This morning the DfT announced the winners of the new franchises for Northern and TransPennine Express, which are Arriva and First Group respectively. The First Group bid includes extension of hourly TPE services from Newcastle to Edinburgh, calling at Morpeth (from 2019). SENRUG had lobbied very hard for TPE trains to call at Cramlington and Morpeth, and it was encouraging to receive a call from First Group shortly after the announcement was made thanking me for my input to their winning bid. We still need to lobby for Cramlington however. I spent most of the morning checking details of both companies’ proposals on theirs and the DfT website, and placing a few calls to Arriva to clarify some details. Then issued our own Press Release which you can see here. It is interesting to note that Arriva was the only one of the Northern franchise bidders, and First was the only one of the TPE franchise bidders, that came and spoke to SENRUG during the bid process. We look forward to working with both Arriva and First as they take over the franchises from April 2016.
