TfL has announced the four companies it has approved to bid for operational control of Crossrail. The company which wins the franchise will run the train services and stations, as well as providing staff, for the London metro rail service, which is due to open with a partial service in May 2015.
The companies shortlisted to bid are: Arriva Crossrail Limited, Keolis/Go Ahead, MTR Corporation (Crossrail) Limited and National Express Group PLC.
Just to break that down a bit: Arriva is a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn, which is the German national rail company and is majority-owned by the German government; MTR corporation is the Hong Kong national rail company and is majority-owned by the Hong Kong government; and Keolis is majority-owned by SNCF, the French national rail company which is wholly owned by the French government.
National Express and Go Ahead, the other half of the Keolis/Go Ahead consortium, are both UK-headquartered FTSE 250 companies.
In other words, fully half of the companies which are bidding to run Crossrail are the nationalised rail companies of other countries; and another quarter of the bidders is a joint venture involving the nationalised rail company of another country.
That follows the creation of London Overground Rail Operations Limited, the company which runs the London Overground concession. That franchise, which is consistently one of the best, or the best, on the whole National Rail network, is run by a consortium of Arriva and MTR under the control of TfL.
Nationalisation: apparently quite good in practice?
Original post, “Why Crossrail’s new roundel matters more than it seems”, 13 May 2013 13:54
Transport for London revealed further information about how the Crossrail franchise is to be run yesterday, confirming that it would be run as a managed concession in the style of the London Overground.
TfL will stipulate the services which must be provided, as well as owning the trains and track. The private company which wins the franchise will be responsible for running the train services and the crossrail-specific stations along the route, as well as providing staff, but it will not be given the freedom, which most national rail franchises have, to dictate hours of operation and staffing levels.
The news comes as TfL announced the branding that Crossrail would receive as part of London’s transport mix; the service will get its own roundel, in a fetching purple shade (that’s it above). As the London Reconnections blog points out, that’s a more notable piece of news than it first appears:
As Crossrail’s TBMs tunnel beneath London, and its stations begin to take shape (more on both of those shortly) it is easy to forget that there are still some important questions that remain to be answered politically and strategically about the line.
The funding question may have dominated the discourse whilst the line pushed for approval, but it mustn’t be forgotten that Crossrail will also push well beyond London’s borders. In doing so, it will take TfL—and more importantly their authority and systems—with it. At a time when TfL and the DfT have yet to agree on what role London’s transport authority will have with regards to franchising, that’s potentially a very hot political potato.
The most similar existing train franchise to Crossrail, the Thameslink service, is a typical national rail service, run by the First group. As such, First runs its stations, Oyster cards are not accepted outside of travelcard zones 1-6, and TfL has very little say over most of the operations.
Owing to the devolved nature of London transport, the capital is slowly building a different model of how to run a suburban rail system to the one preferred by the Department for Transport. There is still hefty private-sector involvement, but the planning is far more centralised, and, cable-car aside, TfL has seen far fewer missteps than its competitors.
Earlier this week, the Department for Transport was forced to back down on a plan to increase commuter pricing even more than it currently does. The Financial Times reported on Sunday that:
The government was also urged just weeks ago by the Commons’ transport committee to rule out a shake-up of fares.
The committee said it feared that proposals for more “flexible ticketing” would end up being a “tax on commuters” who had no choice over when or how they travelled. The committee said there were limits to what the policy could achieve: “Many lower-paid workers have no choice but to travel at peak times,” the report said.
The first Crossrail services will run from May 2015 between Liverpool Street and Shenfield, Essex. Commuters on that line will see double the number of trains per hour, and new rolling stock from 2017. For them at least, the change is likely to be undeniably positive.
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