Sir, The system of rail franchising strikes me as fundamentally absurd.
Arriva is to replace Virgin on cross-country routes (report, 10 July). In Yorkshire there are still trains bearing Arriva’s colours, not yet having been repainted after Arriva’s loss of the northeastern regional franchise in 2004.
Decisions about which company is awarded a franchise, and why, seem to be shrouded in mystery – even more so now that the Department for Transport sets out such a precise service specification to bidders.
Does it really matter which company operates a franchise, if the DfT is in such close control? Can the cost and hassle of transferring one train-operating company’s staff to another and rebranding its leased fleet and stations be justified for so little benefit to passengers?
The railway will not recover from its botched privatisation until track and train are reunited through vertical integration, something that the present franchising system will never achieve, no matter how many new liveries are wheeled out.
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MARTIN SHUTTLEWORTH, Leicester
Sir, Ministers are not asking train companies to increase rail fares (report, July 11).
We continue to limit fares rises for regulated tickets (which account for more than half of all rail journeys) to inflation plus 1 per cent. The rest, unregulated fares, are set entirely at the commercial discretion of train operators, and the department emphatically does not seek to influence their decisions.
When fares go up it is because they are helping to pay for new carriages, more frequent trains, improved stations and refurbished tracks. We could lower fares but that would mean either retreating from record levels of investment, raising taxes or increasing public subsidy.
TOM HARRIS, MP Parliamentary Secretary for Rail
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Sir, Like all train companies operating in London and the South East, we face a large challenge in providing extra capacity to match the rise in demand for our services. However, your report (July 10 ) doesn’t reflect that we have committed to the Government in our franchise agreement to add significant amounts of capacity on First Great Western, adding about 30 per cent in the morning peak and 20 per cent in the evening peak. The figures quoted in the report are for the autumn of 2006 before we made significant changes to timetable and capacity.
In addition, the £63 million investment in refurbishing our 53 high-speed trains will mean 33 more seats on each one – that translates into thousands more seats every day and a total of three million extra seats per year.
ALISON FORSTER Managing Director First Great Western