Tag: Press Release

The press release issued by the Strategic Rail Authority on 26 January 2001.

On 1 February, the Strategic Rail Authority will emerge officially from its “shadow”. The Transport Act 2000, which received Royal Assent late last year, provided for the SRA’s establishment as a non-departmental public body to provide leadership and strategic direction for Britain’s railways and promote their development.

Sir Alastair Morton, Chairman of the SRA, will look back next Thursday at what he feels has been “perhaps the most vigorous shadow Britain has seen for decades.”

Established in June 1999 under instructions from the Deputy Prime Minister by Sir Alastair in his capacity as last Chairman of the British Railways Board, and Mike Grant as Franchising Director in charge of OPRAF (Office of Passenger Rail Franchising), the SSRA has played a high-profile role in the past 18 months, stimulating questions, answers and commitments to invest, without encouraging anyone to believe that it was there to run the railways or in some way regroup them under public control.

In a fairly regular series of policy speeches, Sir Alastair has spelled out the development of the SSRA’s thinking as it prepared for the SRA. First came the policy of franchise replacement, aimed at substituting new, longer-term, more incentivised passenger franchises in return for massively increased commitments to invest in safer, bigger and better public services. As the months passed, an outline of a new, more proactive freight development strategy began to emerge, and then an infrastructure enhancement partnership with Railtrack, evolution of which was interrupted by the Hatfield tragedy.

On 1 February, the Board of the SRA – comprising 14 non-executive members plus Messrs Morton and Grant – as Chairman and Chief Executive respectively – will meet with the SRA’s nine executive directors to review its “Strategic Agenda”.

“We have had to go slow in preparing it” Sir Alastair said today, “because we had to know how much money the SRA will have – which we learned from the 10 Year Plan in July; how much Railtrack will have – from the Rail Regulator last October; and whether Railtrack would accept that – which it did conditionally this month. We also conducted a review with industry leaders of the case, suddenly advanced after Hatfield, for massive restructuring of the industry or its ownership.”

The SRA’s Strategic Agenda is likely to be published in the third or fourth week of February.

The press release issued by the Strategic Rail Authority on 6 March 2001.

The Euston – Northampton Forum met on 5 March, for the first time to discuss the future development of rail services on the Euston to Northampton corridor.

The Forum includes representatives of the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA), Northamptonshire County Council, Hertfordshire County Council, Milton Keynes Council, Bedfordshire County Council, Buckinghamshire County Council and other local authorities along the line of the route. It also includes Members of Parliament, councillors, the Midlands Rail Passengers Committee, London Transport Users Committee (LTUC) and other rail user groups on the line.

The Forum will meet regularly to consider how the needs and aspirations of the stakeholders in the region can be met as part of the further development of the West Coast Main Line and the Silverlink franchise. The Forum has a consultative role and is the focus for fielding ideas for consideration by a Steering Group that is formed of the SRA, local authorities, and the Rail Passengers Committee (including LTUC) who attend the meeting.

The main role of the steering group is to consider options for making the most of current and future investment in the WCML. It has commissioned consultants Booz, Allen & Hamilton to look at ways of improving local and regional services at the southern end of the line. The local authorities and the SRA jointly fund this study.

A wide range of views were expressed on current and future issues, and these will be considered by the consultants as input to the study.

The press release issued by the Strategic Rail Authority on 13 March 2001.

The Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) today publishes its Strategic Agenda, prepared under the personal direction of its Chairman, Sir Alastair Morton.

The 52 page text of the SRA’s Strategic Agenda is in three parts – the Context, the Challenges and the Agenda – as Sir Alastair and his colleagues look at the pressures and the judgements that have shaped today’s unsatisfactory situation; at the issues and objectives confronting the SRA; and at the SRA’s immediate agenda this year, covering four principal areas:

• Passenger franchising: The Agenda describes progress with franchise replacement and sets out clearly the next steps, including details of how the remaining franchises are to be replaced;
• Freight development, based on encouraging competition, and innovation, increasing capacity, providing more terminals and financial support to get freight off road and onto rail.
• Infrastructure enhancement, recognising Railtrack’s two distinct businesses – operations and maintenance, and major projects. The SRA’s role focuses on the latter and the Agenda sets out how, assisted by the Rail Modernisation Fund, the SRA will work to deliver the biggest Public/Private Partnerships in Europe.
• Ancillary but necessary developments in other areas, including better training and development of staff, building project management skills as well as more research, new equipment and information systems for passengers.

A series of quotes extracted from the Strategic Agenda is attached to this release. The document itself is published with a list of enhancement schemes and a number of annexes.

