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(asked on 10th November 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to his Department's stakeholder consultation on the Trans-Pennine Express Rail Franchise and the Northern Rail Franchise, published in June 2014, what assessment he has made of the compatibility of continuing to operate Pacer railbuses alongside the requirement to introduce driver-only operation.


Answered by
Robert Goodwill Portrait
Robert Goodwill
This question was answered on 17th November 2014

In the consultation on the future of the TransPennine Express (TPE) and Northern franchises, we stated that: “on the Northern franchise, we expect to require bidders to set out how Driver Only Operation (DOO) may be introduced onto suitable services. On TPE, this will be left at bidders’ discretion”. DOO is a safe method that is already the working practice on around 30% of existing franchise services. It will only be introduced where appropriate and where suitable technology can be put in place; this is unlikely to be the case for the Pacer units, which would mean that we would not require the introduction of DOO for these trains. In addition, we will require bidders for the Northern franchise to include proposals as part of their bids for the removal of Pacer units.

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