NEWS
End of grants for ‘bustitution’ announced
TOCs that also own bus com- panies will no longer receive grants for providing alternative road services when parts of the rail network are down, rail min- ister Norman Baker has said.
Baker is stopping the prac- tice by which train companies receive compensation both from Network Rail during track possessions as well as the Bus Service Operators Grant. He called the arrangements “highly questionable” as they involve some operators being “paid twice”.
DfT figures showed First Group’s specialist rail replace- ment bus company received £2.5m for running replacement buses in three years. Stage- coach
received more than
£74,000 in six months ending September 2009 and National Express received £280,000 in 2010 for providing rail replace- ment buses and coaches.
Anthony Smith, Passenger Focus chief executive, said: “Passengers tell us that they would rather stay on a rerout- ed train, rather than switch to a replacement bus service, so any measures that would en- courage train companies to use them as a last resort dur- ing engineering works would be welcome. However, great care needs to be taken to en- sure that replacement bus ser- vices don’t deteriorate as result of any changes to the current system.”
An ATOC spokesman said: “Train companies’ primary fo- cus is and will remain keeping passengers on trains as much as we can because we know that is what customers want. A significant amount of time and effort goes into making sure that disruption for passengers is kept to an absolute minimum during improvement works, in- cluding reducing the number of rail replacement buses used as much as possible.”
For letters on this issue see p17 National
train performance has risen to 91.4%, the highest level of punctuality ever recorded for pe- riod 11. This covers performance from January 8 to February 4 and compares to 90.3% for the same period last year. Period 10 saw performance at 88.7%, following a gradual decline in performance for much of 2011.
The national moving annual aver- age (MAA) is now at 91.6%.
Top of the pile is c2c Rail, with 97.4%, and the highest MAA at 96.9%. The franchise with the lowest performance figures was Virgin with 85.7%. The lowest MAA was 86.0% for East Coast.
The derailment at Bletchley on February 3 had knock-on impacts on many operators.
‘Guilty’ plea from Network Rail
Network Rail has admitted to breaching health & safety laws at a level crossing where two teen- age girls were killed.
In December 2005, Olivia Bazlin- ton and Charlotte Thompson were struck by a train whilst crossing the footpath at Elsenham station. Network Rail has pleaded guilty to failing to carry out sufficient risk assessment, failing to properly control protective measures and failing to prevent girls from being exposed to risks which led to their deaths.
A sentencing hearing will take place
on 15 Higgins, March chief 2012
Chelmsford Crown Court. David
at executive
of Network Rail, apologised and said: “In this tragic case, Network Rail accepts that it was respon- sible for failings, and therefore we have pleaded guilty. Nothing we can say or do will lessen the pain felt by Olivia and Charlotte’s families but I have promised them that we are committed to making our railway as safe as possible. In recent years we have reassessed all of our 6,500 level crossings and closed over 500. I accept that there is still a long way to go but we are making progress.”
The final sign-off on the details on the IEP fleet to replace the HSTs on the GWML and ECML has been further delayed by the De- partment for Transport, according to the December Structural Re- form Plan, published on the Num- ber 10 website.
Procurement for the Intercity Ex- press Programme was expected to be completed by December.
But the DfT states that the objec- tive to ‘complete the commercial arrangements for the delivery of the Intercity Express Programme (IEP)’ has been delayed for rea- sons ‘outside of the Department’s control’.
The delay was further explained 6 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 12
as difficulties securing planning permission, and the need to con- clude commercial discussions with the Agility Trains consortium (Hitachi and John Laing) and their banks.
The plan suggests the commercial close has now been postponed until the end of May 2012.
Hitachi recently told the North- ern Echo newspaper: “Due to the complexity
of the programme,
we now envisage to come to a close of contract in the first half of 2012.”
The maintenance depots associ- ated with the project, however, have now had planning permis- sion approved by the relevant lo- cal authorities.
A second open day for potential suppliers to the project is being held in County Durham in June.
Visit
www.hitachirailproject.co.uk
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