£750m main rail line upgrade ‘at risk’

Jun 26 2008 by Alex Turner, Liverpool Daily Post

THERE is a “significant risk” that improvements to the West Coast Main Line will either be late or below standard, according to tran-sport group Stagecoach.

In May, a series of weekend closures began on the line between Liverpool and London as Network Rail aims to complete £750m of investment by December.

However, Stagecoach, which has a 49% share in the route’s operator, Virgin Trains, said: “There is a significant risk that Network Rail will not deliver by December, 2008, an upgraded railway that is accept-able to Virgin Rail Group and its passengers.

“The infrastructure needs to be delivered on time and be of the right quality to enable Network Rail to provide a consistently safe and reliable railway.

“Network Rail’s recent opera-tional performance in relation to West Coast Trains has been worse than target and improved reliability is required to allow for the significant increase in train services from December, 2008. We continue to monitor developments carefully.”

It expects a planned upgrade for the line to deliver a 30% rise in capacity from this December.

Stagecoach’s concerns came as it announced underlying pre-tax profits of £174.4m for the year to April 30, marginally ahead of market expectations. Its shareholding in Virgin Trains contributed profits of £32.2m.

The group, which is Merseyside’s second biggest bus operator, said it is being buoyed by a “fundamental shift” towards public transport.

It believes it is benefiting from higher fuel costs and environ-mental concerns as it unveiled big revenue rises for its bus and train operations yesterday.

Chief executive Brian Souter said: “We believe there are growing signs of a fundamental positive shift in customer attitudes towards public transport, driven by increas-ing road congestion, rising fuel costs and climate change concern.”

The firm said that while fuel prices are a concern for its own operations – the group uses 328m litres of fuel each year – it is encouraged by the possibility of a further shift from cars onto buses and trains.

Stagecoach’s UK bus division, which took over running Liverpool’s buses from Glenvale Transport in 2005, saw its like-for-like revenues rise 7.5% and its operating margin rise slightly to 14.8%. It transports around 2m people on its fleet of 7,000 buses every day.

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