Lord Bradshaw – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Bradshaw on 2016-09-06.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 17 June (HL516), what assessment they have made of the levels of punctuality and reliability of trains on the East Coast Main Line required to facilitate a proposal to integrate 24 trains per hour through the central core of Thameslink via Blackfriars.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

Network Rail and the relevant train operators will continue to develop the detail and performance implications of the 2021 timetable in line with the industry’s normal timetable development process, under the oversight of the Office of Rail and Road.

With regard to the operation of the Thameslink central core, this is a matter for Network Rail and the relevant train operators, under the oversight of the Office of Rail and Road. The industry is continuing to develop plans for integrating the 24 trains per hour proposed to run on the Thameslink route at peak times from December 2018 with other services on the East Coast Main Line, including the implications for punctuality and reliability.

After consulting with Network Rail we have established that there were five ‘unplanned closures’, on various sections of the line, on five separate days in August, two of which were infrastructure related and three as a result of passenger action.

Network Rail have defined days with ‘unplanned closures’ of the East Coast Main Line as days where there are more than five cancellation events. A cancellation event covers any service suffering one or more of the below events:

• Full Cancellation
• Part Cancellation
• Diversion
• Fail to stop
• Change of Origin