PICCADILLY PAPER PLAN

Wednesday 27 Jun 2007

PICCADILLY PAPER PLAN

Region & Route:: National

Network Rail is inviting expressions of interest from publishers to explore options to distribute a free afternoon / evening newspaper at Manchester Piccadilly station. This follows the award, in October 2006, of the right to distribute at Network Rail's London stations to News International’s thelondonpaper. The Manchester newspaper will be able to be distributed Mondays to Fridays between the likely hours of 3pm and 9pm. The footfall through Manchester Piccadilly each day is around 60,000 of which 76% are in the ABC1 demographic. Mick Martin, Network Rail's Director, Commercial Property said: "Manchester is economically booming and now has an output equivalent to Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield combined. Therefore the opportunity to distribute a free newspaper is a great one in a rapidly growing market. For Network Rail the benefits would be yet another offering for passengers and a further stream of revenue to invest back into the railway." Associated Newspapers will retain the rights to distribute Metro at the station in the morning. The tender process begins immediately with a view to completion within a month.

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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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