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FEATURE NEWS ANALYSIS GATWICK EXPRESS GETS REPRIEVE In a remarkable U-turn by the Department for Transport, the Gatwick Express has been saved. But Britain’s smallest passenger franchise will be taken over by Southern, which competes for passengers on the same route.Paul Clifton explains The Department for Transport had planned to abolish the non-stop service linking Gatwick Airport and central London to make room for more commuter services from Brighton, on some of the country’s most congested railway tracks. The decision, first published in 2004 in the draft Route Utilisation Strategy for the Brighton line, caused a storm of protest. It included strong public criticism from the airport operator, BAA. That took the Government by surprise. Eighteen months ago, the DfT said a decision would be made ‘before long’. Commuters standing in the doorways of Southern trains were fed up with peering out of the window at half-empty Gatwick Express trains speeding past on their way to Victoria. Some travellers from Brighton had taken to driving to the airport to get a seat on the faster trains. Taking a ride in a train cab up from the coast illustrates the scale of the problem. In the morning peak, the entire journey is made on single yellow signals. Not once does the driver travel on a green light, and for much of the journey you can actually see the train in front. But the airport lobby was powerful. Gatwick was the first airport in the world to offer a dedicated rail-air link: in 1936 passengers flew to Paris on a combined air and rail ticket from London Victoria. The airport will handle many of the passengers heading for the 2012 Olympics. And the lobby pointed out that no other capital city in the world is downgrading a public transport link to its airport. To do so would fly in the face of a host of other government policies. In the end, a compromise solution fell conveniently into the department’s lap. South West Trains no longer wanted its Class 442 Wessex Electric fleet. In February Angel Trains put them into storage at the former Eastleigh rail works. With a little refurbishment, the trains can work on the Brighton line in ten-car formations, easing overcrowding. There’s no other use for these comfortable and popular trains, and at 20 years old they’re cheap enough to justify using them for only a handful of peak services each day. The Gatwick Express is to be retained as a non-stop route and keep its 15-minute frequency and airport branding. But in the morning and evening peaks the service will be extended to Brighton, adding 10 per cent more capacity in the busiest parts of the day – an extra 3,700 seats. The changes will start in December 2008. The five-car Wessex Electrics will run in 10-car formations, compared with the seven-car Gatwick Express Junipers. Some services will call at Brighton Preston Park, Hassocks and Burgess Hill. Tied in with that deal is a promise to buy 48 more Electrostar carriages for Southern, enabling it to release its remaining Class 319 fleet to ease the chronic congestion on First Capital Connect’s services from Brighton to Bedford. They are the only trains capable of running on both 25kv overhead cables and 750 volt dc third-rail, as well as fitting through the narrow tunnel beneath central London. Southern will transfer the first 16 carriages by the end of this year with the rest in place a year later. That allows FCC to double the remaining four-car services to eight carriages in the peak, adding 8,300 peak hour seats. The current Gatwick Express franchise, which had been due to expire in 2011, will be ended in May 2008 and be transferred into the Southern franchise, which runs until 2009. It will then be re-let as a single franchise. Gatwick Express is currently owned by National Express, and Southern is run by GoVia, the joint venture between the Go-Ahead Group and Keolis. In a carefully-worded statement, National Express Group ‘noted’ rather than ‘welcomed’ the news. Chief executive Richard Bowker said: ‘We will always stand by our commitments even when the immediate commercial advantage is not obvious. We will continue to maintain this level of professionalism for our customers on Gatwick Express until our obligations expire in May 2008.’ Southern, understandably, has more to say. ‘It’s certainly a different decision from what was being mooted,’ Chris Burchell, managing director of Southern told Rail Professional. ‘The department has heeded the concerns, and this manages to increase capacity as well as keeping the airport express. We do not yet know how many Class 442s we will need. And there is work to be done on the interiors to make the seating and luggage space more suited to the needs of airline passengers. There are some specific challenges on the doors as well. ‘What we have is a framework agreement. The detailed timetable planning, and what we do to the rolling stock, still all has to be sorted out. But the additional Electrostars will provide a real benefit to passengers. This is a good compromise and we can make it work.’ 10 RAIL PROFESSIONAL : MAY 2007
