Arriva says it has submitted a new open access application to the Office of Rail and Road to run direct services almost the length of England, between Newcastle, Gatwick Airport and Brighton.

The application is the latest in a series of open access bids which have been lodged since last July’s election, when Labour pledged to renationalise all the remaining operators which used to have franchises and are still in the private sector.

The first of these will be South Western Railway, which is set to return to public ownership in a month from today.

Arriva, which already owns Grand Central, wants to run direct services between Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Brighton. The intermediate calling points would be Durham, Darlington, Northallerton, York, Doncaster, Sheffield, Derby, Burton-on-Trent, Birmingham New Street, Warwick Parkway, Banbury, Oxford, Reading, Wokingham, Guildford, Redhill, Gatwick Airport and Haywards Heath.

Arriva’s application will also be notified formally to Network Rail today. Arriva says it has identified spare paths, and would use these to run five trains a day in each direction.

The service would be part of Grand Central, and could be introduced from December 2026.

Arriva UK Trains’ Rail Services managing director Paul Hutchings said: ‘We’re committed to connecting communities and enabling more people to travel in ways that are convenient and sustainable, so we’re very pleased to be submitting this application for the first direct service between Newcastle and Brighton, opening up new travel opportunities and making better use of available network capacity – all while building on Grand Central’s proud history of connecting traditionally underserved communities.

‘This is an exciting time for Grand Central’s growth story and follows the extension of our existing access rights to 2038 as well as the recent announcement of an investment of around £300 million in a new battery hybrid train fleet for our existing routes, further underlining our commitment and ambition for rail in the UK.’

London Gatwick Airport’s chief commercial officer Jonathan Pollard added: ‘We welcome Arriva’s exploration of a regular service between London Gatwick, the Midlands and North East, and are excited about the opportunities this proposed service could bring. London Gatwick is keen to encourage passengers to use public transport and this enhanced connectivity would support underserved areas, while strengthening and growing our catchment.’

Arriva is already in the ORR’s queue of applications for more open access services. It is awaiting decisions on proposals for two extra daily return services between Bradford and London and an early morning and late evening return from York to London, as well as the introduction of a direct London connection to Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

The other contenders for various routes are Alstom, FirstGroup and Virgin Trains.

Although the government is willing in principle to allow open access operators to continue, it has also sounded notes of caution about introducing more.

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander wrote to the ORR in January, saying: ‘I am … aware of the additional pressures new services can create on already constrained network capacity and their impact on the value secured from public investment in infrastructure. While Open Access operators pay variable access charges to Network Rail to cover the direct costs incurred running their trains on the network, unlike government contracted operators they do not fully cover the costs of fixed track access charges.’

Soon afterwards the Department for Transport revealed that it was not supporting any of the open access applications which had been lodged at that time, with the possible exception of a proposal by Alstom to revive the route between London and Wrexham.

Readers’ comments

Interesting to see a non London centric application being submitted. However cautious qualification with Arriva being the current contracted operator of the Cross Country business and therefore privy to detailed commercial knowledge of the core Newcastle to Reading part of this application. Proposing to reintroduce a 'cross country' presence between Reading and Brighton should be seen as a positive having been abandoned by DfT when the XC franchise contract was being relet and resources concentrated on the core network. However the core suspicion of Open Access remains over revenue abstraction from contracted operators. Changes may have been made to ensure charges for track access more accurately reflect the costs incurred but while they continue to enjoy the fruits of revenue sharing through the industry ORCATS process these concerns will continue. So while this application offers the olive leaf of restoring XC services to Sussex it's probably true the aim is to muscle into one of XC's core routes between Reading & Newcastle. Once again let us recall by comparison the aviation industry doesn't pool revenue between destinations and allow an algorithm to share it between rival operators.

Chris Jones-Bridger, Buckley, Flintshire 

Interesting. I've maintained before that previous attempts at railway reorganisation (Grouping 1923, Nationalisation 1948, and Privatisation 1994) have proved to be flawed. If Open Access is prevented because of political dogma, a real opportunity for a better railway may well be lost. New routings like this one could be a real boon to intending passengers. Look to new ideas, rather than going back to failed nostrums. In general, before Covid, there existed a number of services under the general term ‘cross country’ that gave direct through trains between important places that don't run now. It is possible they were of appeal to certain market segments, and may well repeat such if restored .                                                   

David C. Smith, Bletchley, Milton Keynes

 
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