The Preface to the Strategic Agenda (attached) spells out why the SRA has good reason to present this as work in progress towards a Strategic Plan which will appear in the autumn, about nine months after the formal establishment of the SRA.

Work in Progress it may be, but today’s Strategic Agenda makes very clear the broad span of the SRA’s preparations to stimulate, guide and shape the development of the system. The text cannot be comfortable reading for everyone.

As Sir Alastair said today:

This document is not a call for re-nationalisation, nor for vertical integration, nor for revolutionary structural change. It is a call to the industry for a radical improvement in management, in operations, in method and performance and in service culture in the railway.

It may disappoint commentators that after 175 years of evolution, and seven years of privatisation, the perfect fix is not available in months – but it is in the nature of railways contained within a straitjacket of available rights of way to move forward in carefully planned, slowly implemented steps – or chaos will ensue.

The SRA’s Strategy will be investment-led and long term, to develop a safer, better and bigger railway system, well integrated with other forms of transport.”

The SRA has not only had to engage with passenger and freight train operators and overcome Railtrack’s reluctance last year (but no longer) to commit to the Public Private Partnership described by the SRA as utterly fundamental to its investment-led strategy. The SRA has also had to engage with Government from the Prime Minister and, particularly, the Deputy Prime Minister down to front-line officials in the Treasury and DETR as well as with relevant agencies such as ORR and HSE; and with new devolved governments in Scotland, London and Wales; and with local government and planning bodies across England. It has had to engage with City professionals in the development of innovative funding and it has had to foster the positive development of Rail Passenger Committees, and listen to the ultimate customer more than was usual in the past. All these in a time of great stress for the industry, out of which the SRA is asked on all sides to forge strong structures.

Summing up his presentation today, Sir Alastair said, The thesis of privatisation has been thoroughly confounded by growth, which has bought great pressure onto an ageing, under-invested system. Guided by the SRA, privatisation is now evolving into a huge Public Private Partnership. We have lift-off because we have consensus on the objectives and are working to develop detail and momentum. The SRA is engaged on many fronts: the industry is sworn to work together and with it

The workload is heavy, but the prize – a safer, better and bigger railway offering satisfactory returns on investment – is of the greatest national importance.

The press release issued by the Strategic Rail Authority on 2 April 2001.

The creation of a new cross London railway moved a step closer today as £39 million of funding was released by the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) for a new rail link between the Underground and the National Rail network.

The East London Line extension is designed to link London Underground’s East London Line with Railtrack’s North London Line at Dalston. Today’s funding announcement kick starts the project development needed to enable initial engineering work to begin later this year.

Today’s funding move follows the SRA’s recent announcement of plans for design and development work on the scheme and will ensure the project is kept on schedule, with the Authority working in close partnership Transport for London, London Underground and Railtrack.

The press release issued by the Strategic Rail Authority on 2 April 2001.

Welcoming the Government’s Railtrack funding announcement, Sir Alastair Morton said this morning,

“Today we make an early delivery of three important items in our Strategic Agenda, and each opens the way for further delivery. The three are:-

1. Enhancements are no longer forced to wait until Railtrack finds money and management for them. CTRL Phase 2, the East Coast Main Line upgrade and the East London Line can all move forward. But when completed they can be integrated with Railtrack’s network operation and may be acquired by Railtrack, with all the project risks behind them. A healthy Railtrack will be able to grow into a major national utility if it gets its act together, starting with its core business of operating, maintaining and renewing the existing network.
2. New passenger franchises promise years of major investment to improve services and are reshaping the network. Stagecoach had to stretch to stave off a very competitive challenge from a new joint venture between First Group and Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch State Railways). The passenger will benefit from the competition.

   The Waterloo to Exeter service, moved into the new Wessex franchise, will be doubled as part of a widespread upgrade of rail services in England south of Birmingham and west of London.

3. The SRA’s longer term vision for London is based on national rail network routes under the capital, developed in co-operation with Transport for London (TfL). Thameslink 2000 will now be accompanied by the connection between Croydon and Dalston via the East London Line. Later, we hope to launch an East-West route evolved from Crossrail and a new route from near Clapham Junction to Hackney and beyond.

   Quite soon, the SRA intends to approve, with TfL, a sort out of the North London Line to move freight more efficiently while offering more capacity to passenger operators in preparation for a new Orbirail franchise, whose core will be the network from Willesden to Dalston to Docklands, around South London, to Clapham and back to Willesden in the North West of London.

“Change doesn’t happen overnight on rail. Operators and Railtrack have a huge task to develop safe and efficient operation but, as numbers and tonnes moving continue to increase, strategically planned investment becomes more and more essential. Government participation in these investments, via the SRA, will be the key to making them happen”.