The Ticket Collector

Qualified Bidders for GNER. As Predicted

THE DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT today announced the parties that have qualified as Bidders for the Intercity East Coast (ICEC) franchise. They are:

• Arriva Trains East Coast Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Arriva Trains Limited. The ultimate parent company is Arriva plc

• First London, Scottish and North East Railways Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of First Rail Holdings Ltd. The ultimate parent company is FirstGroup plc

• inter city - railways Limited, a 50/50 joint venture between Stagecoach plc and Virgin Group of Companies

• NXEC Trains Limited, wholly owned subsidiary of National Express Group plc

DfT issued an advertisement in December 2006 inviting Expressions of Interest in the franchise. Short listed bidders will be asked to bid against a specification based on DfT proposals and the responses to a recent public consultation which closed on 15th February 2007.

The winner of the competition will be announced in Summer 2007 and it is anticipated that the new ICEC franchise will be in place in late Autumn 2007. The term of the new franchise is a maximum of 7 years and 5 months, the last 17 months being dependent on the franchisee achieving performance targets.

“Crowded trains are safer in crashes” - ORR

Was reading somthing of interest to regular visitors of this blog in the Evening Standard yesterday. The Standard/Daily Mail are continuing on there “Campaign” for a seat for every commuter. Well we all know that this will never be possible.
What defines a commuter? Someone who travels every day including weekends? Someone who travels 3 days a week? Prehaps someone who travels on the overnight trains once a week in both directions, are they classed as a commuter?

Now this is what really pisses me off about the Evening Standard, yeah we will moan and complain but what we wont tell you is we couldnt even run a train service, we barley run a newspaper.

But anyway onto the main reason for this blog posting.

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) yesterday stated that “Packed trains are safer”, “Research in the late 1990’s found that where there was a crowded or overcrowded train carriage there was no detrimental effect to people involved in crashes”. “In a lot of cases people were better off in train carriages where there was overcrowding”

The Evening Standard continued to moan about how commuters are getting a raw deal, but did they mention that fact that most companies offer you a 5% refund on your ticket if you dont get a seat? No because that would go against their unwinnable campaign “a seat for every commuter”.

There is actually no legal limit to how many people can travel in any given carriage at any given time, there is also no safety law regarding the maximum number of people in a train carriage.

FCC are planning to increase their services between Cambridge and London to 12 carriages, this is dependant on Network Rail and the DfT upgrading the power supply between Cambridge and Letchworth. Some platforms are going to have to be lengthened.
Also there are rumors and these are only rumors at the moment that FCC will be getting some new trains to replace the extra carriages which will be taken from other routes to lengthen the Cambridge - London services. These could be HST’s, 180’s or the trains which silverlink use.

Accredited Bidders for GNER. Leaked?

Ok right first off theticketcollector.co.uk will not release where the following information came from, will not release any names (we dont know anyway), and will not release anything which could comprise our source. The following information could change at any time as is NOT officially released.

ACCREDITED BIDDERS for EAST COAST FRANCHISE

The information goes on and on about start dates and stuff but the nitty gritty is as follows:
First Group PLC
Virgin Trains/Stagecoach Group
Arriva Trains
National Express Group
Serco/NedRailways

Basicly its the main players plus a few smaller ones, I have noticed that GNER are not an accredited bidder maybe cos the DfT told them not to bid.