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Darling disowns railway support target
Franchise remapping – one task too many?
Signalling getting older
Policy initiatives – unreality knows no bounds
£50million/year fund for small enhancements
Northern line – politics not technology
As you can see, December Informed Sources is a very ‘busy’ column with six disparate items.
I had the chance at the DfT press conference, held to announce the remapping of the Central Trains franchise, to ask Transport Secretary Alistair Darling about the Government’s aspiration for the level of support for the railways under the current Periodic Review. As you know, one of his officials said at a conference durting the summer that £3-3.5 billion a year would keep the Treasury quiet.
When I put this to Darling he denied the number, said that ministers not officials made policy and anyway the aim was to put more money into the railways. ‘More than the £6.5 billion this year’, I asked? And you can read what followed, but it is all very vague, as is usually the case when dealing with the Transport Secretary.
Subsequently an Informed Source in the Treasury explained that the level of support for railways would be up to the DfT to determine within the Department’s overall budget agreed with the Treasury. All very weaselly, but the broad hint was that the budget will assume less railway.
Details of the franchise remapping proposals are in the News pages. I am more concerned about the impact of this upheaval on work to improve the railway. No 10 Downing street is calling for a 90% Public Performance Measure in time for the next election, but this will mean more SWT-style timetable recasts just as everyone is starting to bid for the new franchises – and there is a finite supply of skilled timetablers. There’s a related Railtalk on the associated loss of focus in the new franchises – ‘West Midlands’ will stretch from London to Preston.
Held over from last month’s column the ageing signalling story brings home the effect of the crisis in the industry – first spotted in the column back in the days of Railtrack and only now coming to an end. Would you expect the average age of interlocking to have increased or decreased since privatisation? All is revealed.
Next, there’s a fine old rant over two loopy policy initiatives floated in the Sunday papers over one weekend - banning alcohol on trains and the ‘airport-style’ scanning trials at stations. In both cases the Government backpedalled furiously when the reaction was less than favourable. On the drinks ban, they claimed it had the support of the British Transport Police – only for the BTP to say the next day that it was not people getting drunk on trains but drunk people getting on trains that was the problem and 24 hour opening would make it worse.
Now for some good news. Deep in an ORR consultation document I found that the Government is to underwrite a £50 million a year fund for small enhancements, with four pilot schemes already committed. While £50 million doesn’t buy much nowadays, if you can piggyback onto major projects you can get a bigger bang for your buck and buy useful features, or provision for future expansion.
Finally the Northern Line trip cock storm in a tea-cup. As I explain, this was all about Alstom’s Private Finance Initiative train provision deal and little or nothing to do with trip cocks. What seems clear is that the reliability of the fleet has gone downhill since I visited Golder’s Green depot (Modern Railways April 2002) and they were getting over 20,000km per casualty – and 200,000km in one particular week. But as always you have to ask how a casualty is defined.
Unfortunately, lack of time and space meant that ‘Who runs the TOCs 2005’ had to be looped. With January Informed Sources dominated by the annual Fleet Reliability Survey, it’s going to have to be ‘who runs the TOCs 2006’. Apologies to fans of this feature.
Fleet reliability brings us to the Fourth Friday Club meeting on 25 November when we will have the Golden Spanners awards for reliability based on the National Fleet Reliability Improvement Programme (NFRIP) figures. Captain Deltic is getting his overalls out to make the presentations.
Talking of which it was a big disappointment that a long weekend in Gent meant that I had to turn down the invitation to unveil GNER’s ‘Deltic 50’ nameplate at the end of October. And, no, I wasn’t working for English Electric when the loco rolled out at Preston.
Mind you, I did unveil a plaque commemorating the start of testing of Adtranz’s CBI pilot scheme resignalling at Horsham some time back and look what happened to that – pilot scheme cancelled! So perhaps travellers on GNER had a lucky escape.
November has seen some interesting escapes from the office. I went to East Finchely to see how Metronet and Alcatel are getting on with the new Seltrac signalling for the Northern Line. A very conservative approach, based on the DLR signalling system, looked encouraging. Expect a feature article.
Next, the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers had a paper on a European project to develop satellite based train location for lightly used lines. Events permitting I hope to feature it in the January column. Network Rail is showing interest.
Meanwhile, several old favourites grumble on. An electronic brown envelope brought me inside information on the Government’s plans for the ITSO smartcard to invade what they call ‘Oyster Land’. Meanwhile Mayor Ken is putting the squeeze on with big discounts for Oyster users.
DfT has asked for another 30 days to process my Freedom of Information request for a copy of the ‘Letter Agreement’ setting out the details of the 2002 rescue deal for the two Virgin franchises. I am also waiting on DfT for an explanation of some anomalies in the Virgin West Coast franchise subsidies which I submitted a couple of months ago. It is worrying that a railway writer can ask questions about published numbers which a government department can’t answer immediately.
This week I’m off to Birmingham to talk to Virgin Cross Country about their immediate future plus their plans to retain the franchise. Modern Railways is not the most popular publication with VCC, mainly because of our critical comments about the padding in the forthcoming December timetable. For the techies in the readership I also hope to find out about the reported engine problems on the Voyagers. Some interesting theories are emerging.
No major developments on Alycidon this month, but we have added some more articles to the Archive – in particular the big humaan factors article ‘The naked driver’. I have also been taken to task by a reader over TRAC – where the ‘A’ stands for ‘acronym’.
Said reader pointed out that an acronym is a set of initials that make a word. I didn’t agree, but Mrs F did. So I went to her dictionary. Yes, I was wrong.
But before admitting defeat I went to my 1962 Chambers, bought with an apprentice prize together with a set of socket spanners (Whitworth!!). Oops, same definition.
So TRAC is an abbreviation not an acronym. And I have been calling abbreviations acronyms all this time. Most embarassing. Must re-write the TRAC home page.
As always, feedback welcome to Roger@Alycidon.com
Roger