Click here to listen to the latest rail news on Thursday, 28th July 2022
InTheNews: The latest rail news on Thursday, 28th July 2022
Commuters were hit by fresh disruption this morning as services faced knock-on delays following the 24-hour rail strike.
An article on i news says Thameslink services are running a Sunday timetable after the strike and trains didn’t start running until 7am. It says some routes and stations won’t run until later on today.
More strike action is planned including for this Saturday, 30th July, as well as on the 13th, 18th and 20th August when RMT members will be joined by the drivers’ union Aslef and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association.
Talks are due to resume today between unions and Network Rail in a bid to secure a deal, with Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, saying strikes are “always the last resort”.
Sticking with the strikes and Sir Keir Starmer is due to visit Birmingham today amid Labour Party row after a frontbencher was fired following media appearances at an RMT picket line on Wednesday.
An article in the Evening Standard says the party sacked shadow transport minister Sam Tarry after he defied Sir Keir’s ban on frontbenchers joining the pickets in support of striking rail workers.
In other news Liz Truss will perform a major U-Turn on Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) if she wins the Tory leadership race, pledging to deliver the project in full.
An article on Chronicle Live says it would mean tens of billions of pounds of new infrastructure investment and new high speed connections running from Liverpool to Leeds via Manchester and Bradford.
The move would be a reversal of Boris Johnson’s much maligned proposal, unveiled last November, which saw the budget for NPR slashed by £24.9 billion, with the original vision for a new line replaced with upgrades to existing routes.
Figures published by the Department for Transport this week show that passenger numbers are now closing in on pre-pandemic levels.
Between 6-17 July, passenger numbers hit 90-93 per cent of pre-COVID levels every single day of the week. This mirrors figures from June which showed 90-93 per cent of pre-COVID levels every single day between 10-20 June.
Numbers on London’s tube are also now nudging 80 per cent, with a weekday high of 79 per cent recorded on Thursday 21 July (weekend and Bank Holiday highs of 85-118 per cent have been regularly recorded since May).
British tech firm, imabi, has launched a first-of-a-kind app with the British Transport Police to help travellers report crime.
The Railway Guardian App is designed to encourage bystanders to report incidents of harassment or violence. It is part of the British Transport Police’s ‘Speak Up, Interrupt’ campaign tackling violence against women.
Features of the app allow users to access safety information and report incidents directly from their phones.
Photo credit: images on left- RMT Twitter, Right RMT video Screengrab (top) and official portrait (bottom)
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