18.04.16
TfL confirm London Overground contract with Arriva signed
The new £1.5bn contract for Arriva to provide London Overground services has now been signed.
Arriva were announced by Transport for London (TfL) as the preferred bidder to take over from the current operator London Overground Rail Operations (LOROL), jointly operated by MTR, last month, and have now signed the contract following the required standstill period.
Arriva, who also took over the northern franchise at the beginning of April, will operate London Overground from November 2016 and will hold the contract until 2024, with the potential to extend it to 2026.
Chris Burchell, managing director of Arriva’s UK trains division, said: “We have been proud to play our part in the London Overground success story so far and look forward to working closely with Transport for London to improve services further, introduce more new trains and deliver a further step-change in customer service quality.
“London Overground is one of the capital's success stories and from November our role is to ensure this success continues and customer satisfaction levels remain high - helped by 1,400 employees who understand the network inside out.”
The contract contains incentives for Arriva to deliver improvements in performance levels, including financially penalising Arriva should incidents caused by Network Rail, train and freight operators impact on London Overground services and limiting the punctuality measurement to three minutes within the scheduled arrival time.
The practice of paying train operating companies (TOCs) compensation for delays caused by Network Rail, the majority of which are kept by the TOCs, was recently criticised by Joan Ryan MP, who is proposing legislation to force TOCs to spend compensation on improving services.
Arriva will start introducing new services from Boxing Day this year, and from 2018 will introduce new trains on the route out of Liverpool Street and on the Gospel Oak to Barking line, which will close from June 2016 to February 2017 to allow for improvements.
Other improvements will include more frequent trains, starting on the North London line, and modernised stations.
Gareth Powell, TfL's chief operating officer of London Rail, said: “We look forward to working with Arriva to bring about further improvements to the London Overground network. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the existing operator LOROL for their work that has helped make London Overground the huge success story it is today.”
(Image c. Transport for London)