{"id":316,"date":"2016-04-13T15:08:30","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T14:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/?p=316"},"modified":"2016-04-13T15:08:30","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T14:08:30","slug":"rail-news-northern-franchise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/news\/rail-news-northern-franchise\/","title":{"rendered":"Rail News- Northern Franchise"},"content":{"rendered":"

New trains and training for the North<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The North has been given a \u00a31 billion shopping list to transform rail services. A stark contrast to the previous franchise, which assumed no growth and included limited investment. In fact, passenger numbers rose by 50 per cent.<\/p>\n

\"branded-Hitachi-online\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Northern and TransPennine Express franchises will introduce 140 brand new trains between them by 2020. Prior to the launch, TPE, now minus the First, announced that it and Angel Trains had ordered the first batch of new trains for that franchise from Hitachi.<\/p>\n

The majority of the 19 bi-mode trains will be built at Hitachi\u2019s factory in Newton Aycliffe and will start to arrive on the network from December 2019. The arrival of these new units will\u00a0see TPE relieved of half its Class 185 fleet by 2020. The half it keeps will undergo a complete overhaul.<\/p>\n

Northern has already signed\u00a0a contract with CAF for 281 new carriages \u2013 a combination of electric and diesel units. The last of these trains needs to enter service by the end of 2018 if Northern is to achieve the target of phasing out all of its Pacers within the next four years.<\/p>\n

\u2018Even when a Pacer is clean and on time, and [has] great service on board, it\u2019s still a Pacer. They\u2019ll be gone in 44 months.\u2019<\/p>\n

BIG COMMITMENTS TO TRAINING<\/p>\n

New trains are just part of the plan for the new franchises. Arriva\u2019s Northern employs more than 5,000 people. The new franchise, which runs until 2025, will go much further than in the past in terms of recruitment and training, making \u2018big commitments in terms of training, big commitments in terms of development.<\/p>\n

Northern has specified minimum targets for new apprentices,\u00a0graduates and trainees, has committed to scrapping zero-hour contracts and will make a concerted effort to recruit more people from disadvantaged backgrounds. There are also plans to invest more than \u00a32 million improving staff room facilities.<\/p>\n

Contrary to claims made by several of the trade unions, staff numbers will increase during the\u00a0new franchise, says Northern\u2019s Alex Hynes. In fact, Northern\u2019s staff numbers increased on the very first day of the new franchise.<\/p>\n

His opposite number at TPE, Leo Goodwin, echoed this, \u2018We\u2019re going to be investing in our team, our colleagues, as well to equip them with the skills and tools that they need to do the job to the\u00a0best of their ability.\u2019<\/p>\n

He added, \u2018We need to attract the next\u00a0generation of railway professionals into our industry, so we\u2019re going to be significantly expanding both our apprenticeship and graduate programmes. We\u2019ve committed to hire 36 new apprentices in the next few years, for example, and that will hopefully attract the talent that our industry\u2019s going to need to continue to grow and thrive.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New trains and training for the North   The North has been given a \u00a31 billion shopping list to transform rail services. A stark contrast to the previous franchise, which assumed no growth and included limited investment. In fact, passenger numbers rose by 50 per cent. The Northern and TransPennine Express franchises will introduce 140 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317,"href":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions\/317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpd.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}