Ban of Alcohol Consumption on Tube – 1 June
May 7th, 2008 under England, London, London Underground, Rail. [ Comments: none ]

Newly elected London Mayor, Boris Johnson, announced the implementation of one of the key pledges of his election manifesto yesterday, for which London voted for by a majority of approximately 140,000 combined preference votes. It has, however, come under a sustained attack from unions fearing that their members will have to approach members of the public consuming alcohol to have to deal with it.

There will be no powers to deal with the incident until the Conditions of Carriage for London transport have been amended, a process which will take about a year according to The Times in a news article released this evening. There will, reportedly, not be regular patrols of carriages by Transport for London or British Transport Police officials but there will be the recruitment of 440 community support officers to assist with any disorder related incidents.

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West Coast Main Line News
May 7th, 2008 under England, Infrastructure, London Midland, Rail, South West Trains, Train Operating Co's, Virgin Trains. [ Comments: 1 ]

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has approved the recently unveiled Network Rail delivery plan as detailed in March 2008. The ORR considers the delivery plan sufficiently robust for the completion of the modernisation work by the end of 2008. The aim of the work is to allow the number of services to run to increase by 30% and also allow for much improved journey times.

The work is going ahead in the way Network Rail desires despite protests from the Train Operating Companies that use the Main Line for its passenger and freight services. There will be disruption to routes at all bank holidays and most weekends until the end of the year meaning the challenge to passengers and the desirability of traveling via rail will be much reduced.

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