INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview March 2007
When I signed off the February e-Preview I expected the lead story in
March to be the negative attitudes to electrification within Government.
But in this job you never know what will happen next and as you can
read below a classic Informed Sources mix of politics, engineering and
money takes the top spot this month.
To support the electrification item I had submitted this petition to
the No 10 web site.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to:
Instruct the Department for Transport to, within six months, update the
1981 joint Department of Transport/British Rail ‘Review of main line
electrification’ to take into account current installation and energy
costs and rail traffic levels; and, if the positive conclusions of the
original report still stand, revive the proposals for a rolling programme
of main line electrification in Britain.
It went live on 26 January and in the first week it reached 500
signatures. Then the whole issue of the No 10 petition took off, with the
petition opposing road pricing topping 1 million signatures and continuing
to climb. Luckily, then the electrification petition was on the first
page so, hopefully it picked up some stray signatures.
After three weeks it had 1200 signatures and this week the big push
starts when Modern Railways is published. While I am not so naïve to
believe that the PM will do other than ignore this petition, if we can get
it into the top three or four of the Transport & Infrastructure
petitions it will provide industry with additional leverage when arguing
with DfT Rail. I hope you will support the petition, Here is the URL:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Electrify/
I have also posted my update of the 1981 Joint Review of main line
electrification from the May 2006 Modern Railways on Alycidon Rail at::
http://www.alycidon.com/ALYCIDON%20RAIL/Electrification%20archive/Electrification%20review%201981%20revisited%20May%202006.htm
Now back to the March column
Competition referral wrecks Pendolino lengthening plan.
Electrification in limbo
Boiling frogs cross the road
Smart card wars hot up
As explained in Informed Sources last year, the proposed lengthening of
the Pendolino fleet to 10 or 11 cars was up against the clock. It
takes time to order the components for the extra vehicles and set up a new
production line. In addition, the ideal time to insert the extra cars
is during the H2 bogie exam, starting in December 2008, when each trains
would be out of services for 8-9 days.
Alstom had begun preliminary work on the basis of a handshake
agreement, but a formal Notification to Proceed was needed by 31 January,
followed by a signed contract by 31 March.
On 15 January Virgin Rail Group gave DfT Rail its proposal for an 11
car fleet at a cost of £180 million. But on 1 February RBS pulled the
financial plug. Without a contract Alstom stopped the preliminary work
and stood down its project team.
Why did RBS withdraw? In one word, ‘uncertainty’.
Complaint
Since DfT Rail launched its complaint about rolling stock lease rentals
to ORR I have been warning that banks don’t like uncertainty. And when
ORR said, on 29 November, that it was ‘minded’ to refer the ROSCOs to
the Competition Commission, train leasing became riskier.
While the DfT Rail’s complaint concerned the ex British Rail fleets,
the Commission will be looking at the whole market, because old trains
compete with new and vice versa. The ROSCOs are worried that rentals of
new trains bought since privatisation could be capped or regulated.
So no wonder RBS was spooked. But, you have to ask why, if they knew
it was coming from the end of November, it took them until the day after
Alstom’s first critical date to decide to pull out?
It took a couple of days for RBS/Angel and DfT Rail to realise just
what they had done. I don’t think DfT Rail took the critical relationship
between manufacture and the H2 exam seriously.
In an official statement the Department said ‘We plan to work with
Virgin Trains to find alternative arrangements to ensure trains with
adequate capacity can operate on West Coast services’. And Marsham Street
sources tried to assure me that an ORR referral was not a ‘fait accompli’
and was not about current lease prices anyway.
So, a classic balls-up, with all the twists and turns described in
detail in the column. As I write this, DfT Rail and RBS/Angel are trying
to come to a face saving compromise. This centres on a letter from DfT
Rail to RBS, which, for once, has not arrived on my desk in a brown
paper envelope or electronically.
According to informed Sources, this activity has rescued the
lengthening project from the mortuary, still breathing, and it could be revived.
If it does go ahead after all it will have lost six months. I outline
in some detail the consequences of this totally unnecessary delay –
including an extra £10 million on the bill.
Electrification
DfT Rail appears to cut and paste objections to electrocution into
ministers’ speeches and internal documents. Two such are that it is
‘expensive and adds to the complexity of the overall railway’.
