Control of Rail Services
Unlike the today's London Overground, TfL exercised no operational or regulatory control over rail services on the Overground Network, but funded station improvements such as standardised information presentation, branded signage, CCTV and lighting. Operational powers remained with the individual train operators.
In 2004 TfL put forward proposals for a "London Regional Rail Authority" to be established, which would give TfL regulatory powers over rail services in and around Greater London. The Department for Transport considered that granting operational control of rail services to the London mayor would result in fragmentation of the National Rail system. Out of these proposals evolved a new mechanism for giving the London mayor more control over rail services within London, and London Overground was established as a National Rail franchise managed by TfL in 2007. This new system, mostly in North London, was the successor to the Overground Network pilot. ON was quietly forgotten and TfL now promotes LO as its rail service.
Read more about this topic: Overground Network
Famous quotes containing the words control, rail and/or services:
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)