Wednesday 11 Feb 2009
NETWORK RAIL RESPONDS TO TORY RAIL REVIEW
- Region & Route:
- National
Responding to the Conservative 'Getting the best for passengers', Iain Coucher, chief executive said: "Network Rail finds much to commend in the Conservative party’s rail review published today, especially its focus on putting passengers first and enabling existing industry structures to get on with the job of delivering safe and reliable train services for its users.
"Working with our industry partners, Network Rail has transformed the railway. Today passenger numbers are at a post-war high; punctuality and safety performance are at record levels; passenger satisfaction, at 83%, has never been greater; costs have been slashed; and there is now no safer way to travel than by train.
"We must build on this success and work with the broad political consensus to improve the passenger experience. This means expanding the railway, transforming stations and boosting performance."
Notes to editors
Background information and views on other parts of today's rail review: Corporate governance: Network Rail has previously stated that it is happy to look at development to its corporate governance, indeed its Members are undertaking a review at the moment. However, any such development should meet three key tests. Specifically any improvements should support the company’s targets of improving safety and performance; driving cost efficiency; and helping deliver additional railway capacity Vertical integration: The review once again raises the idea of 'trialing' a vertical integration (merging train and track) model, and suggests Merseyrail as the ideal candidate. Network Rail disagrees. The company looked at such a proposal several years ago where the very clear outcome was that such a move would not deliver any benefits to passengers, but would instead waste taxpayers' money. Instead we made changes to the local working arrangements which have resulted in significant improvements for passengers and taxpayers. Merseryrail is already one of the very best performing train operators running at almost 95% of services on time over the past year.Contact information
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About Network Rail
We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.
Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.
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