Lord Bradshaw – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Bradshaw on 2015-01-15.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on total passenger capacity of the East Coast Main Line of the use of 280-seat trains on 17 per cent of the long distance train paths into and out of King’s Cross, as compared with the 530-seat trains used by the InterCity East Coast franchise.

Baroness Kramer

Decisions on the allocation of track capacity on the railway are matters for Network Rail and the Office of Rail Regulation. Clearly, where the number of available train paths on a route is constrained, as in the case of parts of the East Coast Main Line, the use of trains with fewer seats than the maximum operationally possible would reduce passenger capacity. However there are other factors influencing the allocation of train paths, including the need for services to cover a range of different routes and stopping patterns, and the availability of rolling stock. The Government would expect such considerations to be taken into account within the decision process.