Informed Sources e-preview by Roger Ford (view all archives)

Informed Sources e-Preview August 2007

Once upon a time the August Modern Railways was a quiet issue. I would persuade the editor to indulge me with a bit of nostalgia for holiday reading and a picture feature might have a ‘buckets and spades’ theme. But in the 21st Century those gentle days have gone.

This week possibly even today, the Government will publish its High
Level Output Specification (HLOS) and the Statement of Funds Available (SoFA). The Scottish Ministers published their HLOS and SoFA on 13 July and, I’m glad to say’ it is electrification rich. More next month.

New train Tsunami looms

IEP – reality starts to bite.

Electrification – they never give up

Franchises bidders take the Micawber position

All change in West Midlands new trains

Meanwhile this month’s Informed Sources is yet again bursting at the
seams, starting with an analysis of yet another emerging problem,
although it’s not new to the column.

Under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 2005 all rail vehicles,
will have to be fully compliant with the Rail Vehicle Accessibility
Regulations (RVAR) from 1 January 2020. That includes all vehicles built before 1998 when the RVAR came into effect.

Non RVAR compliant fleet totals

Pre RVAR vehicle totals

	EMU	DMU	Loco Hauled	Total
L&SE	2979	343		3322
Regional	519	1203		1722
InterCity			953	953
Grand totals	3498	1546	953	5997

Here’s a little table which shows the scale of the problem. Most of
the InterCity vehicles will be covered by the Intercity Express Programme (IEP), allegedly, but that still leaves 5000 EMU and DMU vehicles to be replaced in the next 12 years. In other words 500 replacement vehicles a year if deliveries start next year.

Considering how proud the Government is of the 1000 replacement
vehicles in the HLOS, you have to wonder whether the implications of the 2020 compliance date have sunk in at DfT, not to mention the Treasury.

Of course, you could make some of the pre-1998 stock. RVAR compliant.

But then, you run into another problem.

With most of the ex-BR fleets, the ROSCOs work on a 35 year book life.
So anything built after 1985 will have some useful life after 2020.
But modification will have a cost and the ROSCOs will need to earn a
return on that investment over – say, 10 years

Softly softly

To make modification affordable, or even possible, some tolerance will
have to be built into the RVAR specifications. For example door
buttons and grab handles have to be between 700mm and 1200 above the ground. A plus or minus 10% tolerance could avoid drilling holes in the body structure.

I call this ‘soft compliance’. If it was combined with refurbishment
programmes over the next seven years, then the cost would be further
reduced. Plis with a minimum of 10 years service life ahead, the increase in rentals would be small.

Seems straightforward put like that. But softening the RVAR for
pre-1998 stock is the big challenge. Informed Sources within DfT tell me that they are on the case and that the way to get the Disability Lobby to hand back some of their hard won legislative rights is ‘softly softly’.

As you might imagine I disagree. The response to the article could be
interesting.

On numbers, DfT’s analysis suggest that around 2600 vehicles could be modified to achieve ‘soft compliance. My fleet-based analysis gives
3396, but if you take the Class 150s and the Class 317s out of my list
there’s only 10% difference between us.

But even if life extension is possible, DfT Rail estimates that just
under 2300 EMU and DMU vehicles will still need to be replaced between now and 2020. I can see this issue becoming another Ballybunion vortex.

InterCity Express

Well, the Expressions of Interest (EoI) in the Intercity Express
Programme (IEP) are all in - sort of. DfT Rail had to extend the 18 June closing date by 10 days as some would-be bidders struggled to provide all the information required, including supplementaries.

A new abbreviation is going to have to be added to TRAC – ERA short for Express Rail Alliance, the consortium set up by Bombardier, Siemens, Angel Trains and Babcock & Brown to take on the IEP. ERA came out with all guns blazing, claiming that IEP will demand such massive design resources over such a short period that only two train builders sharing the load could get the job done in time.

A shrewd move in my book, because IEP has all sorts of risks running
through it like a stick of rock. Forget the design resources, risk
sharing is going to be the big concern.

Remember that IEP is going to be a 30-35 year Private finance
Initiative deal. As a wit remarked last week, ‘I wonder if the collapse of Metronet has persuaded anyone to withdraw their EoI for the IEP?’ Perhaps not, but the risk factors have just gone up.

I reckon there are ten manufacturers who might be tempted to have a go at IEP, but Informed Sources have yet to find any firms other than the usual suspects, plus CSR Ziyang of China. News of sightings of CAF and Talgo of Spain, Rotem or even the Azerbaijani Train Company, will be welcome.

Electrification

They say that just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean that they
really aren’t out to get you. And the relentless drip of technically
illiterate arguments against further electrification has persuaded me
that it is enemy action.

