Click here to listen to the latest rail news on Wednesday, 7th June 2023
InTheNews: The latest rail news on Wednesday, 7th June 2023
Major ports in Southampton and on the Thames are offering financial incentives to customers who transport their freight by rail rather than road.
An article on the BBC website says it’s part of a drive to cut carbon emissions by 30,000 tonnes a year.
The plan by two of the UK’s biggest ports will see customers paid £70 for each container making the change.
The announcement comes as the main rail route from Southampton to the Midlands reopens after a two-month closure of the Nuneham viaduct in Oxfordshire.
DP World, which owns Southampton and London Gateway, will charge a £10 “modal shift” fee on all containers laden with imports.
A former rail boss has spoken out against scrapping plans to build two new platforms at Manchester Piccadilly. The article on the Manchester Evening News website says the plans for platforms 15 and 16 date back more than a decade and have been waiting to be signed off since 2015.
But last month, as the government announced £72 million of investment in Greater Manchester’s stations, rail bosses pulled the plans, which had been estimated to cost up to £800 million. Network Rail boss Tim Shoveller revealed that other plans will be prioritised – including replacing the four platforms at Oxford Road station with three longer ones.
Meeting rail minister Huw Merriman at Manchester Victoria two weeks ago, local leaders demanded an urgent long-term plan to unclog the North of England’s railways. It comes more than a decade after platforms 15 and 16 were first put forward as a solution to congestion on the Castlefield corridor.
But Jim Bamford, who was the head of investment planning at Transport for the North (TfN) before retiring in 2021, says building two new platforms at Piccadilly would allow more trains to travel on the route through Manchester city centre which rail services across the region rely on to run smoothly.
He has spoken out ahead of a meeting of metro mayors, council leaders and industry bosses at TfN’s Rail North Committee in Leeds this morning (June 7).
The number of trips made on the London Underground has returned to 90 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, according to data from Transport for London (TfL).
An article on the BBC website says figures show 91 million Tube journeys were made in April, compared with 101 million for the same month in 2019.
Journeys made on the network have risen by almost 12 million since this time last year.
The Snowdon Mountain Railway trains are set to return to summit for the first time since 2020 after the service was halted during the coronavirus pandemic.
An article on the ITV news website says the railway partially reopened on 1 April, however the service has only travelled three quarters of the distance to the summit, ending at Clogwyn Station as upgrades were being carried out to the line.
On 24 June, the last of 1,000 metres of track upgrades will be completed, allowing passengers to once again travel to the top of Snowdon by train.
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