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Arriva CrossCountry Direct Award

Started by Roy, October 01, 2016, 08:58:13 AM

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Roy

The DfT and Arriva have agreed a deal to extend the current CrossCountry franchise from October 2016 to October 2019.  The main bullet points in the press release are :-

- 39,000 more seats at peak times along the Edinburgh - Plymouth route via Leeds, Birmingham and Bristol by December 2017
- reduced journey times between Birmingham and Manchester, with a typical cut of nine minutes on weekdays and 12 minutes at weekends due to improvements to infrastructure on the route following work by infrastructure manager Network Rail
- £20m government investment in "more modern trains," which equates to improving access to High-Speed Trains (HST) for people with reduced mobility and installing retention toilets
- £9m of this sum will be invested to provide free onboard passenger Wi-Fi services by April 2018, which will use 4G for faster download speeds
- extra services calling at Morpeth
- a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-per-week customer service centre and a new mobile app to buy tickets and check live running times
- a 91% public performance measurement target whereby long-distance trains must arrive within 10 minutes of their stated arrival time, and a less than 3% cancellation or significant lateness measure where trains are operating over 30 minutes late
- waiving the £10 "change of travel" fee for advance tickets from January 2017, and
- £340,000 of annual funding for Community Rail Partnerships across the Cross Country network.

The DfT says Arriva Cross Country will now start work on a new timetable, with a view to introducing enhanced services in December 2017.  The process for the next franchise will start in March 2018 with the contract being awarded in June 2019 for the new franchise to start in October 2019.

The good news as far as I am concerned is the fitting of power operated doors and retention toilets to the HST fleet which should ensure that they remain in service after 2020.  I don't know what is needed to provide the extra 39,000 seats on the Edinburgh - Plymouth route.  Having 4 HST sets in service every day rather than 2 would certainly increase capacity but will that mean that they need extra sets, possibly cascaded from VTEC as their sets are also maintained at Craigentinny and have a similar seating layout to the XC sets.

T840MAK

Quote from: Roy on October 01, 2016, 08:58:13 AM
The DfT and Arriva have agreed a deal to extend the current CrossCountry franchise from October 2016 to October 2019.  The main bullet points in the press release are :-

- 39,000 more seats at peak times along the Edinburgh - Plymouth route via Leeds, Birmingham and Bristol by December 2017
- reduced journey times between Birmingham and Manchester, with a typical cut of nine minutes on weekdays and 12 minutes at weekends due to improvements to infrastructure on the route following work by infrastructure manager Network Rail
- £20m government investment in "more modern trains," which equates to improving access to High-Speed Trains (HST) for people with reduced mobility and installing retention toilets
- £9m of this sum will be invested to provide free onboard passenger Wi-Fi services by April 2018, which will use 4G for faster download speeds
- extra services calling at Morpeth
- a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-per-week customer service centre and a new mobile app to buy tickets and check live running times
- a 91% public performance measurement target whereby long-distance trains must arrive within 10 minutes of their stated arrival time, and a less than 3% cancellation or significant lateness measure where trains are operating over 30 minutes late
- waiving the £10 "change of travel" fee for advance tickets from January 2017, and
- £340,000 of annual funding for Community Rail Partnerships across the Cross Country network.

The DfT says Arriva Cross Country will now start work on a new timetable, with a view to introducing enhanced services in December 2017.  The process for the next franchise will start in March 2018 with the contract being awarded in June 2019 for the new franchise to start in October 2019.

The good news as far as I am concerned is the fitting of power operated doors and retention toilets to the HST fleet which should ensure that they remain in service after 2020.  I don't know what is needed to provide the extra 39,000 seats on the Edinburgh - Plymouth route.  Having 4 HST sets in service every day rather than 2 would certainly increase capacity but will that mean that they need extra sets, possibly cascaded from VTEC as their sets are also maintained at Craigentinny and have a similar seating layout to the XC sets.

The 39,000 extra seats are being provided by two 5 car Voyagers being shortened to four coaches, and the two spare driving cars from the Virgin unit that was disbanded being used to form another four car unit. I believe there's also plans to increase usage of the HST fleet through the week.
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mikestone

#2

;
The gist is the extra Voyager diagram is effectively restricted to Derby-Leeds workings, Paignton loses most of its trains to allow the Manchester-Bristols to run hourly to Exeter, Guildford loses its XC services for no apparent reason and Aberdeen trains run for leisure passengers rather than Scottish commuters - although there seems no reason other than crewing to not continue the existing trains as well.
It appears to require an extra 170, presumably available following completion of the overhaul programme.

Solo1

Was there a service from Birmingham new station that stopped at solihull in the past as im sure they used to be one

midlandred2003

Yes there was the trains to & from London Paddington and to Southampton & Poole.

Solo1

How come they stopped services stopping at solihull from new st u hav to go to moor st

Roy

Quote from: Solo1 on April 20, 2017, 10:52:52 AM
How come they stopped services stopping at solihull from new st u hav to go to moor st
CrossCountry's excuse was that too many local passengers were using the service thus leaving insufficient seats for long distance passengers.

midlandred2003

So now they have local passengers from international and Coventry!

Tony

Quote from: midlandred2003 on April 20, 2017, 02:47:20 PM
So now they have local passengers from international and Coventry!

The 'Solihull' one still goes through Solihull, just doesn't stop

mikestone

The Solihull, Chesterfield stops on the Reading-Newcastle route were taken out to provide additional recovery time.

Solo1

How many an hour use to stop.at solihull from/to new station

midlandred2003

Trains to and from Paddington were every 2 hours,inter regional trains were roughly every hour with occasional extras on top.

mikestone

I don't know where you get that from - the combined service was never better than hourly pre-voyager except on summer saturdays.

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