructure so we can recover faster when the time comes.” He said 419 Network Rail projects were completed over Easter and 1,000 upgrades over the Bank Holiday period.

An upgrade to the A14 in Cambridge has opened seven months ahead of schedule. Around £200million of motorway and A-road improvements were carried out last month and £550million of work on the railway network.

Busy Tube yesterday and roadworks, below. 11m potholes are being filled