Rail monopoly news – 14 April 2016 Member states undermine Bulc’s plea for an open rail market – 4th RP UK, FR and DE lead the campaign to dilute the conflict of interest clauses. At the Transport Council working group meeting last week, UK, DE and FR achieved such a dilution of the conflict of interest…
Lord Berkeley
Death of Andre Benard, the creator of the Channel Tunnel with Alastair Morton.
by Lord Berkeley • • 3 Comments
t160325 Andre Benard notice le Figaro Andre Benard died on 15 March 2016 at the age of 93. He was chairman or co-chairman with Sir Alastair Morton during the construction period of the Channel Tunnel 1987 to 1993. Their partnership through difficult financial and contractual crises achieved its completion and formal opening by HM Queen Elizabeth…
HS2 Select committee fails to listen and challenge the promoters
by Lord Berkeley • • 6 Comments
Euston Express is disappointed that the Commons Select committee chose to ignore the inaccurate evidence given by HS2 about our Euston Express scheme. E Ex puts all HS2 and West Coast Main Line trains onto the WCML tracks from Queens Park inwards and avoids the high cost, massive disruption and demolition to streets to the…
Going to Scilly? The ‘Victorian’ challenge of booking a flight/ship on line
by Lord Berkeley • • 1 Comment
Regular travellers must get really irritated by the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company booking website, which seems incredibly old fashioned and long winded compared with other company travel booking websites. Compare the IOSSC one with GWR trains or Flybe; they are all fairly similar in requiring the date, time, origin and destination of travel. On…
Why break up Network Rail just for shareholder profit of train operators?
by Lord Berkeley • • Comments Off on Why break up Network Rail just for shareholder profit of train operators?
The UK Rail Delivery Group minutes of a November meeting (Guardian 1 February) to discuss the future structure of the railways suggests that one option was to remove routes from Network Rail control, and privatise them in a manner similar to the privatised utilities. Some at the RDG favoured a full breakup, arguing that Network…