Transportinfo.org.uk - today's transport news in the uk, hand picked for you each morning

Thursday, 27 August 2015

BBC News

• London children 'face north-south transport divide'Five to 10-year-olds travel free on Transport for London (TfL) services, principally north of the Thames, but in the south most services are not TFL-run and require tickets to be bought.
• 'Manspreading' added to online dictionaryThe act of "manspreading", or sitting with legs wide apart on public transport, is among 1,000 new words to enter the online Oxford dictionary.

Department for Transport

• Rail Minister tours Great Western electrification worksRail Minister Claire Perry visited Bath today, Wednesday 26 August 2015, to see how improvement work to electrify the railway and provide better journeys between London and the south west is progressing.

Financial Times

• Experts dubious on women-only carriagesCorbyn’s concept branded as backward, difficult to introduce and a magnet for sex pests
• Attack puts railway security into EU arenaNew checks suggested after passengers foil gunman

The Guardian

• Virgin scraps railcard loophole on West Coast trainsVirgin has scrapped a loophole that allowed railcard users to buy cheap West Coast train tickets in a move which that will result in at least one fare rising from £54 to £217. Others will triple in price.
• Corbyn's women-only carriages idea shouldn't just be dismissedFeminism must sometimes embrace concessions to protect women – while at the same time fighting to change the culture that makes us unsafeReturning home late at night this week, I sat in a women-only carriage on the train. Not one of those that may spring into being if Jeremy Corbyn’s controversial suggestion were to become reality, but one that I and half a dozen other women silently agreed to colonise.I chose this carriage after walking past two others that were populated solely by men and rejecting them on that basis. It wasn’t that any of the men I glimpsed through the carriage windows look...

The Herald

• Corbyn's women-only train carriages idea hits the buffers with leadership rivals JEREMY Corbyn's suggestion that women-only train carriages could be introduced at night to guard against sexual attacks has been roundly condemned by his rival Labour leadership contenders as well as anti-sexism campaigners.

Mail Online

• Teenagers dice with death as they play on a Southampton train line The youths were caught on CCTV cavorting on the electrical rail, which usually has a 740 volt current running through it, shortly after a train passed through Woolston station near Southampton.

Network Rail

• Chief Executive sees railway upgrades in Northamptonshire first-handNetwork Rail's High Output Track Renewals team has been busy again overnight.

Bradford Telegraph & Argus

• Workmen are all aboard to keep Low Moor station plans on track for spring 2016 opening CONSTRUCTION work on the long-awaited new train station at Low Moor has finally begun, with the scheme set to bring

Daily Post (North Wales)

• First picture released of what Caernarfon's new £2m railway station could look like Work on the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railway's two floor building, which is expected to create two new full time jobs, could be open by early 2017

Liverpool Echo

• Virgin Trains partner Stagecoach confident for full yearTransport group Stagecoach saw like-for-like revenue growth in all its divisions over the past three months, apart from its US operations.

Wales Online

• Bank Holiday strike by First Great Western staff will go ahead after talks break downMembers of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union at First Great Western are due to walk out for three days from Saturday

East Anglian Daily Times

• Rail campaign puts its case to biddersCampaigners seeking to improve rail services across East Anglia underlined the need for new trains at a series of meetings with bidders for the new franchise for the region.

Other Regional Press

• Paramount resort chairman Steven Norris calls for Crossrail to be linked to Ebbsfleet garden cityThe chairman of the future Paramount resort has called for the new Crossrail line under London to be extended to a new garden city in Kent.

Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport

• Rail worker academy will boost Northampton’s economy when it opens next month, says ministerAn academy for train engineers in Northampton will attract highly-skilled people from across the country, the secretary of state for transport has said.  The National Training Academy for Rail (NTAR) in Kings Heath is five weeks from officially opening and was visited by Patrick McLoughlin MP today. He said the benefits to the town and wider UK would become apparent in short order. Mr McLoughlin said: “I think Northampton might just be saying, gosh, we have a brand new railway station state-of-the-art, which looked terrible for a very long time and was not acceptable. Now we&rsq...
• Hitachi Rail Europe to open new train manufacturing plant in SeptemberHitachi Rail Europe is set to open its new rolling stock manufacturing and assembly plant in the UK on 3rd September. The new £82m plant in Newton Aycliffe is the first European train factory of Hitachi Rail, according to Railway Technology. The new facility will initially be used to build Super Express Trains for the Great Western Main Line and the East Coast Main Line. Hitachi will manufacture a total of 866 Class 800/801 train carriages destined to run on the Great Western Main Line from 2017 and East Coast Main Line from 2018. In addition, the new facility will support UK's Intercity...
• Worcestershire Parkway rail station given go aheadWork can begin on a £22m rail station in Worcestershire after planning permission was granted. The Worcestershire Parkway, near junction 7 of the M5 for Worcester, will join the Cotswolds and Birmingham to Bristol lines. Construction of the station, near Norton, will now start in spring, the county council said. The station, Worcester's third, is due to open to the first passengers in autumn 2017. Work on the station, will have a single platform on the Cotswold Line and two on the Birmingham to Bristol Line, is being paid for by both the county council and the Worcestershire Local En...
• Stagecoach on track to meet annual expectations, as like-for-like revenues growPublic transport operator Stagecoach saw an increase in like-for-like revenues in the July quarter as a strong performance in the UK offset challenging market conditions in the US. In the three months to 25 July, the group posted a 1% year-on-year increase in like-for-like revenues from UK regional bus operations, while revenue growth in its UK London bus business was 1.5%, boosted by an increase in contract prices. The FTSE 250 company said like-for-like revenue in its UK rail arm increased 5.5% year-on-year excluding the Virgin Train East Coast venture, while Virgin Rail Group like-for-like...

London TravelWatch

• Join in the discussions about London's interchanges on our new Interchange Matters blogIt has been a few weeks since we published our report, Interchange Matters, which gives a passenger perspective on the importance of interchanges to London’s transport network and we have had lots of good feedback from industry colleagues and the passengers we represent.

Rail Magazine

• Stagecoach rail revenue increasesStagecoach Group rail revenues increase
• Test trams in St Peter’s SquareTest trams run through St Peter’s Square ahead of tram link reconnections

Rail Technology Magazine

• Siemens Commissions First Trackguard Westrace Mk2 in Scandinavia Following the successful completion of the final stage of signalling work by Siemens, Norway's metro transport infrastructure owner, Sporveien Oslo AS, has now commissioned into full service all four sheds for the new Avløs rail depot for Oslo's Kols…
• Inter-Vehicle Jumper Systems Today's inter-vehicle jumper systems must be capable of withstanding a diverse array of electrical, mechanical and climatic conditions. The design of the inter-vehicle jumper systems must consider the influence from: flow of current and the resulting…

Railway Gazette

• Beth Caruso to lead AREMA Elizabeth S Caruso has been appointed as Executive Director & CEO of the American Railway...
• First train arrives at Rotterdam World GatewayNETHERLANDS: The first commercial freight train arrived at the Rotterdam World Gateway container...
• Freight line passenger revivalGERMANY: Local freight railway Bentheimer Eisenbahn has called tenders for a contract to provide...

Other News Sources

• It's time to move beyond open accessThe Office of Rail and Road’s approval of Alliance Rail’s application to run six return trains per day between Blackpool and London from 2018 has been portrayed in many quarters as a breakthrough for greater open access competition on the railways and a real illustration of the benefits competition can bring.
• Good news fare freeze fails to silence criticsThe DfT's announcement of the lowest rail fare increase for six years has failed to prevent criticism in the media and from campaign groups     The Conservatives’ election pledge to freeze fare increases at inflation will mean regulated fares rise by 1% in January. As well as being the lowest increase since 2009, the Department for Transport said last week that it would be the first time since 2003 that increases in average earnings outstrip rises in rail ticket prices. The DfT also calculated that over the government’s five-year term, the freeze would save season ticket holders £425...
• Parking levy pays for council's new tram linesNottingham extends system on proceeds of country’s only workplace parking charge
• Jeremy Corbyn criticised over women-only train carriage ideaLabour leadership frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn is criticised over a proposal to introduce women-only train carriages to protect women from harassment.