I am pleased to be able to let you know that the Department for Transport has now confirmed Abellio as the operator of the new East Anglia rail franchise, after being announced as Preferred Bidder on the 10th August.
Firstly, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for your input during last year's bidding process. We are very grateful for the thoughts, suggestions and insights you provided. Your views not only strengthened the DfT's Invitation to Tender, they enabled our bid team to put together creative and bid-winning ideas, many of which have been incorporated into what we will deliver, which is well above and beyond the franchise specification to achieve a transformation of rail services for the whole of East Anglia.
We now have exciting plans to roll-out during a nine year franchise which allows us to build on the improvements we have made during two very short franchise periods since 2012. By the end of 2020, all Greater Anglia customers will be travelling on brand new trains. A new fleet of 1,043 new carriages being built by Bombardier in Derby and Stadler in Switzerland will feature many of the comforts and amenities stakeholders and customers told us they expected, such as WiFi and air conditioning and more capacity for a growing railway. At the same time, we will have completely rewritten the timetable for the entire network with faster journey times on many routes and improved connections between the important regional centres and beyond. . We also know how important a reliable service is to you and the new timetable will be just one of the initiatives which will help us to provide a higher-performing railway over the franchise.
We'll also be spending around £60 million on modernising and refurbishing stations, adding thousands more car and cycle parking spaces. We will upgrade the customer information available at every station on the network, and make the fares system work better for our customers - introducing flexible 'carnet' tickets and extending smart and mobile ticketing.
In the shorter term, we'll be introducing 72 new carriages in January 2017 to add much needed additional capacity, updating the existing rolling stock with WiFi, making better provision for people with disabilities, carrying out 'deep cleans' of all stations and investing in new traineeships and apprenticeships.
In the next few weeks, we'd like to tell you more about our plans for the new franchise and will organise a number of 'roadshows' around the Greater Anglia franchise area. We'll be back in touch with more details about these and to send you an invitation.
