The transport secretary has admitted that she is unable to give a start date for services on East West Rail (EWR) as ministers continue to back the destaffing of the railways.
Callum Anderson, MP for Buckingham and Bletchley, wrote to Heidi Alexander about the ongoing delays to East West Rail passenger trains running.
He said: “My constituents remain frustrated by the continued absence of passenger services on a railway that has now been physically reinstated for some time.
The paper reports that Heidi Alexander acknowledged the letter over a month later, but admitted that the situation had not changed substantively:
She said: “Significant progress has been made, including the training of new drivers, the completion of a new colleague hub and driver depot at Bletchley, and the fitting out of Winslow station.”
She also added she understands how “frustrated” it would be for her to set an opening date only to have to move it later.
She said: ” I hope you will therefore understand that I am unable to commit to a date at this time.
“I accept that the delays have been (sic) inevitably affected public confidence in the project and have been frustrating for communities.”
Saying the delays have affected public confidence is quite an understatement: East West Rail is a laughing stock. But it’s clearly a situation that Alexander is happy to see continue.
In a story about the nationalisation of Chiltern Railways, Rail magazine notes:
it’s the EWR saga that continues to loom over the operator, despite the government saying public ownership would provide “a fresh opportunity” to deliver long-delayed Oxford-Milton Keynes services.
It seems pretty clear that what is holding it up is the attempt to run trains without a second “safety critical” member of staff on board.
RAIL understands Chiltern and the Department for Transport (DfT) don’t plan to change their position that a second person would not have a safety critical responsibilities.
Described as driver-only operation by the RMT, Chiltern and DfT view it as driver-controlled with the second staff member in a customer-facing role.
The problem for the union, and for passengers, is that if EWR launches without a second safety critical staff member, the “customer facing” person becomes optional and can be removed in future.
Rail notes that:
2018 research by the Rail Safety and Standards Board said driver-controlled operation was safe, with a lower dispatch risk on metro and suburban services (which EWR is being called as) compared with a train manager being responsible. The RMT disagrees with the findings.
But EWR does not really fit into the category of metro and suburban services, with many aspects of its set-up being very different. It is being marketed as “metro‑style”, but is really a regional inter‑urban railway. As far as I can see, it does not have the same platform‑train interface (PTI) infrastructure, station staffing levels and rolling stock technology.
Similarly, Rail quotes Chiltern’s interim managing director, Tony Baxter, as saying that the firm is:
proposing to run these services the way that Chiltern has safely operated many of its trains over decades.
But, as far as I can see, the characteristics of these routes do not map on to EWR.
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