Select Committee on Transport Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence


Supplementary note by the SRA (REN 41A)

  Thank you for the letter of 7 May about rail speeds in the North of England.

  The SRA does not specify nor monitor line speeds. I cannot therefore confirm the accuracy of the speeds that have been quoted by a witness in the course of the enquiry—"Railways in the North of England". Passenger Service Requirements, which describe minimum service levels in existing franchise agreements, specify among other things, stopping patterns and maximum journey times. The line speeds which you quote may have been deduced from these journey times for the distances involved but I have not attempted to check whether this is so. The maximum journey times for each of the routes quoted are as follows:

    —  Leeds-Bradford—29 minutes [ATN (WYPTE Route F2) Leeds-Bradford Forster Square]

    —  Leeds-Preston—130 minutes [Leeds-Blackpool North. ATN (Route A7)]

    —  Leeds-Lancaster—144 minutes [Leeds-Morecambe. ATN (Route C4). Direction specific]

    —  Leeds-Sheffield—61 minutes [Fast service. ATN (Route C5) via Wakefield Westgate. Direction specific]—99 minutes [ATN. (WYPTE Route F8 and SYPTE Route G3) via Barnsley. Direction specific, though 65% must not exceed 84 minutes]

    —  Sheffield-Huddersfield—88 minutes [ATN (SYPTE Route G5 and WYPTE Route F10) Direction specific, though 80% must not exceed 80 minutes]

    —  Manchester-Blackburn—59 minutes [All stations except Clifton. FNW (GMPTE Route V) Direction specific, though limited stop services may not take more than 50 minutes]

    —  Manchester-Buxton—62 minutes [All stations. FNW (GMPTE Route M). Direction specific, though limited stop services may take not more than 55 minutes]

    —  Liverpool-Wigan—No PSR specification for a maximum journey time.

    —  Newcastle-Sunderland—28 minutes [All stations. ATN (T&W PTE Route E1). Direction specific]

  Most of these services are jointly or exclusively specified by the PTEs who in many cases have a preference for stopping services within their conurbations: the more station stops, the longer journey times.

  I hope this is helpful.

James Watson

May 2003


 
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