News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, Edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.
Railfuture News Snippets 268 - 20/08/2015
- STATIONS [all issues]
- Final planing approval given for new £44m Cambridge North station - construction will begin immediately
- Abellio Greater Anglia promises extra staff to sell tickets to avoid crazy queues
- RAIL ROUTES [all issues]
- RAIL FARES [all issues]
- RAIL FREIGHT [all issues]
- ROLLING STOCK [all issues]
- GUIDED BUSWAY [all issues]
A reminder that there will be a Railfuture meeting in Norwich at 14:00 on Saturday 19th 2015, which is free to attend and open to the public. The guest speaker will be Ian Brown CBE, who is now Railfuture's director of policy, having spent his career it the railway reaching the top level of the industry (e.g. as Managing Director of London Rail at Transport for London). See FLIER for details of the venue and a profile of the speaker.
According to official figures, Abellio Greater Anglia paid £2.3m in delay compensation to passengers in the year to 31st March 2015. This was a £900,000 increase, up from £1.4m in 2013/14. In 2011/12, which saw AGA take over from Nationl Express, it was just £120,000. AGA has now paid out £5,389,000 since it took over the franchise in February 2012. A possible reason for the increase is that the train operator has promoted Delay Repay and the ways that passengers can claim and has also launched an online delay repay scheme for season ticket holders.
The Oxon and Bucks Rail Action Committee (OBRAC) will hold its AGM on Wednesday 9th September at 19:00 at Bicester Town Council Offices, The Garth, Launton Road, Bicester OX26 6PS. Stephen Barker, Chiltern Railways' Strategic Development Engineer (who spoke to Railfuture at its national conference in Oxford in November 2013) will talk about East West Rail Phase 1. This is a joint meeting with Railfuture.
STATIONS
Final planing approval given for new £44m Cambridge North station - construction will begin immediately
Keywords: [CambridgeNorthStation]
The planning application submitted by Network Rail in May 2015 to build the new £44m Cambridge North station, which is being fully funded by the the Department for Transport and should open at the timetable change in December 2016, was approved by Cambridge City Council on Wednesday 19th August (NR had hoped for approval in June). It was really just a formality as permission for a virtually identical scheme was given was given back in December 2013 to Cambridgeshire County Council, who were originally managing the construction before it was handed to NR in August 2014 - an action that has seen the twice pushed back, first from May 2016 to December 2015 and then by another 12 months. The 1km-long busway link to the new station is already complete, along with some preparation work on the station site. Building work for the three platforms, footbridge, 450-square-metre station building, 450-space car park, 1,000-space cycle park and forecourt, which will take 15 months, is due to start within weeks (although the car park is conditional upon approval for a totally overhauled planning application tat NR will submit in the autumn). This time-scale is considerably longer than the new island platforms at Cambridge station took in 2012.
Planning documents (see section 4): http://democracy.cambridge.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=188&MId=2827&Ver=4.
Councillors have expressed concern about the distance from the station of the disabled parking and drop-off area, as well as the area for taxis. The car park will have 24 disabled parking spaces with most within 50 metres of the station entrance. Railfuture has been lobbying for the redundant freight access road to the station, which is owned by Network Rail, to be opened for pedestrians and cyclists so that they are segregated from cars and buses. Network Rail and the council still refer to a mere 3,000 rail journeys each day, which is just over 800,000 a year - a figure that has not been increased since the funding bid (then estimated to cost £26m) was made back in 2009, despite the significant growth around Cambridge since then. Even so, this is a very pessimistic estimate given that Cambridge station now sees annual footfall of ten million, having doubled since 2000, and is struggling to cope.
Abellio Greater Anglia promises extra staff to sell tickets to avoid crazy queues
Keywords: [CambridgeStation] [GreaterAnglia]
Railfuture has often complained about the unacceptably long queues at Cambridge station, often stretching outside the station building, as passengers taking up to 30 minutes to buy tickets. The problem tends to be worse at weekends as fewer people have season tickets. Abellio Greater Anglia has been hoping that the expanded ticket hall (with 20 automated ticket machines) would solve most of these issues, but it has been delayed endlessly. Following a meeting with councillors, Abellio has accepted that this cannot continue and it will start by drafting in extra staff to help manage the queues. It is about to open a temporary ticket office prior to the new ticket hall opening in spring 2016. Abellio also wants to extending its ticketing options so that people do not have to buy (or collect) tickets at the station. Options include print-at-home tickets, which has been around for a decade but tends only to be used for train-specific journeys, 'smart cards' and mobile phones, which is common-place with air travel and is used by some train operators. Apart from its franchising ending soon (in October 2016), one of the problems for Abellio is that it can introduce these things for its services (print-at-home tickets are available for journeys to Liverpool Street) but the vast majority of the passengers use other operators' trains, primarily GTR's Greater Anglia trains to King's Cross. Railfuture has long questioned the sense of the station being managed by 'minor' operator.
Councillors are also unhappy about the inconvenience caused to passengers by the "cb1" Station Square development in front of the station, although if the Science Park station was already opened the problems would be less severe. Station access is described as "totally inadequate" for disabled and older people, with a "continued serious traffic accident risk" in the drop-off area, although Abellio says most of the works should be finished by October 2015.
RAIL ROUTES
Could East West Rail western section be delayed as Network Rail misses GRIP 3 milestone by nine months?
Keywords: [EastWestRail]
Network Rail was supposed to complete the GRIP3 stage of the western section of the East West Rail project by November 2015 (a date that was set in 2013) but Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has agreed for this slip to August 2016. The excuse is that Network Rail assumed that a study completed for the East West Rail consortium in 2008-09 had effectively achieved most of the GRIP 1-3 development, but it now says that the original study had several omissions, such as ground investigation and surveys, and did not include development of the additional scope to meet the 'core' and 'incremental' train service specifications now being considered.