NEWS ANALYSIS FEATURE Justin Grainge Chris Burchell, manager of Southern which takes over Gatwick Express from May 2008. Brian Cooke, chairman of London TravelWatch, says he is pleased the lengthy discussions had finally come to a head. ‘However it is a real shame that this will take to the end of next year to achieve,’ he adds. ‘A more strategic approach to allocating the rolling stock might have solved this problem much, much earlier. The precise benefits for passengers are still unclear – it will depend on the detail of the proposed timetable changes.’ But passengers in West Sussex are less pleased. Trevor Tupper of the Arun Valley Rail Users Association says: ‘Three years ago the Strategic Rail Authority put forward proposals that would have given Gatwick six express trains an hour rather than four and all of these would have carried on into Sussex improving journey times from London to places like Worthing, Littlehampton, Chichester and Bognor Regis. It would also have improved journey times and frequency to Gatwick from these towns as well as from Portsmouth, Fareham and Southampton. All hope of these improvements has now been dashed.’ ‘We’re quite pleased,’ admits Stuart Condie of BAA, who led the determined behind-thescenes lobbying campaign to the Government. BAA’s planning and surface access director comments: ‘We have retained the service elements that our passengers need. It’s still four times an hour, it’s still non-stop and it’s still with airport branding. ‘We put a lot of time and effort into getting our views across. But there is still a lot of detail to be worked out. We must look at the likely loadings on early morning trains up from Brighton, to make sure there is room for passengers and their luggage, and sufficient dwell time for passengers to get everything on board at Gatwick. ‘We need to look at ticketing arrangements in general and pricing from Gatwick in particular. We need an internal refurbishment of the trains and we must provide more luggage space. That’s a lot to do in 18 months. But it’s as good a compromise as we can manage without infrastructure work.’ BAA had consistently argued that dumping the Gatwick Express was a flawed concept, taking a sledgehammer to crack a problem that exists for only an hour or two each weekday. Its original submission to the Government had quoted from a Rail Professional editorial of 2004: ‘At a time when other industrialised nations either have a dedicated rail link to their major airports, or are busy building them, Britain’s rail authority is planning a move in the opposite direction. Is that progress?’ But with Southern’s passenger numbers on the route growing by four per cent a year, the debate was never straightforward. Gatwick station has long been a bottleneck, with conflicting train movements. The Gatwick Expresses have to cross the tracks to sit at a platform for up to 20 minutes at a stretch. Useful for airline passengers arriving on ‘red-eye’ flights with jet lag, heavy luggage and a dodgy sense of direction. Boarding a through train which stops for 90 seconds would not be as easy, particularly if that train was already full of commuters whose briefcases and umbrellas already filled the limited luggage space. A re-working of the layout at Gatwick could provide space for trains to wait for airport passengers without messing up the precious paths to Brighton. Network Rail, the Department for Transport, the train operators and BAA are all talking about it. It’s possible a solution could emerge in time for the next Southern franchise in 2009, but they will be looking for Gatwick Airport to pick up a big chunk of the cost. And with the competition authorities currently investigating BAA’s continued ownership of all three main London airports, and the continuing debate about where an additional runway might be built, commitments on that scale will not be rapid. Chris Burchell calls it a ‘good compromise solution for the short to medium term’. It’s a description most parties would accept. A stepchange in capacity on one of the country’s fastest-growing and most heavily-congested railway routes requires more than a little cascaded second-hand rolling stock. It needs major infrastructure changes at Gatwick, and a flyover at East Croydon. Neither has yet been promised. Paul Clifton is the transport correspondent for BBC South. MAY 2007 : RAIL PROFESSIONAL 11
Page 1: PROFESSIONAL THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE
Page 4 and 5: NEWS Putting rail on the political
Page 6: NEWS ISLE OF WIGHT’S TRAINS SOLD
Page 9: POLICY TRANSPORT MUST GO GREEN Chri
Page 14 and 15: INTERVIEW ‘We are key to UK plc,
Page 16 and 17: TRANSPENNINE EXPRESS FIRST PAST THE
Page 18: TRANSPENNINE EXPRESS Vernon Barker
Page 21 and 22: SMOKING BAN Bob Crowley, head of em
Page 23 and 24: INFRASTRUCTURE Main picture: wwwlra
Page 25 and 26: INFRASTRUCTURE At 8.1 metres in dia
Page 27 and 28: COMMENT LEARNING FROM PAST MISTAKES
Page 29 and 30: Compare, for instance, the thousand
Page 31 and 32: LEGAL OPINION although the new (200
Page 33 and 34: IRO NEWS DIARY OF EVENTS SCOTTISH A
Page 35 and 36: BUSINESS NEWS TRAVEL PERKS ROW THRE
Page 37 and 38: PEOPLE PEOPLE ROUND-UP CARILLION DI
Page 39 and 40: PRODUCTS AND SERVICES SIEMENS Leadi
Page 41 and 42: TO LIST YOUR APPOINTMENTS CALL Rob
Page 43: TO LIST YOUR APPOINTMENTS CALL Rob

move over freightliner, we want to get into ... - Rail Professional

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