News Releases

Arriva Group responds to the announcement today (16 October 2020) by the UK Government of a new three-year contract for CrossCountry Trains

Arriva blog: Reflections from our outgoing CEO on the essential role of public transport and how to 'build back better' 

Exploring the role of public transport in the wake of Covid - the importance of building passenger confidence, what the research tells us about the risk of infection while travelling and our ambition to build back better and greener.

• UK Department for Transport agreement ensures continuity for passengers and colleagues​
• Chiltern Railways will continue to build on its strong track record of service delivery and investment
• Arriva continues to work with Government to enable essential longer-term rail reform and respond quickly to fast changing travel patterns

• Chris Burchell to leave Arriva as UK MD Trains in mid-October
• Industry professional David Brown to take over the role

​Chris Burchell, Managing Director, Arriva UK Trains

• Eurostar CEO to join Arriva as Group CEO in early October 2020
• Mike succeeds Dr Manfred Rudhart who is stepping down after nearly five years in the role

Jana Siber, Managing Director, Mainland Europe 

The shock to the EU economy from the pandemic has hit all member states. This has led to EU governments to agree a historic COVID-19 recovery fund to help countries bounce back. As governments are now setting priorities and defining how the EU’s recovery fund should be used at a national level, it will be a challenging task to decide which amongst many competing priorities should be included in the national recovery and resilience plans.

Liz Benison, Managing Director, Mainland Europe 

Last week, I spoke at the Global Railway Review online summit on the challenges and opportunities arising from COVID-19 and what this means for the future of rail travel in Europe.  

The pandemic will undoubtedly accelerate changes already underway in pre-COVID times, including greater home working and the rise of online shopping. This will have implications for how and when people use public transport. However, exactly how this will play out is by no means clear and we can already see passengers respond in different ways. For instance, passenger numbers have already bounced back to near-normal levels on Arriva's rail services in Denmark, whereas in the Netherlands we are at the 50% mark. 

Richard McLean, Managing Director, Grand Central Railway

On Sunday I was at York Station to greet our first customer-carrying train in almost four months. For me it was a pivotal moment - one which concluded a huge amount of planning and preparation but also opened the next chapter for us.  It seems a very long time ago that we made the tough but necessary decision to suspend our services. As an Open Access train operator, we‘re not part of a Government franchise which means we rely completely on tickets sales.

Anne Hettinga, Arriva Netherlands CEO

The reaction to Covid-19 in the Netherlands was a so-called ‘intelligent lockdown’, which strived to achieve a balance between implementing necessary measures to tackle the virus while allowing ordinary life to continue as much as possible.