Dozens of services to and from London cancelled, and strike action hits TransPennine Express routes
Rail passengers face a “disastrous weekend” of disruption as engineering works and strikes hamper one of the busiest Easter getaways in years.
Dozens of services to and from London have been cancelled as Network Rail carries out 530 engineering projects across the bank holiday weekend.
Continue reading...Activists say bill being presented to parliament sanctions irreversible destruction of environment
A nationwide day of action against HS2 – involving banner drops, solidarity protests and a Twitter storm – is planned for Monday as the bill to expand the line beyond Crewe is presented to parliament.
Environmental activists say the bill will “sanction immense and irreversible destruction to the environment” and want to raise awareness of HS2’s “continuing ecocide, corruption and financial mis-management”.
Continue reading...Union says it is ‘common sense’ that Britain’s 1,100 steel businesses should be ‘paramount’ in procurement
The Unite union is demanding the government sets clear targets for the use of UK-produced steel in the HS2 rail project, after it emerged that the Department for Transport currently has none in place.
Responding to two written questions in parliament posted by Labour MPs in December, the transport minister Andrew Stephenson admitted there is “no formal target” for the use of UK steel in its construction.
Continue reading...Volunteer passengers will be aboard central TfL section of Elizabeth line as part of final testing phase
Hopes that Crossrail will open in central London in early 2022 – this time on schedule – have been boosted as the troubled £19bn scheme moved into its final phase of testing at the weekend.
The start of months of trial operations, which will involve thousands of volunteer passengers to test how the system will function, including in emergencies, was described as a “significant milestone” by Transport for London and the mayor.
Continue reading...Number of commuter trips made in mid-October was just 45% of pre-Covid figure, industry says
The number of train journeys made by commuters in Great Britain remains at less than half of pre-pandemic levels, figures show.
The industry body Rail Delivery Group (RDG) said in mid-October the number of railway journeys made by those going to work was just 45% of what it was before the coronavirus crisis.
Continue reading...Staff warily contemplate going back to work as business leaders say it is vital to boost urban economy
With the lifting of coronavirus restrictions in England probably two weeks away, the prospect of returning to offices means the revival of the daily commute.
In a push to bring back more people to town and city centres to boost the urban economy, a group of 50 business leaders, including the Canary Wharf executive chair, Sir George Iacobescu, the bosses of Heathrow and Gatwick airports, the Capita chief executive, Jon Lewis, and the BT chief executive, Philip Jansen, are calling for the government to encourage a return to the office.
Continue reading...A French start-up aims to run ‘hotels on rails’ from Paris to 12 cities across Europe, including Edinburgh, from 2024
Less than a decade after Europe’s night trains appeared to have reached the end of the line, a new French start-up has announced plans for a network of overnight services out of Paris from 2024.
Midnight Trains is hoping post-Covid interest in cleaner, greener travel will generate interest in its proposed “hotels on rails”, which aims to connect the French capital to 12 other European destinations, including Edinburgh.
Continue reading...The cross-Channel train service has seen a 95% fall in passengers during the Covid-19 pandemic
Eurostar has said it is facing an existential threat, as business leaders pleaded with the government to step in and save the “vital link” with Europe.
A 95% drop in passenger numbers has brought the cross-Channel train service to its knees, and the company reiterated on Sunday that while government loans had been extended to aviation, international high-speed rail had also been severely affected by the pandemic.
Continue reading...The crisis poses a deadly threat to some sectors and creates opportunities for others. We examine how they will fare in 2021
Coronavirus has changed lives and industries across the UK, accelerating fundamental shifts in behaviour and consumption that were already on their way. Debates about home working, preserving local high streets and the ethics of air travel were bubbling away before coronavirus rampaged across the world, but the consequences of the worst pandemic in more than a century have either settled those arguments or boosted the momentum behind certain lifestyle changes. Here we look at how those debates have been changed – or resolved – by Covid-19.
Continue reading...Fatal derailment after heavy rains exposes growing danger posed by extreme weather
The derailment of a ScotRail train in rural Aberdeenshire with the loss of three lives adds Stonehaven to a grim roll call of names, instantly identifiable with tragedy to those associated with the UK railway: the likes of Potters Bar, Hatfield and Grayrigg. It will be no consolation at all to those grieving lost colleagues, spouses and parents to know just how far apart such tragic events have lately become.
The last time a passenger died in a train crash in the UK was the Grayrigg derailment in 2007, when a Virgin high-speed train went down an embankment in Cumbria, miraculously with just one casualty. Before Wednesday, the last time a driver had been killed in a crash was in 2004; and the last disaster with multiple fatalities, Potters Bar, was as far back as 2002.
