Rail News

Room for improvement

19.06.13: Passenger satisfaction is largely unchanged from last year, the latest survey from Passenger Focus shows. While bad weather and infrastructure in need of repair has contributed considerably to people’s perception of the railway, at le...

Strategic Rail Freight Interchange plans ‘not legally flawed’

19.06.13: St Albans council has been refused legal action against the Government for planning permission to build a rail depot on greenbelt land. Communities’ secretary Eric Pickles stated in December that he was “minded to approve”...

First aid training for New Street workers

19.06.13: Construction workers on the Birmingham New Street project are benefitting from a programme to improve health and wellbeing. Network Rail and Mace are working to raise awareness of health-related risks of construction, including hand-arm vib...

National Passenger Survey shows satisfaction at 82%

19.06.13: Overall passenger satisfaction with the rail network remains high at 82%, the latest National Passenger Survey (NPS) shows. Satisfaction has fallen slightly in the latest survey, covering January to March 2013, compared to the same period l...

Spare change

18.06.13: The Government did not happen to notice there was a spare £33bn sitting around in the Treasury and then work out a way to spend it. HS2 is a project developed to solve a specific purpose, to add vital capacity to a stretched network, and t...

London Bridge designs complete

18.06.13: The first designs for the next stage of the London Bridge station overhaul project have been delivered, ready for the next stage in the Thameslink project. Construction has now begun onsite, with three platforms demolished. A joint ven...

Safeguards set out for devolution of London rail franchising

18.06.13: Devolution must include safeguards to protect passengers’ interests, London TravelWatch has urged. If responsibility for rail services is devolved to the Mayor of London, any decisions about the operation of the railway must treat pas...

Government ‘backing the wrong horse’ with HS2

18.06.13: Demand for HS2 has likely been “overestimated” by oversimplified Government modelling, a think tank has argued in a new report. The New Economics Foundation (Nef) has criticised the value for money of the £33bn project and...

Get me away

17.06.13: TfGM has introduced its new smart ticketing system, a card which can pay for all forms of public transport quickly and easily. The catchy name for this scheme is, wait for it, ‘get me there’. The system follows in the footsteps...

£6.9m Stratford station opens

17.06.13: The new railway station at Stratford-upon-Avon Parkway has been delivered ahead of schedule and on budget. The £6.9m station is seven months early, Warwickshire County Council has announced. Buckingham Group Contracting started a desi...

£240m lost through fare dodging each year

17.06.13: Fare dodgers are costing the railway £240m a year, new figures from the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) show. There are an estimated 120,000 train journeys taken each day by passengers without tickets, despite train op...

Smart ticketing launched for Manchester

17.06.13: TfGM has introduced a new smart ticketing system for Manchester, to be known as the ‘get me there’ scheme. It will cover Metrolink trams, buses and rail services with roll-out beginning next year. The name has already proved con...

Whifflet route electrification

14.06.13: This is the RIGHT priority for electrification, as it is wiring up sections which should have been wired up ages ago. It means a very simple wiring up project means another service using the underutilised Glasgow Central Low line to provide a be...

Raising the bar

14.06.13: David Statham has set out plans to radically improve service reliability, passenger service information and how clean FCC’s trains are. The new managing director is taking on a challenging task, with passenger expectations higher than...

Virgin Trains ‘a five star business’

14.06.13: Virgin Trains has renewed its five star certification in the Recognised for Excellence (RfE) programme. The assessment by the British Quality Foundation (BQF) found Virgin Trains improved its overall score by around 20% since it originally achie...