Virgin Trains bid to return to UK railway rejected by regulator

Virgin Trains' application to return to Britain’s west coast mainline has been rejected by the rail regulator.

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) rebuffed three existing applications to run “open access” private company train services out of London’s Euston station along the route.

In its findings, the ORR said there was insufficient capacity on the line, and it would affect existing passenger train and freight users.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander wants open access rail services restricted because they pose a threat to revenue from the government’s renationalised Great British Railway (GBR) and could also create congestion on the network.

The services are operated by a private company and utilise gaps in the timetable or the network. They do not receive subsidy and keep all profits.

Virgin proposed to run services along the line to Glasgow as well as separate routes to Manchester and Liverpool. The other rejected applications were from First Group, which wanted to operate a new budget Lumo service to Manchester, and the French company Alstom, which had wanted to run a service to north Wales.

Virgin ran the west coast mainline franchise for 20 years after privatisation.

“In the case of these three applications, lack of capacity and the anticipated impact on performance alone meant we could not approve them. As such, our duty to have regard to the funds available to the secretary of state was not relevant to this decision,” the ORR said.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com