07.08.15
Alliance victorious in bid for new London-Blackpool services by 2018
Open access operator Alliance Rail has won approval for its planned new direct passenger services between Blackpool and London.
The Office of Rail & Road (ORR, formerly the Office of Rail Regulation) rejected a similar proposal earlier this year, but said Alliance had now addressed all its concerns and so granted approval.
The application was submitted by Arriva-owned Great North Western Railway (GNWR), whose sister company Grand Central already operates open access services between the north east and West Yorkshire to London.
The new services will run between Queen’s Park in London and Blackpool North with contingent rights between Queen’s Park and London Euston.
Map of previous proposal: current bid no longer includes service to Leeds or Warrington Bank Quay
Features of the new service will include six return trains a day between the two cities and an investment in a fleet of new six-coach Alstom Pendolino EMUs with around 330 passenger capacity. Alstom told RTM that it welcomed the news.
The proposal was pitched by Alliance and Grand Central – also owned by Arriva – in April.
The new services will start in 2018 after Arriva invests in the new tilting trains.
Ian Yeowart, managing director of Alliance, said: “The introduction of these new services will further grow the market for rail travel. As well as bringing new direct services to a number of locations, notably Blackpool, it will give passengers further choice.
“Experience on the East Coast Main Line with Grand Central has shown how this stimulates the market and helps put pressure on prices, a fact noted by the Competition and Markets Authority in its recent rail review.”
ORR said in its decision letter: “We will now work up the detailed access contract that we will direct Network Rail to enter into. However, we will include additional requirements relating to the investments GNWR will make (that justify the 10-year contract duration), calling pattern requirements and rolling stock commitments, including the time by which rolling stock must be secured and the services introduced.”
Director of economic regulation at ORR, John Larkinson, added that the company’s plans would include additional investment in stations and trains to bring further benefits to passengers.
In January this year the ORR had rejected similar proposals by GNWR to provide new open access long-distance services on the West Coast Main Line from London to Blackpool, Leeds and Huddersfield.
Network Rail had backed the application for the new services saying they could be accommodated with better use of existing capacity, citing the Northern Hub project to increase rail capacity in the Manchester area.
However, the ORR rejected the proposal because the service would not generate enough new revenue to justify competition with the West Coast franchise operated by Virgin.
The decision letter at that time read: “We would not expect to approve applications that did not generate at least 30p of new revenue for every £1 abstracted from existing operators. We set the threshold at this relatively low level with the benefits of competition firmly in mind.”
However, in its new acceptance letter, ORR justified the U-turn in its decision by saying that changes to the new application accommodated previous concerns.
“The application is for half the number of services in the previous application and it focuses on providing a regular off-peak service between Blackpool and London only. The services now proposed broadly replicate the Blackpool rights sought in GNWR’s last application but with the addition of calls at Kirkham & Wesham (which does not current have a direct London service) and the removal of calls at Warrington that would likely be very abstractive of revenue from current operators.”