Assessing the CO 2 impact of current and future rail track in the UK

Abstract

This paper investigates the CO 2 impact of current and future UK rail track and estimates the material, process and transport emissions associated with construction, maintenance and end-of-life activities for designs at high and low traffic loads. Analysis shows that for current track configurations, track with concrete sleepers has the lowest CO 2 impact, followed by steel, hardwood and softwood. Several potential future rail track designs have been analysed including embedded rail and double and quadruple-headed rail. All future track designs have a lower impact than current designs, but this improvement is more marked at high traffic loads. Up to a 40% reduction in CO 2 impact could be achieved if the UK rail network was to move from conventional track design to a double-headed embedded rail design. Key levers for reducing the CO 2 impact of track are identified as service life extension, traffic load reduction and the selection of low impact track designs.