Continue reading...Nils Pratley hits the nail on the head (Lobbyists may be having a field day justifying HS2’s burgeoning cost, but a rethink is long overdue, 21 January). In 2009 I reported to the promoters that the benefits of high-speed rail beyond the south-east would require a well-integrated national plan for complementary measures (transport and non-transport). Without such a plan – and a regional delivery mechanism – high-speed rail risked making regional disparities worse.
Fast forward to today: such limited regional mechanisms as existed have been dismantled, while the concept of high-speed rail has given birth to the present scheme. The case for HS2 rested heavily on the economic benefit of user time savings, making speed vital. This led to a higher speed specification than elsewhere in Europe, adding to the cost and environmental impact, while reducing flexibility in routing.
Continue reading...Transport secretary says he has started process after year of chaos and cancellations
The process to strip Northern rail of its franchise has begun after years of poor performance, the transport secretary has said.
Grant Shapps told the BBC he had started the process that could result in removing the firm’s routes, calling its service “completely unacceptable”.
Continue reading...An initiative against tax havens has been voted down by states who cannot afford to lose the revenue such status brings
For the time being, the European commission has lost its battle with the EU’s tax havens for greater visibility on how much tax multinational companies pay and where they pay it.
A proposed rule would have forced multinationals to reveal the revenues and profits they make, and how little corporate tax they pay, in each of the 28 member states.
Continue reading...3,200 Canadian National workers walked out last week, paralyzing freight traffic and prompting fears of a heating gas shortage
Canada’s largest rail strike in more than a decade has paralyzed much of the nation’s freight traffic and prompted fears of a heating gas shortage as winter sets in.
Nearly 3,200 workers at Canadian National, the country’s largest rail operator, walked off the job on 19 November, to protest against chronic overwork and unsafe conditions.
Continue reading...TfL says aim is for the London rail link to open ‘as soon as practically possible in 2021’
Crossrail will not open until 2021 and has incurred a further cost overrun that will take the total price of the London rail link to more than £18bn, Transport for London (TfL) has announced.
The latest assessment for the opening of the central section has ruled out late 2020 and the aim is for Crossrail to open “as soon as practically possible in 2021”, the capital’s transport authority said. TfL had previously said the Elizabeth line, as the service will be called, was unlikely to start running before 2021 but had kept an autumn 2020 opening in its plans.
Continue reading...A pledge to end the dumping of human waste on railway tracks in England and Wales by the end of the year will no longer be met, Network Rail and train firms have admitted.
Although Network Rail’s former chief executive, Mark Carne, said in 2017 he had secured government agreement to end the “disgusting practice” by 2019, several companies will continue to use trains whose toilets flush directly onto the track.
Continue reading...Business and city leaders warn of economic damage of cancellation and call for 2012 Olympics-style authority
A review of HS2 by northern business and city leaders has called for control of construction of the high-speed railway to be devolved to the north and Midlands – and warned that its possible cancellation would leave no viable alternatives for transforming their economies.
The Northern Powerhouse Independent Review (NPIR), established to inform or pre-empt the government’s own review of HS2, recommended a new body, HS2 North, be established to integrate HS2 with proposed Northern Powerhouse Rail links.
Continue reading...Journalist Andrew Gilligan has long argued for a slower, cheaper rail line to be built
The prospects for survival of the high-speed rail line HS2 look slimmer after the prime minister, Boris Johnson, appointed an arch-critic as transport adviser.
The journalist Andrew Gilligan, who was cycling tsar in Johnson’s London mayoralty, has long opposed what he says is a “disastrous scheme”, arguing for a slower, cheaper line to be built instead.
Continue reading...Rail firm privately backtracks on vow to MPs that fleet would be retired by end of year
Northern rail promised MPs last week its fleet of hated “buses-on-rails” would be retired by the end of the year, but it has emerged the firm had already privately warned the transport secretary it might have to keep some of them in service well into 2020.
Rob Warnes, the rail firm’s network planning director, told the all-party parliamentary group (AAPG) on rail in the north that all of its antiquated fleet of Pacers would be gone by the end of the year, according to Ian Mearns, the Labour MP who chairs the AAPG.
Continue reading...Finance ministers say Europe is increasingly dependent on Chinese and US technology
It boasts the world’s second biggest economy, a huge consumer market of about 500 million people and prodigious pools of talent and capital, not to mention two of the world’s most important financial centres.
But Europe is struggling to match its great rivals, the US and China, in creating the kind of global firms that increasingly dominate the 21st-century marketplace.
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