There is quite a lot going on there, so I will take it a step at a time.
The £200 million is additional to the other extensive investments already being made in the north-east of Scotland. For example, a £330 million project to upgrade capacity to the west of Aberdeen is being delivered as we speak; it is going very well, I am pleased to say.
The purpose of the £200 million is to improve journey times and the capacity for frequency on the railway between Aberdeen and the central belt. The Aberdeen-central belt reference group, which has representation from Tayside, Aberdeen and across the rail industry, is working to establish the best way of using that £200 million to improve journey times. It is not the only investment that is contributing to that improvement. There is a separate improvement to the signalling capacity just south of Aberdeen, where there is a long distance between signals, which means long times between trains. We have also started to introduce new high-speed trains on the Aberdeen to central belt services. Given their superior performance, they are also contributing to the improvement in journey times.
I do not recognise that the £200 million is specifically for a 20-minute improvement in isolation. We have been given the task of finding the best possible investment and the best return for passengers and freight customers that we can get from that £200 million, treating the railway as a system that includes the infrastructure, the track, the signalling that is controlling the trains, the capability of the trains themselves, and the timetable. The iteration of those things leads to the right outcome.
The report to which you referred was commissioned by the reference group and is part of the process of development. It focused on the potential that could be achieved just through upgrading the track—line speed improvements and specific things such as redoubling some bridges. We were not entirely surprised that that report concluded that that would not give a particularly good-value return.
Separately, in parallel with that report, work is going on with colleagues to look at issues such as signalling capacity. At this stage, without that work having been completed, my judgment is that that is likely to be a more fruitful area for investment because we have a quite old-fashioned signalling system between Dundee and Aberdeen.
Turning to your final point about where the works will be located, the railway is a system and the objective is improvement of journey times, capacity and freight capacity between Aberdeen and the central belt. It is sometimes the case that the best way of improving the train to Aberdeen is to invest in one of the key junctions further south. For example, we have some single-track sections between Dundee and Perth that we are looking at. However, I expect that most of that money will be spent towards the north end of the line because we have some other projects under development. Mr Coffey made an observation about the importance of studying something carefully before one commits the funds; that is exactly what we are doing.
The commitment was that this money should be spent over the 10-year period of the Aberdeen city region deal, and we are a couple of years into that. I think that we are making good progress towards meeting that commitment in a prudent development process, but I would also point you to all the other investment in that route at the moment.