Tram engineers to walk out in ‘bad faith’ row
Tram engineers and fitters working for Transport for London are set to strike from 20.00 on 5 May to 06.00 on 9 May, after talks over pay differentials had broken down. The two sides have clashed over allegations of ‘bad faith’ made by the engineers’ union Unite, which TfL denies. TfL is advising its passengers to walk, cycle or use buses or the Overground on strike days, when no tram services are expected before 07.00 or after 18.00.
More than 800 railway improvement projects are planned by Network Rail during the two bank holidays in May, when a total of £135 million will be invested. Most of the work takes the form of ‘normal’ weekend engineering overnight, when few passenger trains are running. Disruption of a different kind will affect various English operators next week, when drivers’ union ASLEF stages further strikes in its continuing pay dispute. As before, this will be a series of ‘rolling’ strikes, affecting different groups of operators each day.
Rolling stock leasing company Porterbrook has announced plans to electrify the Long Marston test track in Warwickshire. Porterbrook took over operations at Long Marston in 2021 and completed the purchase in March this year. Porterbrook said its latest upgrade would take its total investment in Long Marston, which has 3.5km of track, to more than £75 million since 2021. The electrification should be ready for use next year.
TUESDAY BRIEFING: Landslip work completed near Pontefract ++ Global Centre of Rail Excellence welcomes new contract ++ Avanti extends cheap travel offer ++ Transpennine tunnels to be upgraded
Labour’s plans for the passenger railway have received plenty of attention over the past few days, although some of the general media coverage was ill-informed or potentially misleading. Some sources talked about ‘UK Rail’, when Northern Ireland is nothing to do with this, but few commentators seemed to notice the quiet change of the status of Great British Railways from ‘guiding mind’, to ‘directing mind’.
Labour’s detailed proposals for railway reform are ambitious. They take the plans set out in Keith Williams’ Rail Review and build on them, with the result that a new railway industry emerges. This will still be a hybrid industry, financially speaking, although it will hardly deserve the label ‘privatised’ any longer. In a nutshell, if Labour gains power, the infrastructure and core passenger services (those operated by the former franchises) will be state-owned, and administered by ‘Great British Railways’. During the first five-year term of a Labour Government the core periods of the existing (passenger) contracts will have expired, and they can then be ‘folded in’ to GBR.
The Labour Party has published its proposal for creating Great British Railways, which is called ‘Getting Britain moving’ and runs to 28 pages. Speaking in London this morning, shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh said: ‘If I am secretary of state, I won’t be running the railways day-to-day, but I will act as ‘passenger-in-chief’ – setting the strategy and objectives for Great British Railways, and holding it to account. ‘But, unlike current Ministers, I will trust the experts. Experts who don’t just come from the rail sector – because we all know that it can sometimes be a little too inward-looking. But external experts in providing exceptional customer service.’ She revealed that if Labour is elected, instructions will be given immediately to the Department for Transport, Network Rail, the Rail Delivery Group and the Operator of Last Resort ‘to work together from day one to create a “shadow” Great British Railways’.