{"id":164817,"date":"2025-01-07T19:01:51","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T09:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=58884"},"modified":"2025-01-07T19:01:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T09:01:51","slug":"hs1-ordered-to-lower-fees-on-line-to-channel-tunnel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=164817","title":{"rendered":"HS1 ordered to lower fees on line to Channel Tunnel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The UK\u2019s Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has ordered HS1, which connects London St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel, to lower its charges from April 2025, stating the line was not fulfilling its duties for efficient spending.<\/strong><br \/>\n<span id=\"more-58884\"><\/span>The high-speed line, used by Southeastern and Eurostar passenger and freight trains, has been told to reduce its fees by 3.8 per cent from its latest plans published in November. The price drop means that passenger and freight trains could save up to 5 million pounds (\u20ac6.02m) a year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe regulator has determined that overall charges should come down by 3.8 per cent (\u00a35m per year) compared to HS1 Ltd\u2019s latest plans,\u201d the regulator stated this morning. \u201cAs part of this, the company is being directed to reduce its charges for renewing its track assets and its stations, including St Pancras. It must also reduce its charges for its day-to-day operations and maintenance of the railway.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>ORR said it had been able to identify \u201cspecific areas\u201d in the company\u2019s spending plans where \u201cfurther improvements can be made, resulting in savings to passenger and freight train operators.\u201d It added that \u201cbetter management of the track and station assets can result in lower charges.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"readmore\">\n<div class=\"readmore-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/railfreight\/2025\/01\/06\/snow-pierces-british-railways\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Settle-Junction-128x128.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"readmore-thumbnail\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"readmore-info\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/railfreight\/2025\/01\/06\/snow-pierces-british-railways\/\" class=\"readmore-title\">Snow pierces British railways<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<h2>How it breaks down<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-48795 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.railtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/ORRhs1.png\" alt=\"How the ORR's final ruling was broken down.\" width=\"2158\" height=\"696\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">How the ORR&#8217;s final ruling was broken down. \u00a9 ORR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The specific areas that the ORR said had to be revised included HS1\u2019s charges for renewals, saying they were not efficient and must be reduced by \u00a31.9m per year for the HS1 Route and by \u00a30.9m per year for station renewals. Meanwhile, its charges for operations and maintenance were also deemed inefficient, with ORR stating they must come down by \u00a32.3m per year.<\/p>\n<p>As for passenger growth, ORR said its ruling was separate from the decision on access to HS1, but it assumed a lower price would support long-term growth in passenger traffic, including the introduction of new operators.<\/p>\n<p>The decision will mean HS1\u2019s total regulated income will come down by more than 10 per cent compared to what it spent previously. Feras Alshaker, ORR\u2019s director of planning and performance, said: \u201cAlthough, overall, HS1\u2019s original plans were good, the company must now change specific areas of those plans to account for our decisions, which should benefit everyone who uses this railway.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>This article was originally published on our sister publication <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railtech.com\/all\/2025\/01\/06\/5m-in-savings-hs1-ordered-to-cut-spending-on-eurostar-line\/\"  rel=\"noopener\">RailTech.com<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The UK\u2019s Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has ordered HS1, which connects London St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel, to lower its charges from\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[329,14104,343,47,85,701],"tags":[12634],"class_list":["post-164817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-channel-tunnel","category-hs1","category-infrastructure","category-rail-news","category-uk","category-united-kingdom","tag-railfreight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164817"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165149,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164817\/revisions\/165149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}