Today was the final Stakeholder Briefing in Newcastle from Northern Rail prior to the expiry of the contract at the end of this month, at which point Arriva take over. Northern have achieved a great deal during their custodianship and should be congratulated for it. Further, they truly have kept on developing until the very last minute – no taking their eye of the ball in the last few months, which as MD Alex Haynes pointed out is just as well – since a whole series of franchise extensions means that Northern have been in their “final few months” for several years now. A local example is that, en route to Newcastle, I discovered remotely controlled PA announcements have just been introduced at Cramlington. I was impressed with the presentation from Commercial Director Richard Allen about the introduction of advance tickets on certain key routes to optimise yield management (techno speak for “sell more tickets for lightly loaded trains”). But why then, I asked, had Northern withdrawn the off-peak fare on the Morpeth – Newcastle route? Surely that is counter-intuitive? No-one seemed to know the answer to that. Let’s hope incoming franchisee Arriva quickly reverse this nonsense.
