East Midlands Railway has bucked a trend amongst main line operators. Where others have still been operating reduced timetables, it pressed ahead with a significant enhancement in May on both its Midland main line services to and from London St Pancras and on its regional routes.
The MML timetable has performed well, but the regional service struggled from the outset, prompting the decision to cut back services just four weeks after the timetable was introduced. Nonetheless, EMR is still operating around 70 more trains per day than it did prior to the May timetable change.
Both timetable changes included significant crew training requirements on new traction types, a task made significantly more challenging by the pandemic. EMR Managing Director Will Rogers reported in late August that the operator was still seeing a significant number of positive Covid cases amongst its staff, which it was continuing to manage closely.
At the outset of the pandemic EMR introduced a command structure within the business; ‘we’re looking at how we roll that into business as usual’ reports Mr Rogers. ‘In the meantime, we’re aiming to balance demand with the level of service we can reliably resource.’
DEMAND RETURN
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