The Department for Transport yesterday confirmed that TfL is going to be allowed to take over most of the services currently run by the privatised Greater Anglia franchise out of Liverpool Street to north east London and Hertfordshire, but prevented the organisation from achieving its wider goal of taking over rail services in southeast London.
Under the settlement, TfL will take over the maintenance of 23 of the 25 stations on the portions of the line it will be operating. Trains running between Liverpool Street and Chingford, Cheshunt and Enfield Town via Hackney Downs will now be operated under concession from TfL, almost certainly under the same model as the London Overground and Crossrail. The public company will also manage all the stations except Liverpool Street and Cheshunt, which will both remain in the hands of Network Rail.
The new routes will most likely be incorporated into the Overground network, which would leave the tube map looking something like this:
(click to embiggen)
It’s a big step for TfL, because it represents the first time a former Network Rail franchise has been taken over without a clear end goal in mind. London Overground exists because of a long-standing plan to create a London orbital railway; the Silverlink Metro franchise was taken over in its entirety, and then linked together with a few branches taken from other operators to make the orbital Overground as it is today.
The Greater Anglia franchise, on the other hand, is being handed over for the simpler reason that TfL has proved it could do it better. The fact that the DfT didn’t also hand over Southeastern shows it’s not quite prepared to start heading down the road which ends with TfL in charge of all metro rail in London; but if TfL continues to run transport services better than the private franchisees it’s competing with, it will get harder to knock them back.
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