Office of Rail and Road approves new services at Peterborough

Yesterday (Friday 24 November), the [1] gave approval to open access operator [2] to run services from [3] station.

This will allow two existing Grand Central services in each direction to call at Peterborough each day from Monday to Saturday.

Peterborough, which has recently been awarded ‘levelling up' funding[4] to improve its connection to the city centre, is an important station on the East Coast Mainline, and is also served by local lines and west-to-east lines.

Peterborough station Credit: Network Rail

[5] (LNER), [6], [7], [8], East Midlands Railway (EMR) and [9] all run services which stop at the station.

ORR's policy is to support new open-access services where this creates competition and benefits passengers, and where the new services can run alongside existing services without causing undue impact on network performance. The Office reports that, in making its decision, it also considered the impact on government funds and the effect on other railway users.

Stephanie Tobyn, Director, Strategy, Policy & Reform, said: “Open access services promote competition on the rail network and give passengers more choice about how they travel. With passenger numbers still not quite recovered following the pandemic, it's important that the network provides options for all as the industry looks to increase passenger journeys.

“ORR plays a crucial role in overseeing competition on our railway, and we'll continue to assess open access applications with the goal of providing greater consumer choice, value and performance.”

References

  1. ^ (www.railadvent.co.uk)
  2. ^ (www.railadvent.co.uk)
  3. ^ (www.railadvent.co.uk)
  4. ^ recently been awarded ‘levelling up' funding (www.railadvent.co.uk)
  5. ^ (www.railadvent.co.uk)
  6. ^ (www.railadvent.co.uk)
  7. ^ (www.railadvent.co.uk)
  8. ^ (www.railadvent.co.uk)
  9. ^ (www.railadvent.co.uk)

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