News
NORTHERN RAIL’S TOP AWARDS FOR INNOVATION
8th July 2010
|
Northern is celebrating after scooping two top national awards and four commendations at the Railway Industry Innovation Awards. We won the ‘Cross-industry Partnership Award’ in conjunction with Network Rail, Direct Rail Services, Department for Transport, Cumbria County Council and Allerdale Borough Council for our response to the Cumbrian floods last year. We all worked together to bring transport links back to the area following the collapse of Northside Bridge, which connected the two sides of the town. A temporary station was constructed in less than a week and a train service introduced that offered double the usual capacity and frequency, ensuring residents could access schools, work, health facilities and more. The result was that the railway provided some sense of normality for the communities of Cumbria while they came to terms with the impact of the devastating floods. Jo Kaye, Network Rail route director said: "This award recognises the roles played by all the organisations involved in delivering what was a truly amazing project - the building of a temporary railway station in less than a week, which brought a sense of normality to the people of Workington at a time when they needed it most. Northern also claimed the top award in the ‘Operations and Performance’ category for a project to develop an interactive and live method of train performance reporting, helping engineers to identify faults and react more quickly to rectify problems. Northern is the first UK train operator to develop this method of reporting, which has contributed to a significant improvement in train reliability. We also received a commended citation in the same category for our Southport-Manchester Airport Quality Improvement Team, as well as being commended in the Engineering, Safety and Small Scale Project categories. Ian Bevan, Managing Director, Northern, said: “We are delighted to receive national recognition for both our partnership working and our efforts to improve the performance and reliability of our fleet. We’ve made a lot of progress in delivering a better service for our customers since we started, but we are determined to keep improving. “We are extremely proud of these accolades which are testament to the tremendous support and hard work put in by everyone at Northern.” |
