§ Mr. DobsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport if franchise agreements for shared rail routes following privatisation will require mandatory inter-availability and common pricing for(a) full fare standard, (b) first class and (c) discounted tickets.
§ Mr. FreemanIt is our intention to include the following paragraph in the Secretary of State's formal guidance to the franchising director:
608W
§ Mr. NorrisThe Department does not hold information about headways on a station-by-station basis, or details on the specific length of incidents, including cancellations, which have resulted in a headway of more than 20 minutes. Line-by-line data showing the number of headways over 20 minutes are shown in the table.
"In considering the need for tickets to be inter-available between franchisees, you should consider whether the benefits outweigh the likely benefits of price competition and service diversity. You should encourage appropriate arrangements for co-operation between operators on the pricing of tickets and apportionment of revenues."
In many cases, private operators will make arrangements to ensure that ticket inter-availability continues because it will be in their own interests to do so. However, the franchising director has said that he expects inter-availability normally to be a requirement of franchise agreements for season and full-fare standard and first class tickets on routes over which two or more franchisees operate. At the same time, there would be freedom for 609W operators to introduce differential pricing and validity restrictions on discounted tickets in order to attract customers to their particular services.