Click here to listen to the latest rail news on Thursday, 2nd September 2021
The latest rail news on Thursday, 2nd September 2021
ScotRail engineers have voted for industrial action after pay talks with management collapsed.
The article on the BBC website says about 250 workers, who maintain and repair ScotRail trains, backed strike action and other measures.
The rail operator has already cancelled a series of services following a six-month-long pay dispute with train conductors.
ScotRail said passenger numbers and its income have plummeted due to the pandemic.
Network Rail’s Southern region has invested over £1.8 billion in the railway to support the country in its mission to ‘build back better’ so passengers can feel confident and safe when they return to travelling by train.
Even at the height of the pandemic, Network Rail was working to keep trains running for critical workers, such as NHS staff, as well as making sure thousands of tonnes of vital goods, like food, fuel and medical supplies, were transported by freight trains every day.
Since March 2020, over £660 million in Kent, £643 million in Sussex and £580 million in Wessex has been invested on maintaining and upgrading the railway.
New provisional statistics by the Department for Transport show rail journeys reached a new high of 66 per cent of pre pandemic levels, driven by increased leisure travel, such as staycations.
Last week, the rail industry revealed leisure journeys to seaside destinations over the bank holiday weekend surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
Research by WPI Economics for the Rail Delivery Group, published in August, showed leisure travellers by train spend £107 per trip on things like shops, restaurants and hotels, generating £46 billion for businesses.
Overall, commuting and business journeys by rail are still well below pre-pandemic levels and rail industry revenue is just 59 per cent of that seen in 2019.
Mental health campaigner and best-selling author Bryony Gordon, double gold Olympic medallist swimmer Rebecca Adlington, and Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins star Jason Fox, feature in the health and wellbeing speaker line-up for this year’s Rail Wellbeing Live.
Following the huge success of the inaugural event in 2020 which was attended by more than 13,000 people, the rail industry’s largest free health and wellbeing event returns online on 17 to 18 November and is set to be even bigger and better.
Like last year, it will be open to Britain’s 240,000-strong rail workforce for free, where suicides are among the highest in the UK workforce at 1.6 times the national average.
Photo credit: Network Rail
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