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East Anglia Branch News - Snippets Issue 319 - 31/10/2019

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News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, Edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.

Railfuture News Snippets 319 - 31/10/2019



Greater Anglia (GA) has completed the installation of 53 new (modern, attractive, easy-to-read and informative), customer information screens (CIS) at Cambridge station. This is part of the £20 wider project to roll out the new CIS and other improvements across GA stations.

Railfuture East Anglia has responded to the Greater Cambridge Partnership's Foxton Travel Hub consultation. The response can be read here.

Bombardier, in Derby, has now built the first 100 out of the 655 carriages of Greater Anglia's new electric commuter trains. These form 20 five-car trains. In total it is building 111 trains mostly with five carriages but some with 10. When they come off the production line, tests on braking, traction and system functionality, among other safety and performance tests, are performed before delivery to GA.

The Greater Cambridge Partnership's Executive Board and Joint Assembly meetings for November and December 2019 have been cancelled following the announcement of a General Election on 12th December 2019. Other organisations in East Anglia (and across Britain) will be similarly affected. For example, a planned VIP event about Cambridge South station has been put back from 27th November 2019 to early 2020.

It has been announced that Clacton MP Giles Watling has taken over as chairman of the Great Eastern Rail Taskforce, which is a collaboration of MPs, business leaders and representatives from Network Rail and franchise holder Greater Anglia. He takes over from Priti Patel MP, who had to stand down after being appointed Home Secretary.

East West Railway Company has appointed an Arup-led consortium to support early works for the Bedford-Cambridge section of the East West Rail corridor between Oxford and Cambridge. Arup will work with Environmental Resources Management, Copper and Ardent to provide support for alignment design and assessment work, the public consultation process and studies to inform strategic decision making.

Network Rail has announced the next set of dates when major improvement work will take place as part of the £1.2 billion East Coast Upgrade. This including two weekends when there will be no trains to or from London King's Cross: on Saturday 25th/Sunday 26th January and Saturday 29th February/Sunday 1st March. Work will include an upgrade to the power supply and overhead line equipment in and around King's Cross station and construction of an additional platform with new track at Stevenage station. There will also be five weekends of a reduced service on the East Coast Main Line: Saturday 4th/Sunday 5th January, Saturday 11th/Sunday 12th January, Saturday 18th/Sunday 19th January, Saturday 8th/Sunday 9th February and Saturday 15th/Sunday 16th February.


STATIONS
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Mayor calls for action on Cambridge South station now

Keywords: [CambridgeSouthStation]

The Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough James Palmer is extremely eager for Cambridge South station — regardless of whether it has full facilities or is just a basic station — is opened as soon as possible. Like Railfuture, he is extremely critical of Network Rail's claim that it could not be opened before 2027, although 2025 is now looking achievable if it is delivered separately from East West Rail. He has proposed that if the station is delivered locally the it could open earlier, ideally 2023, relieving current transport pressure in the area, especially at the growing Biomedical Campus where Addenbrooke's Hospital is located. There are currently an estimated 26,500 visits to the campus every day from patients, staff, academics, scientists and visitors. AstraZeneca, a global pharmaceutical company, is investing over £500 million to relocate their Headquarters there, that will be home for around 2,000 employees.

Mr Palmer said "Given planned expansion in the area, a station at Cambridge South is critical and any further delays threaten to undermine projected economic growth, which would be detrimental to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and to the UK economy at large. We need to focus on the things we have more control over, so that's why I'm pushing for a solution that can be delivered locally. This is exactly what devolution was set up for. We must untangle plans for a Cambridge South train station from East-West Rail and get on with delivering a station by 2023."

Some Great Northern stations will enable collection of e-shopping and sending parcels

Keywords: [GreatNorthern]

Travellers will soon be able to pick up, drop off and return their parcels at stations thanks to a partnership between Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) and InPost (website: inpostdirect.co.uk). It is fast to use as it does not require queuing up at a desk. Automated lockers are being installed at 11 stations across the GTR network. Unfortunately this does not include any stations in East Anglia - all of the large ones it serves are managed by Greater Anglia (e.g. Cambridge) or LNER (e.g. Peterborough).

Purchases are initially limited to a very small number of (generally up-market) retailers. When customers order their goods, they can choose a local locker to collect their parcels from. Once the parcel has been delivered to the locker, customers are sent a QR code by SMS and email. They then scan the code at the locker to open the door. The facility is not limited to railway stations. Other locker locations include supermarkets and petrol stations.

