Rail firms will roll out Oyster November 23, 2009 COMMUTERS will be able to touch in and out using their Oyster card across Greater London on the City’s overland rail by early next year, London Mayor Boris Johnson said yesterday. The £40m investment is set to revolutionise London travel, and allow passengers to use the Oyster card across the tube, bus, river boat Thames [...]
Gatwick owners eye astronaut November 22, 2009 The new owners of Gatwick have gone galactic in their search for a new board for the London airport. It is expected that James van Hoften, a former astronaut who now runs the airports arm of American engineering giant Bechtel, will be hired. Global Infrastructure Partners, the GE-Credit Suisse joint venture that snapped up Gatwick [...]
Crossrail’s chairman says the 16bn project is set to push ahead in 2010 November 17, 2009 The last time I saw Terry Morgan was a year ago at 2am, underneath Leicester Square. Then he was the Tube Lines chief executive and was standing on the underground tracks between Leicester Square and Covent Garden stations, telling a couple of engineers exactly what he thought of their work. This meeting could not be [...]
East Coast Line handed to state November 12, 2009 The Department for Transport (DfT) will today take over the running of National Express’s East Coast Main Line, after the transport group failed to find the £1.3bn it needed to pay in premiums for the lifetime of the franchise. The rail unions are urging the DfT to keep the major London to Scotland route in [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING November 12, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES NATIONAL EXPRESS FACES EUROSTAR BILLNational Express could be saddled with a bill of up to £32m to cover losses made by Eurostar, the cross-Channel rail service. The indebted transport group, which gives up its lossmaking East Coast rail franchise tonight, is the leading shareholder in a consortium that manages the UK end of [...]
Nat Ex loses its East line early November 5, 2009 THE East Coast Main Line rail franchise, which runs services from London to Edinburgh, will be transferred to a government-controlled company on 13 November, a month earlier than anticipated, the Department of Transport (DfT) said yesterday. The franchise, which will be handed back by ailing bus and rail operator National Express after it ran up [...]
Greyhound dogs FirstGroup November 4, 2009 FIRSTGROUP, the transport company which was rebuffed in its attempt to takeover National Express last month, yesterday said its profits had slumped as its iconic Greyhound bus service was hit by the downturn. FirstGroup, which launched a London-Southampton service bearing the Greyhound symbol in the UK earlier this year, said the unit’s operating profits slid [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING October 29, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES ASIAN SHIPPING LINES SUFFER FURTHER LOSSESTwo of Asia’s biggest shipping lines announced major losses for the June-September quarter in a further sign of the unprecedented severity of the crisis battering the industry. Singapore’s Neptune Orient Lines said that it would lose money at least for the first half of 2010 as it announced [...]
Go-Ahead overtakes forecasts October 29, 2009 Transport group Go Ahead said yesterday that it had seen growth slightly ahead of expectations in its bus and aviation operations over the first quarter, and that rail operations were continuing to trade in line with forecasts. The largest bus operator in London said first-quarter revenue growth was slightly ahead of its expectations as passenger [...]
Boris stands firm on Crossrail October 27, 2009 LONDON Mayor Boris Johnson yesterday secured the support of business organisation London First as he continued to insist investing in Crossrail and London’s transport network was essential for the Capital’s economic prosperity. Attending the launch of a report published by London First into the benefits of maintaining investment in transport, Johnson said his commitment to [...]