Quote:
Originally Posted by Ravenheart
That's my point Chris, the operator wants it to run, there's demand for the service in both regions yet they're told they cant.
The now defunct Wrexham & Shopshire service wasn't able to call at stations the route to London passed through due to the way agreements were drawn up.
|
Well yes, the public service routes and service levels were devised back in the day by OPRAF and companies have bid for franchises based on those. It would be unfair for those franchises, once agreed, to be undermined by open-access operators. Such operators are welcome to fill in any gaps they perceive in the franchised schedules but they can hardly expect to be allowed to steal business from the companies that won the franchises.
Aside from that, the reasons quoted for this particular refusal are not denial of access to lucrative stations, but denial of access to the tracks themselves for capacity reasons. It's worth pointing out that BR didn't face such capacity issues because BR was running the railways the way the civil service ran the empire, I.e. in a state of managed decline. I've not looked up the specifics but I'm willing to bet that Blackpool and Shrewsbury have in the past had direct connections to London, and I'm also willing to bet that it was the nationalised operator that shut those routes down. It is a private operator that wants to bring them back, and when the capacity issues are resolved I expect they will be allowed to do it.