2000-07-20 £180bn Ten year investment plan to deliver top class transport system (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions)

2000-07-20 Government's £25bn boost for London's transport (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions)

2000-07-20 Transport (ten year plan) (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions)

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date 22 September 2000
source ATOC
type Press release

Britain's train operators said today the £40million passenger security plan, which was announced two years ago, is starting to provide them with a safe and secure journey on the rail network.

This followed the release of the British Transport Police Annual Report that showed only a 1.4 per cent increase in reported crime on the railways in England and Wales and a 12.8 per cent decrease in Scotland - compared to a 3.8 per cent rise nationally. The rail industry achieved this against a growth of six per cent more passengers (50 million) for the past year.

ATOC Director General, George Muir, said: "Train operators are fully aware of the need to provide passengers with a safe and secure journey to encourage them to travel by rail. It is good to see objective evidence that our efforts are bearing fruit but we are by no means complacent.

"With one billion passenger journeys over the past year, and this number expected to increase by 50 per cent over the next 10 years, we will continue to invest in more staff, more surveillance and better fencing and lighting to provide the safest possible travel environment."

Commitments the industry has made and delivered are:

o 877 stations now have CCTV with many linked to local authority surveillance centres.

o CCTV now covers 516 car parks. Combined with better lighting and fencing, these initiatives have reduced car park crime at some stations by as much as 60 per cent.

o Installing ticket gates at stations has reduced halved crime at some stations and also led to reduce costs in repairing vandalism and graffiti.

o The number of customer facing staff have increased by more than 2,000 since privatisation with a further 270 planned for later this year. In addition 600 security staff have specific roles to patrol trains and stations.

o Train companies have committed themselves to a Code of Practice on improving actual and perceived personal security.

ENDS

For more information call the ATOC Press Office on 020 7904 3010

Railhub Archive ::: 2000-09-22 ATO-001