PRIVATE companies have been invited to bid for the East Coast rail franchise, which has been run in the public sector since 2009.
The London-Edinburgh route – which runs through our region - has been run by the Department for Transport since National Express pulled out in November 2009, while GNER was forced to surrender the franchise two years before that.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin today announced a two-year contest for the East Coast and a detailed timetable for franchise arrangements over the next eight years.
The announcement is the result as the Government attempts to get the franchise process back on track.
Mr McLoughlin said: "This programme is a major step in delivering tangible improvements to services, providing long-term certainty to the market and supporting our huge programme of rail investment.
"Above all, in future franchise competitions we are placing passengers in the driving seat by ensuring that their views and satisfaction levels are taken into account when deciding which companies run our railway services.
"Franchising has been a force for good in the story of Britain's railways, transforming an industry that was in decline into one that today carries record numbers of passengers."
Rail unions reacted with anger to the East Coast line news, pointing out that the private sector has now twice given up the franchise.
RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: "Despite wasting hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money on the franchising circus, and instead of learning the lessons of the privatisation disasters on the East and West Coast main lines and across the rest of the network, the Government has this morning given the green light to a whole new wave of profiteering that will have the train companies laughing all the way to the bank.
"The proposed reprivatisation of the East Coast, after the public sector rescued the service following two private failures, proves conclusively that the political class have learnt absolutely nothing when it comes to our railways.
"This is a politically-inspired wrecking move designed to flog off this publicly-owned intercity route before the next election regardless of the consequences."
Manuel Cortes, leader of the TSSA rail union, added: "The Tories are just like the Bourbons when it comes to rail - they ignore all the lessons of history.
"The £50million West Coast line fiasco revealed that private franchises are a shambles. So they go and privatise the only successful publicly-owned franchise, the East Coast line.
"This is an act of political spite to reward their friends in the City and to tie the hands of an incoming Labour government in 2015. The most expensive rail network in Europe is about to get even more expensive."
