Public transport groups deny seeking state aid

The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) has rejected media reports that the directors of Britain’s five major public transport groups (Arriva, FirstGroup, Go-Ahead Group, National Express and Stagecoach) have requested state financial assistance for their rail franchise businesses. Media reports had claimed that the directors of the five groups had asked the Department for Transport (DfT) for consent for shortened trains, the rewriting of the financial terms of their franchise agreements and for Government funding for approximately one thousand front-line staff at railway stations. ATOC has dismissed the reports, claiming that ‘the train operators are weathering the current economic climate’ and denied that the companies had raised any of the reported issues with the DfT.

New station on Severn Beach line?

A new station could be built on the railway line between Bristol Temple Meads and Severn Beach, adjacent to the Portway park-and-ride site, which has eight hundred and thirty car parking spaces, to ease congestion on the A4 road between Avonmouth and the City Centre.

Deadline for end of Automatic Train Protection

A pilot Automated Train Protection (ATP) system was installed on the power cars of high speed trains operated by First Great Western, following the Clapham rail crash of 1988. Following the Southall accident in 1997, the use of the ATP system on First Great Western high speed trains is mandatory. The ATP system is now suffering from obsolescence and maintenance support is becoming a critical issue - Alstom has therefore announced that it will not support the ATP system beyond the end of the existing First Great Western franchise, which terminates in 2016. The Great Western Main Line is one of the first routes planned to benefit from the introduction of the new European Train Control System (ECTS) signalling.

Nailsea and Backwell station car park to expand

North Somerset Council has agreed to purchase land next to the existing car park at Nailsea and Backwell railway station to provide two hundred additional spaces

South West Trains ‘web chat’

South West Trains is holding a live ‘web chat’ with Stewart Palmer, the company’s managing director, on Tuesday 17 February from 1400hrs to 1600hrs – further details are available on the company’s website ‘www.southwesttrains.co.uk’.

Pre-paid tickets can be collected from station machines

South West Trains is piloting the collection of pre-paid tickets, purchased over the internet or by telephone, from self-services machines at five railway stations in South West England – Axminster, Bournemouth, Honiton, Sherborne and Wareham.

And finally,

FirstGroup, Britain’s largest public transport operator, has celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the company’s formation on 20 January 1988, when the management and staff purchased Grampian Regional Transport from the local authority. The company now has annual revenues of approximately six billion pounds, one hundred and thirty-seven thousand employees and operates eighty thousand buses – the company is now the largest bus and rail operator in Great Britain and the biggest provider of school buses in North America.