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News Release from: Freight Transport Association | Subject: Engineering overruns
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 29 February 2008
Freight suffers in railway engineering
disruptions
The Freight Transport Association welcomed the publication of the Office of Rail Regulation's report into Network Rail's handling of the engineering overruns at New Year 2008.
FTA said that it is important to remember that freight services as well as passengers suffered severe disruption due to the engineering overruns at Rugby, London Liverpool Street and Glasgow Shields Junction James Hookham, FTA Policy Director said, 'The engineering disruption due to the unplanned overruns at New Year really were bad news for all concerned, and this included significant freight flows
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 9 Dec 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Rail freight users were forced to switch to road based services for the duration of the disruption.
At a time when we are trying to get new customers to use rail services for the first time, particularly in the retail sector, this was very unfortunate.
Potential rail users will need to be reassured that such a disruption will not occur again, if they are to put their trust in rail.
'FTA is satisfied that the outcome of this event is that Network Rail has learnt the lessons and will be making significant changes to future work in order to prevent a reoccurrence.
The focus must be on the bigger picture, delivering a bigger, better railway for the future.
'FTA's Freight Future project in 2006 demonstrated that UK rail freight growth has been amongst the highest in the EU.
Rail will continue to play a prominent role in moving containers to and from ports, together with an increasing demand from many sectors of industry seeking to reduce their use of congested road networks.
However, industry needs to be confident that rail freight can deliver not only the capacity for increased traffic, but reliable and predictable journey times.
As such the creation of adequate diversionary capability to deal with both planned and unplanned engineering disruption is absolutely vital.'.
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