An electronic brown paper envelope brought me a late draft of DfT
Rail’s Rail Technical; Strategy, of which more later. The ‘let’s wait for
hydrogen’ argument was still in their despite my demolition jobs in
recent issues.

But what got me going this month was a quote in a Guardian supplement. According to a Network Rail spokesman, if we electrified the remainder of the network, it would require the output from two nuclear power stations.

A quick back of the envelope spreadsheet, showed that current diesel
fuel consumption equates to an electrical demand of 275 MW; the current electrified Network requires 440MW

If we double the diesel equivalent to allow for peak demand we still
get only half the rating of the latest nuclear power station to be built.
So, Network Rail was out by a factor of four. Paranoid? Me?

Franchising frenzy

In this issue I analyse the numbers for the new West and East Midlands franchises. It isn’t until you plot the subsidy/premium profiles on a chart that you get the feel for what is going on.
West Midlands is quiet boring financially, but makes up for it with
some new traction and rolling stock. But the only word for East Midlands is hairy!

Stagecoach has whacked in another straight line profile which
predicates percentage revenue growth in double figures. The anticipated 3.4% annual fares increase will go only somewhere towards meeting this ambition.

On the basis of East Midlands and New Cross Country, to be analysed
next month, the winning bid for ICEC is going to see premium payments even more ambitious than those which brought GNER down. Currently, all four ICEC bidders think they have lost!

New trains up-date

As mentioned. the West Midlands franchise includes new trains, more
Desiro EMUs and a lightweight evolution of the Bombardier’s Turbostar.

These new units pretty–well take up the Regional allocation in the
Government’s 1,000 extra vehicles in the HLOS. According to DfT Rail,
which will keep on saying that it doesn’t specify timetables or new trains, the new trains will replace existing rolling stock which will be
‘freed for use in other parts of the country’. So not only don’t they write timetables and allocate trains, but presumably DfT Rail doesn’t
organise cascades either, right?

Having banged on for a long time about new trains getting heavier, the Class 172 Turbostar is a step in the right direction. With the Class
170 already lighter than other new generation DMUs the Class 172 could get under 40tonnes per vehicles, where the Class 185 Desiro averages 53.7tonnes.

With DfT obsessed with weight reduction in new rolling stock,
Bombardier could be in pole position when the New Generation DMU comes out to tender. I’d better add that DfT Rail doesn’t do technical specifications either.

Roger’s blog

A lot’s been going on since the last blog. I had my briefing on ERTMS
with the IRSE President, and very enlightening it was too. Forget
Level 3 for the time being. Then there was another full house Fourth
Friday Club with Transport Minister Tom Harris in fine form. Of course all the TOC MD’s present wimped out when it came to questions.

The next week I was master of ceremonies at the Modern Railways/Railway Forum Innovation awards and learned an important lesson: don’t try and make political jokes when you are sharing a platform with a professional like Tom Harris. It was the day of the new Prime Minister’s reshuffle. Tom remarked that junior ministers are told their fate by phone, adding ‘I have my mobile turned off’. It was a great evening and the general view is that the new format of an exhibition featuring the short-listed entries and a simple presentation ceremony is right for the 21st Century.

Sadly, a fatality on the line stopped me getting to the privatisation
debate on Christian Wolmar’s programme on the internet channel ‘18
Doughty Street’. So it was a walk over for the man from ATOC.

However the hearing with the Competition Commission, providing
background for their investigation into the rolling stock leasing market went ahead the following week. It was huge fun and all I can say is that the Commission has got up to speed on our industry remarkably quickly.

Last week the Rail Safety & Standards Board organised a briefing for me and my fortnightly chum Nigel on DfT Rail’s Rail Technical Strategy
(RTS). In fact they gave us only the executive summary. I have to say
that this was even more airy-fairy than the full document. Nigel and I
spent a fruitless couple of hours over the subsequent dinner trying to
explain why a vacuous wish list isn’t a strategy. Since the RTS
‘informs’ the future of railways White Paper due this week don’t hold your breath.

Finally, a series of social whirls. On the 18 July it was of to DfT
for get-to-know you drinks with the new Transport Secretary and her
team. You can guess my choice of subject. Next day the rat pack went to Harwich for the One Annual Railway Writers’ Lunch. We tried not to talk about franchising. This week it’s a farewell party for Network Rail
Chief Executive John Armitt. Still wondering whether to mention that I
have applied to be a Public Member.

Now, after the champagne and canapés, it’s back to Word and Excel with the HLOS, SoFA and White paper to be dissected and sense made of the Metronet Administration. As I said at the beginning the summer silly season has long gone.

Roger