***Steve Norris, former London Mayoral candidate and Jarvis Executive Chairman is being touted as the new Chairman of Cross London Rail Links Limited. The Crossrail bill is due to receive Royal Assent on the 22 July***
National Express loathes Open Access Operators and would do almost anything to stop Hull Trains and Grand Central services running on the East Coast Mainline.
Recent tactics include retail staff at Kings Cross (employed by National Express) telling passengers that the operator of a rival service had gone bust (not so) and changing the validity of previously open First Class tickets so that they can only be used on National Express East Coast (NEEC) services.
However, NEEC's arrogance may well be its downfall if recent events are anything to go by.
On Sunday Network Rail closed the East Coast Mainline between Stevenage and Peterborough for planned engineering works.
Whilst the two open access operators on the route continued to serve London (via Cambridge) National Express couldn't be arsed, preferring to use generous Network Rail compensation payments to buy in rail replacement services from its own bus and coach divisions.
Alas the bus operation turned into a complete shambles, leaving hundreds of passengers milling around stations as NEEC platform staff went to ground.
With the plan unraveling canny train-crew on Anglo-Scottish shuttles told passengers that Open Access services to London would be a better bet.
As many of these passengers had been sold NEEC-only tickets there were near riots at York and Doncaster as National Express customers tried to clamber aboard the already full trains of other operators.
With no platform staff in evidence and the situation fast deteriorating the Boys in Blue were finally called; after of course significant delay minutes had been recorded by both Open Access operators.
NEEC has yet to apologise.
The Fact Compiler has been supplied with these two remarkable images.
One shows someone surrounded by a diminishing band of supporters, about to be cruelly betrayed and ultimately sacrificed with the connivance of a capricious and deeply unpopular foreign overlord.
The other shows the Son of God.
A metaphorical bouquet goes to SWT following the retirement after forty three years of ‘Nobby’ (Alan Haynes) - an Area Route Controller based at Waterloo.
The company allowed a special train to be organised in secrecy to take him from Waterloo to Brockenhurst on a surprise jolly.
Nice to see a company that appreciates its staff.
***CORRECTION: Sources indicate that Network Rail has determined that there are no additional paths available on the East Coast Mainline for the December 2008 timetable.***
Further details, at the usual address, would be appreciated...
The Fact Compiler has received an agitated email from a gentleman endeavouring to reduce endemic overcrowding on the bus and railway network.
He writes: "I am very concerned about the ridiculously high levels of gross-overcrowding on public transport, caused by train, tube and bus operators pulling buses, tubes and trains out of service willy-nilly, without first putting decent acceptable alternative travel arrangements in place. I believe that this constitutes a grave health and safety matter; and more shockingly, there seems to be absolutely no legislation that addresses this serious problem.
The petition can be found at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/sardines/
The Fact Compiler is happy to alert his readers to the above but fears that the deepening recession may make overcrowding concerns somewhat academic...
Parliamentary Written Answer given on 10th July
"Tom Harris (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Glasgow South, Labour) | Hansard source
Officials in the Department for Transport meet Network Rail every four weeks to discuss rail performance and this meeting is normally chaired at ministerial level. As a key intercity route, all aspects of performance on the route are discussed."
So no Micro-management there then.
The brave Aslef boys and girls would never do anything to compromise safety.
It is only right, therefore, that they hold an extra-ordinary branch meeting tomorrow (Sunday) to discuss the disgraceful dismissal of one of their safety conscious members by East Midlands Trains.
Regrettably the meeting in Nottingham will result in the cancellation of a large number of EMT services but if that is the price for a safe railway then it must be paid!
But what's this?
It turns out that the dismissed driver had not only passed a signal at danger and crashed into some level crossing gates but he had also been making a personal call on his mobile beforehand.
Good to see the "I'm alright Jack" culture persists at Aslef's Nottingham depot.
***There was a significant failure of TfL's Oyster ticketing system this morning with readers on both buses and Tube stations unable to read the cards.
As a consequence a significant number of Oyster cards have been corrupted...
UPDATE: Cards used in the last 24 hours are most likely to be affected, with the system unable to recognise them
UPDATE 2: Understood to be over 100,000 Oyster cards affected***
Good news from the Department for Transport which, rather than doing what it says on the tin and worrying about how to get us from A to B, is now more concerned about our girth.
As DafT is plainly unable to meet the Cartesian requirement for sentience (I think therefore I am) it has cleverly devised an alternative - I print therefore I am.
Latest publication off the Melton Street presses is 'Towards a Sustainable Transport System'.
Alongside a whole load of tosh plainly designed to justify Civil Serpent inactivity is the following entry under "Goal Narratives - Challenge" (I kid you not)!
Improve health outcomes for individuals through encouraging and enabling more physically active travel
Under Possible Metrics are a number of suggestions as to how DafT might respond to this 'Challenge'
Increased levels of walking and cycling
Reduction in obesity levels (child & adult)
Increase in % of adults meeting recommended minimum physical exercise
More mutterings about the PassengerFocus National Passenger Survey.