Similarly, the specification of the InterCity Express Programme assumes
that electrification in the UK ‘will remain broadly similar to that
today’. And at a Rail Strategy Workshop at DfT a ‘possible theme’ was
‘Put the wires up or take them down’? Obviously electrification comes
under the too difficult category as key decision on the HLOS and SoFA get
nearer.
Time to stop the rot. So this month I spend some deconstructing the
various elements of the ministers’ views, or, rather the view of the
civil servants behind them.
I also looks at benchmark costs where consultants appear to disagree.
Those working for DfT Rail reckon it is £500,000 per single track
kilometre while others confirm my figure of £250,000 per stkm.
As a means of demonstrating affordability I have introduced a new unit
of currency, the Spark. One Spark equals £250,000 - the cost of a
track km of electrification. Pricing things in Sparks – from John Armitt’s
salary to franchise bidding costs is instructive.
Add in some arguments on ‘complexity’ and a look at the energy
efficiency compared with diesel traction and I hope that this item will help
those trying to get electrification back on the agenda. Which is where
we came in with the petition.
Pricey roads
Now for the good news. What would you think costs the most, adding a
single track mile of electrified railway or a mile of extra lane to a
motorway?
For example, the Trent Valley four-tracking (TV4) involves 12 route
miles of new double track, 50 miles of overhead line equipment,
resignalling, 22 new bridges and two new high-speed junctions. The budget is
£350million, although the final figure could be nearer £330 million.
Anyway, the budget prices equates £14.6 million for a single mile of
electrified, signalled track.
Adding an extra lane to each carriageway over 53 miles of the M6 is
quoted by the Highways Agency at £2.9 billion. That makes the cost per
mile of a single lane of motorway £27 million. Yes, twice the cost of
a high tech railway.
Smart cards
On behalf of its members, ATOC has accepted the Mayor of London’s
offer-cum-ultimatum to implement Oyster Pay As You Go at National Rail
stations within TfL’s Zones. So what, you ask?
Well, the real interest is in the in-fighting going on behind the
scenes featured in the column. For a start, DfT Rail is leaning on Mayor Ken
to maker Oyster ITSO smartcard compliant and has offered to pay £19
million. Ken is leaning on the National Rail TOCs to accept Oyster PAYG.
DfT Rail is using replacement franchises to make the hapless TOCs
implement ITSO. But the TOCs are not so hapless because ATOC owns Rail
Settlement Plan. And Rail Settlement Plan is now leaning on ITSO to do
smart card ticketing its way. And the TOCs are leaning on Mayor Ken to
make Oyster ITSO compliant for its commuters from outside the TfL Zones.
As far as I can tell this is a total free for all, with collateral
damage all round. And if that were not enough, SWT is proposing a different
was of using ITSO which by-passes the ITSO rail ticketing product.
Anyway RSP says that this ITSO product is not fit for purpose and is
developing something better.
Read quickly, have a laugh and move on, is my recommendation. I will
try to explain what is happening in future issues.
Roger’s blog
I’ve been quite busy since the last e-Preview. The January Fourth
Friday Club meeting was a sell out. The Editor was worried that the home
team would have to stand, but in the end we had one seat spare with the
maximum capacity arrangement holding 150.
On 7 February I went to Bletchley Depot to name a class 321 ‘Bletchley’
Pride. This marked the award of a second consecutive Golden Spanner
for the Depot’s Class 321 EMUs, the most reliable trains in Britain.
Given thst SRA policy was to close Bletchely, its current pre-eminence is
a tribute to the motivation of the management and staff who refused to
give in. Dare anyone close them now?
The following week there was a trip to Wabtec at Doncaster to see the
first refurbished IC 125 Mk 3 coaches. A very high quality, and quite
different to the FGW units I saw before Christmas. I will try to write
a comparison which reflects the different markets facing these
operators.
This coming week, of course, is Railtex, when I hope to meet many
e-Preview subscribers. Plus, having been very rude about Transport Minister
Tom Harris in the February column, just before it was published I
received an invite to meet him for a ‘get to know you session’ this coming
Wednesday. Will it be one of those meetings where the host has a copy
of Modern Railways open on the desk with lots of magic marker in
evidence?
And the week after that could see the high point of my whole career.
FCC has invited me to open the refurbished toilets at Welwyn Garden City
station. Going up to London next day to join an industry round table
on the future of the railways hosted by the Secretary of State for
Transport Douglas Alexander can only be an anti-climax.
That’s all for now
Roger
