Click here to listen to the latest rail news on Thursday, 23rd June 2022
InTheNews: The latest rail news on Thursday, 23rd June 2022
A second day of strike action is underway today after talks to avert the stoppage collapsed last night.
That’s according to an article in The Guardian. Millions of passengers face disruption to train services across Britain as 40,000 RMT members working for Network Rail and 13 train operating companies stage their second strike in a week.
Just one in five trains are expected to run today, with services only running between 7.30am and 6.30pm.
Last night, the head of the RMT union, Mick Lynch, hit out at the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, for “wrecking negotiations by not allowing Network Rail to withdraw their letter threatening redundancy for 2,900 of our members” in the dispute over pay, working conditions and proposed “modernisation” plans.
Shapps said the RMT claim was “a total lie”. Network Rail said the union had walked away from talks.
Separately, the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association announced that its members at Merseyrail had accepted a 7.1 per cent pay offer.
In other news, Transport for the South East (TfSE) has outlined a method through which it can gather £3.2 billion of funding to build an extension of the Elizabeth line that would see it extend to Ebbsfleet and beyond to Gravesend.
An article in the New Civil Engineer says the transport body has opened a public consultation on its Strategic Investment Plan for the South East, which outlines how it wishes to invest £45 billion into the region’s transport over the next 27 years. It believes that by 2050 these investments would return an annual £4 billion in gross value added.
Funding an extension to the Elizabeth line it says that this begins with Great British Railways (GBR) agreeing to be the main delivery partner for the scheme, recognising that much of the extension would run on existing North Kent route railways.
TfSE is then eyeing up funding input from sources outside central government, as the body sees it as “major, complex (and capital-intensive) cross border scheme with wide-ranging potential benefits”.
Two of Scotland’s largest landowners are seeking ways to work closer together where public forestry and land is adjacent to the country’s rail network.
Teams from Scottish Government agency Forestry and Land Scotland and Network Rail met to discuss ways in which they could work together to manage the risks and challenges that both organisations have on land where they are neighbours.
Photo credit: Network Rail
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