Regular readers will recollect that publication of the survey was delayed for two months to allow figures to be massaged and that when published National Express cried foul when it's East Coast franchise with spanked with other dire operators despite a claimed 4% improvement in NEEC passenger satisfaction.
The saga gets murkier still.
The Fact Compiler has received the following note from a TOC source:
"NPS is somewhat flawed as they hang-around stations giving out surveys indiscriminately to people - a certain percentage of whom actually work for TOCs.
"The easiest way to get your score up is to find a survey team, flood the station with people in suits from HQ and pretend to work for the NHS!!"
The Fact Compiler awaits the PassengerFocus press release celebrating the record numbers of NHS staff travelling to York with interest.
With an incredibly tight timetable for introduction of the new Thameslink fleet the smart money must be on Bombardier.
The first units are due for testing in Autumn of 2011.
The company already has dual voltage electric trains operating on the Southern and the work done on developing a lightweight Turbostar for London Midland and Loo-Roll could presumably read-across to their Electrostar production lines.
Sources close to Litchurch Lane also indicate that capacity at Derby would not be a problem (despite the company talking up full order books).
Siemens may be in with a chance with the lard-butt Desiros but the Fact Compiler hears disturbing rumours that the company is quoting silly prices for desperately needed Trans-Pennine infill vehicles. Which may explain why no orders have yet been placed.
Alstom looks like also-rans as they haven't yet got a design.
Of course it would be dangerous for Bombardier to get too complacent as the inclusion of Hitachi in the pre-qualification list will require some serious sharpening of Derby pencils.
***DfT Press Release***
The European Parliament approved an agreement reached with the Council on the EU-wide approval of different types of railway rolling stock.
Under the new legislation, any rolling stock already approved for use in one Member State will have to be accepted in the other states. This will cut red tape and should boost the development of rail transport in Europe.
Heritage, museum and tourist railways are exempted from the directive, as the result of another successful demand by Parliament.
Let's see them try to run a TGV on the ECML then!
EU press release here
***Over on Tom Harris' blog there is an announcement about the formation of a new Labour Transport Group who are "organising to promote debate on transport policy within the party".***
Tom provides a contact email for those interested in further details.
The Fact Compiler has already signed up but wonders if after 11 years this may be too little too late...
From our International Correspondent
The Atkins sponsored "Case for Electrification" supplement in the July issue of Modern Railways has a forward by Secretary of State for Transport Ruth Kelly.
A good thing, as it is so incoherent and financially illiterate that your Treasury will almost certainly use it to justify never again having to electrifying a single chain of your network.
In one article RSSB is quoted as costing electrification at between £550k - £650k per single track-km.
On that basis Tier 1 alone (London-Bristol, Bedford-Sheffield and Edinburgh-Glasgow) would cost somewhere in the region of £400 million. And remember that's just for the wires. The cost of trains isn't included.
The £400 million "investment" would need to be serviced at a minimum rate of 4% per annum.
Servicing the debt would be achieved through a number of ways:
Savings by not running diesel trains (approx £40,000 maintenance saving per train per annum), additional "sparks effect" tickets sales and a reduction in carbon emissions which, according to supplement sponsor Atkins, delivers just 20% efficiencies over diesel - i.e pretty much what you get if you cruise your elderly HST at 100mph vice 125mph (or run it smoothly without signal checks, TSRs. or delays whilst the wires are down).
Deduct the loss of income during the endless weekend possessions whilst engineers do the knitting unmolested by trains and you have a pretty big income hole to be plastered over using Cost Benefit Analysis (i.e think of a number, get an academic to double it and then a Transport Planner to add the number originally thought of plus an optimism bias).
Now in Europe we just build the damn things and count the Euros rolling in afterwards.
Whilst DafT occupies itself with moving the deckchairs around it is instructive to see how our continental cousins are meeting the challenge of encouraging modal shift from air to rail.
The FT revealed last week that national-flag carrier Air France is looking to move short-haul flight passengers onto Europe’s high-speed railways.
The company is holding discussions with Paris-based Veolia Transport with the aim of having Veolia run Air France branded trains from the airline’s hub at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport to destinations across Europe.
The potential for such services can only increase as the number of electrified high speed lines in Europe multiply. Last year the LGV Est opened between Paris and Strasbourg and a new line linking Antwerp and Amsterdam is due to open next year.
More mutterings following the late publication yesterday of the National Passenger Survey.
InterCity operator National Express East Coast is absolutely furious with watchdog PassengerFocus .
When the survey was published the PassengerFocus press office went into overdrive, screaming that the survey was a "red alert" to a number of long distance operators where overall passenger satisfaction "had plummeted 4% points."
But what's this?
Amongst the list of dire operators singled out for attention was NEEC - this despite the fact that their rating had actually gone up by 4%.
Meanwhile no mention was made of piss-poor operator Worst Great Western who are so loathed by passengers that they have been told more than once by Daft that they are drinking at the last chance saloon.
If the Fact Compiler didn't know better he might be tempted to think that the two month delay in publishing the figures had something to do with their being massaged. As PassengerFocus is funded by DafT one wonders who might do such a thing?
More examples of spin over substance please.
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