On 14 Mar, 15:42, "Paul Scott" wrote:

The ELL will be DC third rail - and I shall be very surprised if in due
course it isn't run by Southern, as contractors to TfL as the services will
have to be timetabled into the existing paths, indeed the extension of the
railway to Crystal Palace and Croydon will subsume certain existing
services.


Current bidders for London Overground (= NLL, ELLx, WLL, GOBLIN) are
MTR/Laing (Chiltern) and GoVia (Southern). AIUI the Southern franchise
deal allows for transferring certain services to ELLx when it opens,
so this side of things won't be a problem whoever wins.

Network Rail is supposed to be able to resolve timetable conflicts
between different operators, and doesn't do a terrible job: for
example, although the South Central and South Eastern franchises have
been under the same control for much of privatisation (Connex and now
GoVia), the period when GoVia and SRA were running South Central and
South Eastern respectively was not a disaster.

Also, the LO franchise is rather different from the South Central
franchise, in that it's far more tightly specced and responsible to
TfL - much of the strategic/planning work that GoVia does for Southern
will be done by TfL for LO.

So overall, I don't think GoVia has the kind of advantage in bidding
that you're suggesting - although they might win by default if it
transpires that Laing's new owners don't have the same interest in
rail as the previous management.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org