Govia

Department for Transport announces Integrated Kent franchise
_______________________________________________________________

date 30 November 2005
source Govia
type Press release

The Department for Transport today announced that GoVia has been awarded the contract to run the Integrated Kent franchise (IKF) from 01 April 2006.

The IKF will include routes on the national rail network currently operated by South Eastern Trains throughout Kent, parts of East Sussex and South East London.

It will also include new high speed commuter services from St Pancras making use of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) from 2009.

The franchise contract is for 8 years with the final 2 years dependent on service performance achieving preset targets. The total subsidy for IKF is £585m over 8 years.

The franchise area has already benefited from almost £700 million in investment on new rolling stock and improved infrastructure. £250 million will be invested on new high speed trains for CTRL.

Given investment in the region the new operator will increase fares by 3% above inflation from January 2007 for five years to ensure there is a fair balance in cost between the taxpayer and fare paying passenger.

GoVia has also committed to:

o Invest around £76 million in passenger and staff facilities.
o Oversee the construction of two depots in East Kent to maintain the new and existing fleet of trains.
o Improve performance with all day PPM train performance of 91.6% by March 2010 and 93.74% by March 2014.
o Provide services which are additional to the base line DfT asked for in the ITT, including a strengthened half-hourly service to Beckenham Junction to Victoria, an additional peak service between Faversham o and Cannon Street, two additional peak trains between Ashford and Charing Cross and some extra mid-evening and late evening trains to suburban and Kent destinations from London.
o Run services to Dover if safety concerns at the Shakespeare Tunnel can be overcome.

Railhub Archive ::: 2005-11-30 GOV-001