NATIONAL Express says it is carrying more than one in six people travelling from Edinburgh to London as part of a modal shift towards rail.
The owner of the prestigious East Coast rail franchise said yesterday that the line had increased its proportion of those using all modes of transport, from 13 per cent in April 2006 to 17 per cent at the end of June.
Chief executive Richard Bowke
r said there was evidence that some travellers who had not previously considered rail, both business and leisure users, were moving towards trains. In particular he believed Edinburgh-London travellers were moving away from flying.
"As the rising costs of air travel hits people through fuel surcharging, that helps, and there's an associated benefit from environmental concerns," Bowker said.
Improvements to the line mean National Express expects to cut scheduled journey times between Edinburgh and London by about 20 minutes, to 4 hours 20 minutes, by 2010.
This, Bowker argued, would make the time difference between flying and rail "marginal".
"We want to take time, from city centre to city centre, out of the equation, and focus on all of the advantages of using rail."
National Express is spending more than £40 million improving the franchise, ranging from installing wireless internet in all carriages to major station upgrades, with most of the investment coming in the first 18 months of operating the line.
Already the group is seeing increased returns from the route, with like-for-like revenue in the six months to 30 June increasing by 11 per cent, compared to 9 per cent growth across its entire rail business.
Shares in National Express eased slightly yesterday despite the group announcing a 13.9 per cent increase in first-half profit to £90m and predicting that results in the second half would continue to be strong.
Across the group, which also has bus and coach operations in the US, Spain and Morocco, revenue increased 4.4 per cent to £1.37 billion. The strong results prompted a 10 per cent increase in the interim dividend to 12.72p, but shares dipped 2.5p to 977p.
National Express released the results of a poll by YouGov yesterday that claimed 61 per cent of people were considering using public transport in the near future.
National Express is the biggest public transport firm in Spain after buying the country's second largest operator, Continental Auto, in 2007. Bowker said the company was in a good position to take advantage of the liberalisation of the Spanish transport market.
The full article contains 431 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
