Network
rail@bauermedia.co.uk
TRANSPORT for the North’s rail committee has given qualified support to a new timetable for the East Coast Main Line that should take effect from December 2024, with members wanting more assurances over infrastructure improvements that could lead to more services running in future.
The rail industry’s December 2024 timetable adds a third Newcastle-London service. But this comes at the expense of restoring the second hourly train from Tyneside to Manchester that TransPennine Express ran before the pandemic took hold in 2020.
The timetable also adds an hourly service between Middlesbrough and Newcastle via Sunderland (to give two trains per hour) and an hourly LeedsWakefield Westgate-Sheffield service, to add more capacity than CrossCountry can provide.
Elsewhere, Bradford Forster Square and Middlesbrough receive London trains every other hour and there is to be a daily CleethorpesLondon service.
Network Rail expects the extra services to deliver around £60 million more revenue each year. However, while councillors welcomed these improvements, the Rail North Committee meeting on November 14 heard some scepticism over promises of improved infrastructure to allow (for example) a seventh high-speed path between York and Newcastle that might allow that second TPE service.
Committee Chairman Andy Burnham said members wanted commitments, not “vague promises dangled in front of us”, as he called for more clarity around rail industry plans.
He asked the rail industry’s help in removing the ‘but’ from its support for December 2024.
At the meeting, Network Rail Industry Programme Director Simon Leyshon said December 2024’s timetable would build the case for further improvements, while noting that a decision to take forward design work for the seventh path north of York is expected in early 2024.
It is currently at outline business case stage, while further improvement work