Family of former railwayman help fund life-saving heart resuscitator installed at Lowestoft station

Keywords: [LowestoftStation]

Life-saving defibrillator equipment has been installed on Platform 2 at Lowestoft railway station, paid for by the family of Ronnie Dell, a Lowestoft resident whose career on the railway spanned over 40 years until his retirement in 1997 including in the Lowestoft Goods Office. The family gave donations made at his funeral with the Wherry Lines Community Rail Partnership arranging and funding the installation. The new equipment was officially unveiled on Monday 28th October 2020 followed by a training session for staff and volunteers at the station.


PURCHASING TICKETS
Rail Delivery Group co-ordinates industry-wide 'Smart Week' campaign to increase take up of smart cards

Keywords: [GreaterAnglia] [SmartCards]

The Rail Delivery Group co-ordinated an industry-wide campaign during the week of 14th-20th October 2020 to encourage passengers to move away from paper (tangerine) tickets. Events were held at 73 stations across the country, including Cambridge, Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich. The aim was to remind people of the benefits of digital tickets and encourage them to make the switch. The monthly number of rail journeys in Britain taken with paper tickets dropped by 13.3 million year on year. Only 50% of journeys using paper tickets, down from 63% the previous last year. Greater Anglia says that 75% of its season ticket holders are using a plastic smartcard, which eliminates the problem of worn or damaged tickets and reducing queuing time at ticket machines by ordering them digitally from anywhere. Ticket barriers across the country now allow passengers to touch the reader a ticket gates, making for a smoother entrance and exit of stations, and open up the possibility of new types of fares, such as part-time season tickets or tap-in-tap-out that works across buses, trams and trains.

A key concern for Railfuture is the interoperability of smartcards, particularly when the origin and destination stations are managed by different train operators. Railfuture conducted an exercise in October 2020 and confirmed that smart seven-day, monthly, annual and period season tickets can now be purchased on the GTR and Greater Anglia websites to upload on to the Key and Greater Anglia smartcards respectively at the specified station from stations on the routes Cambridge to King's Cross and Cambridge to King's Lynn to Cambridge and Cambridge North. This exercise involved purchasing a seven-day season ticket on the GTR website for a GTR key smartcard for Cambridge North to Cambridge and uploading it to the Key smartcard at the ticket gates at Cambridge North. Smart season tickets for the Greater Anglia smart card can be purchased on the Greater Anglia website for stations on the route Cambridge to Liverpool Street to Cambridge and Cambridge North.

The train operators had not yet updated their smartcard maps on their websites to show the smartcards extending to King's Lynn but smartcard season tickets can now be purchased online for stations Cambridge to King's Lynn. A photo card for season tickets is needed and these are available at staffed stations.



RAIL ROUTES
First set of accounts for the operational the East West Railway Company Limited are published

Keywords: [EastWestRail]

The East West Railway Company Limited has published its Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31st March 2019. It shows that the company became operational in September 2018. It has grown from a team of seven employees to over 45 dedicated specialists. It spent the early part of 2019 in public consultation for the Bedford to Cambridge section — looking for views on five alternative proposed routes. This exercise triggered over 7,000 responses. The beginning of 2019 saw the public inquiry into Network Rail's TWA Order application for the Oxford to Bedford section, for which more than four hundred letters of support were received. It says that the inspector expected to deliver a final report to the Secretary of State for Transport in late 2019, with approval in early 2020. The company also engaged with suppliers of rolling stock, ahead of a formal procurement process, for the western section of the route.


GUIDED BUSWAY
Investigation launched after guided bus "came off tracks and landed in a field"

Yet another incident on the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway occurred on the morning of Thursday 17th October 2019 after a bus crashed off the tracks, went through a hedge and ended up in a field at Longstanton. The driver sustained minor injuries but no passengers were hurt in the accident. No-one needed hospital treatment on this occasion. A recovery vehicle was then called to move the stranded bus. The section of a guided busway between the Longstanton Park & Ride site and the B1050 junction was expected to be closed for almost a week, until Wednesday 23rd October, for repairs to the busway kerb to take place.

According to reports, the bus appears to have careered off the track near the Longstanton park and ride site and travelled about 15 metres from the track, through a hedge and into a field. There have been several incidents before, generally because the driver had been speeding. The worst such incident on the guided busway, just south of Cambridge station, killed a cyclist.


Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 319 - 31/10/2019

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