Meanwhile, on Monday 3rd August BBC Look East, which reported (announced several days earlier - see [Snippets 267]) on the two corridors identified by Network Rail for the Central Section of the East West Rail Link. The BBC broadcast about 25 seconds of Railfuture East Anglia branch chairman Peter Wakefield talking from Hills Road bridge overlooking Cambridge station as a train went past below. He had spent an hour that afternoon with Hollie Goodall of "Cambridge TV", a new TV operator from which the BBC is required to buy content.
It is possible to subscribe to news upgrades from the Consortium by registering on their website at: http://www.eastwestrail.org.uk/subscribe.
RAIL FARES
Railfuture gets media attention in its response to January 2016 fare increases
Railfuture attracted considerable media interest from its press release on 18th August, when the annual interest rate for July was announced. Although CPI was only 0.1%, the RPI rate was 1%, meaning that regulated fares in England will rise on average by 1% (the lowest amount in six years, since RPI went negative following the sudden and dramatic reduction in interest rates) on the first working day in January 2016. Railfuture wants the CPI measure to be used (as it is for nearly everything else the government does) and accused the Government of "using smoke and mirrors to disguise the fact that the real cost of rail travel will again be going up." The press release went on: "The Conservatives promised in their manifesto that there would be a 'freeze' on rail fares in England for the lifetime of the parliament, but the real cost of rail travel continues to rise although people's incomes are virtually stagnant. Add to that the fact that George Osborne has repeatedly frozen fuel duty for motorists, and that the cost of oil is falling, and it looks like the Government are trying to drive people off the railways and onto the roads." The press release was picked up by the Guardian, Evening Standard, Manchester Evening News, Western Mail and Newcastle's Chronicle amongst many others, with enquiries from BBC Five Live, Sky News and the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. Railfuture was on BBC Radio Lincolnshire and BBC Three Counties radio.
Railfuture's East Anglia media spokesman, Chris Burton, said: "We are concerned about what might happen to the 'unregulated' 50 per cent of the ticket market. Is this sector to take up the shortfall in regulated income as over 75% of railway expenditure comes from ticket revenue?"
RAIL FREIGHT
Three new freight trains a week between Ely and Norwich once Potter Group pellet factory opens
In mid-August East Cambridgeshire District Council approved an application (reference 15/00427/FUM) by the Potter Group for a "straw pellet making factory" at a site south-west of the Potter Group in Queen Adelaide Way, Ely. When this plant is completed, and the consignees' plant at Norwich Crown Point is also completed, this will result in three train-loads a week. Although only a minor increase in rail-freight this is yet more traffic for Ely North junction to deal with. A firm date for the removal of the single-lead junction there us still awaited.
ROLLING STOCK
Upgraded Class 321 'Renatus' trains to enter service with Abellio Greater Anglia from early 2016
Abellio Greater Anglia's has a fleet of around 89 Class 321 4-carriage trains, which were built in 1998-1990, operate on services between London-Braintree, London-Norwich, London-Harwich International, London-Southend Victoria and Wickford-Southminster. As announced in [Snippets 267] 40 of these carriages are to have a 'minor refresh'. Evershot Rail Group, which owns the trains, has since announced that it will spend £60 million perform a compliant accessible 'full refurbishment' of a further 30 of the units operated by Abellio Greater Anglia commencing in September 2015 with the first train entering service sometime in 2016. The project has been given the codename 'Renatus' (meaning 'born again' in Latin) and it is expected that the first ten upgraded trains will be in service by October 2016 when AGA's current franchise ends. The upgrade project dates back to 2014 when Eversholt agreed to fund the upgrade of two carriages to provide a 'demonstrator unit' to gauge passengers' views. The upgrade includes new seats, flooring and glazing; improved insulation, new air-conditioning and heating systems, Wi-Fi, 240V passenger power sockets for each row of seats, energy-efficient lighting and PRM-TSI compliance - to extend the life of the trains - with larger vestibules to improve passenger flows, greater space for buggies and luggage and "safer" seating. All toilets will have retention tanks, something that Network Rail has insisted on by 2020 for the sake of its track workers.
News: http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/Rail-News/eversholt-previews-60m-class-321-overhaul.
GUIDED BUSWAY
Driver and two passengers injured on Luton-Dunstable guided busway as tyre punctures on bus
Keywords: [LutonDunstableBusway]
The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway has now been in operation for four years and dispute more than 100 'incidents', of which a small number affected bus passengers, no-one has been seriously injured so far. However, despite having only been in operation less than two years (it opened on 25th September 2013) has now seen its first 'serious collision' according to Luton today.
At around 23:00 on Sunday 2nd August a tyre puncture caused a bus to leave the guideway. The driver and two other passengers were badly injured. It was reported that the driver was thrown through his cab window leaving the vehicle out of control and on the wrong side of the track, and one of the bus passengers jumped out of the moving vehicle and flagged down an oncoming bus to avoid a collision. It was necessary to close the busway between Skimpot and the White Lion retail park until minor repairs could be carried out. The news story was brief mentioned on BBC Look East's early evening news on Monday 3rd August.
Further busway closures took place from 17th to 21th August between Church Street Bridge and Skimpot Road. This was for "sssential maintenance."
News: http://www.lutontoday.co.uk/news/local/three-injured-in-crash-on-luton-dunstable-busway-1-6882723.
Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 268 - 20/08/2015
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