West Coast bidders start legal action against DfT
Stagecoach Group has begun High Court action against the Department for Transport in partnership with SNCF and Virgin Trains, following the disqualification of their joint bid for West Coast Partnership. Stagecoach announced this morning that a claim has been issued alleging that the Department for Transport breached its statutory duties under EU and English law when it disqualified the bid from Stagecoach and its partners on 10 April, on the grounds that it was ‘non-compliant’. Stagecoach is already suing the Department over the simultaneous rejection of its bid for East Midlands Trains. The company was also disqualified from the South Eastern competition. In each case, the problem concerned the level of risk which operators are expected to take, particularly over railway pensions.
New trains whose launch on London Overground has been delayed for a year by technical problems are set to carry passengers for the first time. Class 710 Bombardier Aventra trains are expected to enter service today between Gospel Oak and Barking, and the arrival of the first two units will allow the frequency of trains on the route to be increased. Another six are expected soon. The line itself was electrified a couple of years ago, but the Class 710s were paralysed by a series of software problems. The former Class 172 diesel sets on the line were withdrawn for service with West Midlands Trains a few months ago, because Transport for London had been expecting the new trains by June 2018 at the latest and so allowed the diesel leases to expire. A skeleton service has been running since then.
London Fire Brigade has issued a safety warning over the state of London Bridge tube station. The enforcement notice, served on London Underground Ltd, says that there have been eight breaches of fire regulations. They include failures to maintain equipment and to co-operate with ‘other responsible persons’. Staff at the station have also been left in the dark, because they were not provided with ‘comprehensible and relevant information’. TfL said safety is its top priority and that it has taken ‘urgent steps’.
A two-year pay deal has been agreed by Network Rail and the RMT, which the union has described as ‘inflation busting’. It has voted to accept the offer, which involves an increase of 3.2 per cent (with a minimum of £555) and a further increase in January 2020 which will be the equivalent of the Retail Prices Index in November this year. Regulated fares also remain linked to the RPI, with the January changes linked to the RPI of the previous July. Transport secretary Chris Grayling met a hostile response last year when he suggested using the lower CPI measure to calculate wage increases.
A London teenager who was seriously injured because he trespassed on the railway has been commended by Network Rail for being brave enough to lend his support to a railway safety drive. Inigo Sweeney-Lynch, 17, is backing Network Rail’s You vs. Train campaign to raise awareness of the risks which trespassers face. Inigo came to grief when he and a friend climbed a wall at a railway sub-station, and he was hit by an electrical arc from an overhead line. A third of his body was burnt, and he will carry the legacy of his injuries for life.
Timetables have been shaken up following the usual May changeover, and commuters are discovering today whether the new schedules work. All operators are keeping a sharp eye on performance today. Although the new timetables started yesterday (Sunday), the real test comes on the first weekday. Most operators were reporting a good start at 07.30, although South Western Railway, Southern and Thameslink suffered minor delays. However, these were connected with infrastructure faults rather than the timetable changes. Transport Focus chief executive Anthony Smith said: ‘Passengers want nothing less than a smooth set of timetable changes that deliver tangible improvements.’
The project to build high speed lines linking London with the midlands and north of England needs a ‘major rethink’, according to the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords. The Committee has criticised HS2 on previous occasions, and its latest report casts new doubts on the scheme, which it says has ‘fundamental flaws’. The report, ‘Rethinking High Speed 2’, maintains that the north of England should be the priority for investment, and that the costs of HS2 ‘appear to be out of control’. The government said it ‘fundamentally disagrees’.