National Express East Anglia managing director Andrew Chivers

As National Express East Anglia prepares to hand over its franchise to Abellio’s Greater Anglia, Paul Geater spoke to the outgoing managing director, Andrew Chivers

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THIS weekend sees the end of an era on East Anglia’s trains.

At midnight on Saturday the last National Express East Anglia passenger service will run as the franchise is taken over by Greater Anglia – owned by the Dutch-based Abellio group.

After nearly eight years of running the service throughout this region National Express will be left with only the C2C commuter service between Southend and Fenchurch Street.

The man who has run National Express’ rail services for the last five years is, unlike most of his colleagues, staying with the company.

And Andrew Chivers has admitted National Express could mount a bid to win it back when the long-term franchise comes up to be awarded in 2014.

He said: “Potential franchisees will be starting to bid in 2013. We will be looking at that when the time comes.”

But as the end of the East Anglia franchise approaches, Mr Chivers said his company could look back with satisfaction on many achievements.

He said: “Reliability has improved, on average, from 85% when National Express, or one as it was then called, took over to 91% today.

“During that time we have carried 15% more passengers on 15% more trains over the same infrastructure.”

He accepted there had been challenges.

Main line trains had been transfered to the region and refurbished shortly before the franchise started in 2004 – and were now becoming due for another major refurbishment.

This meant they were now looking tired, but they were basically sound and would probably be improved in the future.

However the company had introduced new trains on many of its services, particularly in Essex and on the line between London and Cambridge.

“That was not in the franchise agreement but it was negotiated with the government during the franchise as the market expanded,” he said.

His company pioneered close working with infrastructure company Network Rail – staff sit together in the regional control centre, working together when issues arise.

And most of the delays that have affected passengers have been because of infrastructure problems rather than train problems.

Signalling failures, overhead line problems (except rare occasions when a train has snagged wires), and engineering over-runs are the responsibility of Network Rail.

However National Express has come under fire for not communicating well enough with its passengers when things go wrong.

Mr Chivers insisted this had improved during the years of the franchise.

He said: “We now try to get information to passengers as soon as we have it to give them the full picture to enable them to make the appropriate choice.

“If there is a problem on the line through Essex it is going to cause delays and there is nothing that we can do about that.

“But it is important to tell people and we are now doing that using social media, announcements over train PA systems, and other methods so people can make an informed choice.”

Looking forward the new train operating company will face many of the same challenges as National Express has done over the last eight years.

The line through much of Essex – between Colchester and Shenfield – is the most intensively-used two-track rail section in the country.

As well as hundreds of passenger trains it also has to cope with 30 freight trains a day – and they are heavier and slower than other services.

The overhead wires between Chelmsford and Liverpool Street are being replaced at a cost of £200 million – the basic infrastructure dates from the 1940s.

The programme should have been completed in time for the Olympics – but in the event the programme has slipped and will not now be finished until Crossrail is completed in 2015.

Problems that have caused frustration for passengers have stemmed from a number of issues outside the control of the industry – a spate of metal thefts over recent years has caused serious problems.

Mr Chivers said: “That has been a problem for Network Rail and of course for our passengers. Hopefully things are happening now to ease that.”

His company was working with Network Rail to try to identify problems before they became major – some trains are fitted with cameras to monitor the infrastructure and spot potential issues before they stop trains.

And National Express engineers have developed new ways of diagnosing potential problems on trains before they result in failures.

He said: “This has helped improve the reliablity of our trains over the last few years.”