Scottish rail franchise may become one-horse race

[Callum Johnstone]

Source: The Scotsman
17/01/04

Scottish rail franchise may become one-horse race

JAMES DOW

Two crunch meetings for the future of ScotRail are scheduled to take
place next week, sources have told The Scotsman, amid industry talk
that the three-way battle to operate the train franchise could soon
become a one-horse race.

Executives at Aberdeen-based FirstGroup are due to meet on Monday in
light of the referral of the firm's bid to the Competition Commission.
FirstGroup executives held a preliminary "brainstorming" meeting
yesterday to thrash out the issues raised by the Commission's inquiry.

Later next week, the Strategic Rail Authority also hopes to meet the
Commission. It wants to discuss the timetable for the watchdog's
investigation. The meetings will be crucial to FirstGroup's continued
participation in the ScotRail bid battle.

The firm is locked in a three-way tussle with National Express, the
incumbent operator, and Arriva. The SRA and Scottish Executive are due
to select a preferred bidder in April. It is understood that if the
SRA cannot secure assurances from the Commission that its report will
be filed before April, FirstGroup will feel compelled to drop its
interest in ScotRail. The cost of staging its bid has already exceeded
£1m.

Detailed bids for the ScotRail franchise were submitted late last
year. It is said that Arriva's offer falls some way short of the
National Express bid, implying that the latter would be the clear
favourite to win the blessing of the SRA and Executive if FirstGroup
abandons its interest.

Ironically, the Competition Commission investigation would therefore
prove detrimental to consumers, effectively reducing the three-way
battle to one likely winner.

Concerns have previously been expressed about National Express's
record in running ScotRail during the past few years. A spokesman for
the SRA said the agency recognised the importance of keeping
FirstGroup in the bid battle, "to get the best offer we can for
passengers."

It is understood the SRA and the Scottish Executive are unwilling to
put back their schedule for selecting a preferred bidder. FirstGroup
is therefore looking for assurances that it could be cleared by the
Commission by April. If not, it would almost certainly drop out of the
ScotRail race, on the assumption it could not be selected as preferred
bidder.

[David Marsh]

Newsgroups: free.uk.scotland.transport-railways,uk.railway

[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments]
begin quote from Callum Johnstone in free.uk.scotland.transport-railways
about: Scottish rail franchise may become one-horse race

[FirstGroup] is locked in a three-way tussle with National Express, the
incumbent operator, and Arriva. The SRA and Scottish Executive are due
to select a preferred bidder in April. It is understood that if the
SRA cannot secure assurances from the Commission that its report will
be filed before April, FirstGroup will feel compelled to drop its
interest in ScotRail. The cost of staging its bid has already exceeded
£1m.

Does anybody have any thoughts on which would be likely to be the best
company to hold the ScotRail franchise?

I've no idea what FirstGroup's rail services are like but it has to be
said that they did wonders for the bus services in Glasgow after buying
the incumbent (and incompetent) Strathclyde Buses: lots of new high-quality
low-floor buses, introduction of a day ticket (and, briefly, sadly,
a transfer ticket for 'single' journeys), better, easier to understand and
more frequent daytime services on core routes (and an incredible improvement
in frequency and comprehensibility (ie, continuing daytime routes) of
night bus services) and involvement in bus priority measures.

This strikes me as the attitude of a company that wants to grow its
business and with the vision that public transport can be something that
you'll be happy to use and might even want to use, rather than being the
distress purchase of last resort.

The fact that FirstGroup operate a significant number of bus services
ought to bode well for better integration - "Zone n" bus fare add-ons
should be the norm for through ticketing, but what's the bets this would,
ironically, be seen as unfair competition. It really ought to be a
requirement that bus and metro add-ons should be a *requirement* for
any franchise bidder.

Of course, what this really points to is the fact that having a multitude
of local bus companies each of which doesn't _quite_ operate a coherent
complete network is utterly pointless, there should be one local bus
operator and one longdistance bus operator for each area at most.




National Express seem to have done a fairly good job with ScotRail, with
the wonderful introduction of the 'turn-up-and-go' 15min-frequency
Edinburgh & Glasgow service (although I reckon it could do with being
extended to 20:00), some fairly good new trains (170s), some very average
new trains (334s), taking bikes for free (and improving bike space on
the 156s, especially on popular tourist routes (lately set back with 158s
used on some routes)), and have introduced some other service improvements
(most of which were are the behest of other parties, admittedly).

However, they don't give the impression of being particularly proactive on
proposing and bringing forward new routes, stations and services [1],
and rather seem to be merely content to do a good job (in general) with
what they've got, rather than trying to (re)extend the reach of rail into
areas it doesn't or no longer reaches.

Perhaps a change of operator might spur NEx into being more proactive were
they to bid again in future?

[1] eg, Edinburgh sub, Glasgow CrossRail, airport links, Borders railway,
St Andrews, Alloa.



I'm also not very familiar with Arriva's rail services, but get the
impression that they generally get a bit of a bad rep? Arriva don't seem to
have much of a bus foothold in Scotland and those I have seen (Paisley
area) generally seem to be older, dirtier, less comfortable buses: more
catering to the stagnant 'you have no choice' distress purchase market.

Are they innovative, plodding, reliable, dreadful? I don't know.


It'll be interesting to see what the outcome is.


David.