Disruption to key UK rail route will end this year, pledges Avanti

Britain’s busiest rail route should be restored to near-normal operations before the end of the year despite months of delays and cancellations, operator Avanti West Coast pledged at a parliamentary hearing.

The artery linking London with Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow will see train frequencies mostly back to 2019 levels with a key timetable change due in December, Richard Scott, corporate affairs director at Avanti parent West Coast Partnership, told the House of Commons Transport Committee Wednesday.

Avanti has suffered the most persistent disruption on the UK railway since July amid a driver shortage, which the company puts down to staff halting overtime as part of a national dispute over pay and job security. While the British government last week resisted pressure to take over the network, it gave the business until April 1 to resolve the situation.

“We are making progress,” Scott told lawmakers. “It’s significantly better than at the start of the summer. In December we will have a significant step up of our timetable which will get us back to a near-normal service, pretty much to pre-Covid levels, and to absolutely pre-Covid levels on much of our route.”

Scott said the level of cancellations, previously afflicting one in 13 trains, had been reduced to one in 20 by last week, with last-minute cancellations at the company, owned by FirstGroup Plc and Trenitalia of Italy, reduced by two-thirds.

Frequencies are also building up on the busiest routes, with London-Manchester -- slashed from three services an hour to one at the height of the disruption -- getting 10 more trains a day, and London-Birmingham four more.

National Talks

The December timetable boost will follow the recruitment of 95 new drivers, Scott said, meaning the schedule doesn’t rely on employees working on their rest days.

Network Rail Ltd.’s Tim Shoveller, the track and station owner’s chief negotiator in the national pay dispute, told the committee that talks are continuing with all unions and that more meetings are scheduled for Friday.

Shoveller said he’s “continually hopeful of progress” and that some encouraging conversations have begun, despite weeks of strikes. 

Mick Lynch, who heads the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, said, however, that he’s seen no great change in the situation and that Network Rail and Britain’s numerous train operating companies need to be given a new negotiating mandate by Prime Minister Liz Truss.

The chief sticking points remain job security, rather than pay, and the work-life balance of rail workers, Lynch told the committee. 

The industry has been struggling to adapt to changed commuting patterns and an overall drop in ridership following the coronavirus crisis. Lynch said the RMT, representing 40,000 striking workers, is amenable to a negotiated evolution of the sector, but not imposed changes.

• Pay negotiations at Felixstowe, Britain’s No. 1 container port, are in limbo according to Hutchison Ports UK’s corporate affairs chief Paul Davey. Davey said there were no talks on a deal for this year and only tentative contact about a settlement for 2023. He played down the impact of walkouts, saying a slowing economy will mean a flatter peak in pre-Christmas volumes, reducing the impact of any further strikes.