Transport Select Commitee on Rail franchising

[maniacmartin]

Transport Committee
Monday 7 November 2016 Meeting starts at 4.05pm

Subject: Rail franchising
Witnesses: Roger Cobbe, Policy Director, Arriva UK Trains Ltd, Hugh Clancy, Commercial Director of First Rail, FirstGroup, Tim Shoveller, Managing Director of Stagecoach Rail, Stagecoach Group, and Jamie Burles, Managing Director, Greater Anglia
Witnesses: Paul Maynard MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport, and Peter Wilkinson, Managing Director of Passenger Services, Department for Transport

Watch it live - starts in 5 minutes, or pre-recorded after the fact at here

Theres another video on the site from a previous meeting on Monday 24th October 2016 where they asked they asked the heads of ASLEF and RMT and 2 people from Network Rail for their views on the franchise process too here

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Very entertaining.
Paul Maynard did a good job of protecting Peter Wilkinson from saying too much.
I wondered about the GA man's "thousands of new trains", but I guess he meant the total number of daily train services with the all-new fleet.
The DfT letter to the committee on GTR performance should make interesting reading.
And Paul seemed to be beating a drum for open access (having just denied it on HS2).
A Govia representative was the elephant not in the room.

 

[grumblingalong]

The point I took from the session was that the DfT would not consider another franchise in the style of GTR.