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Home arrow Holyrood news arrow News categories arrow Transport (HCL05) arrow East Coast mainline franchise winner announced
East Coast mainline franchise winner announced Print E-mail
Tuesday, 14 August 2007

National Express has won the contract to run the East Coast mainline, the main London-to-Scotland rail route.

The transport group will take over the running of the line in December after it was put out to tender after the parent firm of current operator GNER said it could not afford to pay the £1.3bn it had promised the UK government for the right to run the route.

National Express beat off competition from Arriva, First Group and a joint venture between Virgin Trains and Stagecoach to win the contract, which will be called National Express East Coast and will call at Peterborough, Leeds, Doncaster, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness.

Under the terms of the deal, National Express has agreed to pay the Treasury £1.4bn to operate the franchise until the end of March 2015.

The company has pledged to invest in extra services, stations and on-board services, and will also inject £7.4m to upgrade stations, including the creation of 2,000 extra car park spaces, over the course of the seven-and-a-half years. It also said that from December 2010 the number of weekday trains could rise from 136 to 161, and a new London-to-Lincoln service would be added.

One person has commented on this article.
1. Devil in the detail
Gordon Hill, Unregistered
If GNER couldn't afford £1.3bn, National Express must be very confident that they can run the service more efficiently to be able to pay £1.4bn. If they push the fares up people will abstract to coaches or planes.

Perhaps the devil is in the detail as usual!
Posted 2007-08-14 16:58:22
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