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Overhaul of railway network planned
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has outlined plans to change the way in which England's railway network is run.
Grayling stated his intentions to bring ‘back together the operation of track and train on our railways’, offering forward his plans for each rail franchise to be run by joint management teams.
The changes will start when each franchise is renewed in the future. Then, each franchise will be run by one joint team, with the franchise owners and Network Rail will continue to exist separately.
The first new joint management teams will come into operation when the South Eastern and the East Midlands franchises are re-let in 2018.
The Transport Secretary said: "It would be no exaggeration to say that the railways of this country are crucial to its economic future. Without them our economy would grind to a halt.
"Our railways need to adapt and change in order to be able to cope with the growth that they have already experienced, and that which lies ahead. We need a railway which is sustainable in all senses of the word.
"East West Rail will provide a commuter route for the crucial centres on its route and will provide the transport spine for additional housing and business development in a corridor which is one of the government’s priority areas for the future of our country.
"The new organisation will work hand in glove with the National Infrastructure Commission as it plans the development of this nationally important transport corridor to identify the best way to deliver the project."
Pre-empting opposition to his plans, Grayling emphasised that the changes were not about privatising network rail or handing over control of the track to train operating companies, but about ‘forging partnership alliances between the two’.
The announcement has been met by both optimism and opposition, with Mark Carne, chief executive of Network Rail, welcoming the plans to ‘join up working within the industry’. However, Mick Cash, general secretary of the RMT rail union, warned that ‘a slippery slope to privatisation and the break-up of Network Rail’ was a possibility.
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