The West Coast Waltz – latest steps

15 October 2012

The good news – it looks like Virgin will keep running the West Coast for the next few months, so there will be some certainty, especially around Christmas tickets and engineering works.

The not such good news – there is going to be an interim, holding, franchise, possibly for a couple of years while the whole competition for the long term franchise is started afresh. This potentially delays some investment and timetable changes that we passengers would have benefitted from (and to a degree have been paying for already!). It will destabilise staff. It will create a whole fresh set of handover problems – such as who deals with outstanding complaints. A potential three year delay is serious and passengers will need some reassurance that everything will not be frozen in aspic until then.