ATOC think piece warmly welcomed

Exciting news from ATOC!

The Association of Train Operating Companies has published a position paper on industry structural reform.

The document, A new structure for success on Britain's Railways, has been warmly welcomed by the Department for Transport.

And in particular by Petrol-head Hammond, who is understood to be both highly impressed and absolutely delighted by ATOC's public lobbying.

UPDATE: This from John...

It appears that the Rail Freight Group is equally delighted:

RFG Chairman Tony Berkeley commented ‘ATOC offers no cost savings itself, only ‘efficiencies’ through its members having a commercial arrangement with the regional infrastructure companies (infracos) which would replace Network Rail. Interestingly, the TOCs offer no evidence that they would be particularly good at managing or maintaining infrastructure. Only last week Chiltern had to call on Network Rail to take over management of one of the few infrastructure projects managed by a TOC – Evergreen 3. And Network Rail itself has come out well on the £65m gauge enhancement project from Southampton to the West Midlands , coming out on time and £10m under budget.

‘ATOC also seems to have forgotten, again, than many of their proposals are illegal under EU law; allocation of capacity must be done by a body independent of any train operator (Art 13 of Directive 2001/14) in a fair and non-discriminatory way. The charging body must also be independent of any train operator (Art 4, 2001/14) , so any cosy joint venture between a TOC and an infraco involving any of these activities which ATOC members clearly want to get their hands on, would see the UK Government in the European Court of Justice. Try to convince the Secretary of State that this was a good idea!

No love lost there then.