October 2001 Newsletter

Fares to Fall in London & South-East

As a result of ongoing poor performance for rail passengers in the London and South-East region, the SRA has insisted that fares fall by on average 1.4% in the new year.

WAGN�s official performance figures are still showing a worsening trend. The numbers of trains reaching their final destination within three minutes of the scheduled time, as recorded by the SRA for May-July were:

Peak: May 71.9%, June 70.4%, July 69.6%
All-day: May 79.5%, June 79.7%, July 78.4%

Government�s 10 Year Transport Plan

The SRA has warned that many of the good intentions in the government�s 10 year transport plan will not be met without substantial amounts of investment. The plan assumes that 34 billion pounds will be invested in the rail network, by the private operators, over the coming 10 years.

The plan aims to increase rail passengers by 50% over the coming 10 years, providing more frequent services, promoting service innovation such as new routes, and improving the customer perception of the service by encouraging investment in station and transport interchange facilities.

The Harlow Rail User Group committee is concerned that unless major improvements are made to the basic track capacity on the West Anglia line, that any attempt to run more services will result in a dramatic decrease in service reliability, as the line is already running close to capacity at the major bottlenecks between Broxbourne and Cheshunt and on the approach to Liverpool Street. Once capacity is fully utilised, recovery after any delay becomes unacceptably long.

Cullen Report on Rail Safety, part 2

At Ladbroke Grove, 31 people were killed after a commuter train passed a signal at red. TPWS, being installed at 11,000 signals across the country, will result in most such incidents being prevented, by automatically applying the emergency brake, if a red signal is passed.

WAGN recently suffered a derailment after a commuter train passed a signal at red at Welwyn Garden City, resulting in a derailment at trap points placed after the signal. No passengers were on the train at the time.

Two major changes are suggested by Lord Cullen�s report. Firstly, the creation of an independent rail investigation board, to investigate crashes in the same manner as air accidents are handled. Secondly, the Health and Safety Executive�s HM Railways Inspectorate division will become fully responsible for safety aspects of the railways, in place of Railtrack�s Rail Safety subsidiary.

It is the editor�s opinion that no form of travel can ever be completely safe. But rail travel is already far safer than most other forms of transport. The editor would rather see money safeguarded for increasing capacity and reliability, than spent solely on chasing the diminishing returns of achieving zero accidents. After all, overcrowding and delays have surely affected everyone reading this column!

Did you know...

... that if you�re planning a sight-seeing trip to Cambridge, you can get discounted tickets for the Cambridge Guide Friday tour busses from the ticket office...

For further details of this and other WAGN promotional offers, see the National Rail web-site, and click on the �Train Company Promotions� link.