INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview September 2007
I’m afraid I will have to ask you to join me on the SoFA and sacrifice
some brain cells this month. Yes, the High Level Output Specification
(HLOS) and the Statement of Funds Available (SoFA) have been published
and getting my brain round the numbers took a good day’s
spreadsheeting. But I think I understand it so here goes – and there is some less
abstruse stuff later
HLOS – modest enhancements despite soaring income
Perpetual growth funds the HLOS
ERTMS – no magic bullet
RVAR 2020 – problems underground
What caused the grief with the SoFA was reconciling DfT Rail’s
presentation of the figures with the Office of Rail Regulation’s (ORR)
‘Advice to Ministers’ and Network Rail’s ‘Initial Strategic Business Plan’
(ISBP. These lay out the money Network Rail thinks wants and ORR think it
needs respectively.
What DfT Rail has done is start with the ‘baseline’ costs, that is the
steady state railway without enhancements, and then add on the
enhancement projects it thinks it can afford. And when you have ploughed
through all my tables it looks as though the likely cost of the HLOS is not
that far off the money down the back of the SoFA. In fact it is in the
lower third of ORR’s estimates of Network Rail’s income.
How ‘not far off’? Well, when brought back to current prices DfT Rail
is offering £6.5 billion for enhancements over the five years from 2009
while Network Rail reckons the cost is nearer £7.9 billion.
User pays
Having established what the railway is going to cost the next job is to
analyse where the money is coming from. And the premium profile
graphs for recent franchises means readers won’t be surprised at the answer.
DfT Rail is assuming straight line passenger revenue growth at 4.8%%
a year before inflation.
This will bring in an additional £7 billion over the five years from
2009, half from increasing ridership and half from higher fares. Or, as
DfT Rail puts it ‘Growth is delivering significantly enhanced revenues
while industry cost control continues to improve’.
So now, says DfT, ‘subsidy levels should start to return closer to the
historic norm’. DfT’s ever-helpful Rail press office is still trying
to find a civil servant brave enough to define ‘historic norm’.
Meanwhile the Government is getting twitchy about fares, or rather the
growing discontent with value for money revealed in passenger surveys.
So it is proposing four standard fares, three walk on and one
advance purchase, which will be common across the network ‘regardless of
operator’. The list of names, also standard across the network, includes
Super Off-peak which will make school holiday days out expensive or
short.
Also on the fares front. DfT Rail is still trying to find a way of
getting rid of regulated Savers without collateral political damage. It
claims that there was no case for regulation at privatisation on grounds
of competition and, following a review, feels that ‘in principle’ the
case for reform is ‘strong’.
However, customers need to be convinced ‘that change is to their
benefit’. Simplification of the fares structure is the first stage of
building this ‘confidence’.
To minimise collateral damage train operators will be responsible for
dropping Savers, but only when they have a single-leg ticketing
structure which enjoys customer support. The words ‘not me, guv, honest’
spring to mind.
ERTMS update
There is so much tosh about the European Rail Traffic Management System
(ERTMS) and its signalling component the European Train Control System
(ETCS) in the White Paper which accompanied the HLOS and SoFA that I
thought it was time for a touch of reality. I was aided in this by the
expert’s expert view on the subject in the address by the new President
of the IRSE, Wim Coenraad.
I start with a review of the ETCS Levels and the state of play out on
the tracks. Note, in particular that the all-singing/all-dancing Level
3, on which DfT Rail pins such hopes, and uses as one of its FRAMEs, is
in limbo while the manufacturers try to get a stable specification for
Level 2.
One of the advantages claimed for Level 3 is moving block and I give
the traditional railway signal engineer’s analysis of the minor benefit
of moving block on a mixed traffic main line. This includes some crisp
operation on the East Coast with a Hull Trains Pioneer chasing a GNER
IC225, blasting along at 125mile/h two minutes, or less, apart for mile
after mile.
Meanwhile, other railways are having fun and games with Level 2, and
readers will all be super techies able to reel off the version numbers
for ETCS System Requirement Specifications, Does it matter? Well
upgrading from Version 2.2.2 to Version 2.3.0, so that trains on its new High
Speed Line South can run over the border into Belgium is costing
Netherlands Railways 30 million Euros.
All of which does not mean that ETCS (ERTMS, as such, doesn’t exist
yet either) is off the UK agenda. For a start it is mandated under the
European Interoperability Regulations. And, by the time we come to
major resignalling on Great Western and East Coast main lines ‘between 2014
and 2020’, the thoroughly de-bugged Version 3.0.0 should be available
and the economies of scale should be kicking in. Not, ‘should’.
But, as Sir Peter Parker was wont to quote ‘If a way to the better
there be, it deserves a fair look at the worst’. So I have looked.
Accessibility again
Whenever I write about the Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations
(RVAR) and the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 (DDA2005) I keep on
forgetting that the legislation also applies to the London Underground
fleets. So the 2020 drop dead date for total RVAR compliance also applies
to 700 Central Line vehicles plus 636 for the Northern and 441 for the
Jubilee.
Catching up with this led me on to wheelchair spaces in Tube Trains and
the new Victoria Line Stock featured in the August Modern Railways.
And a spectacular nonsense in the RVAR which bans handrails above the
wheelchair space.
Since the wheelchair spaces are likely to be occupied by standing
passengers most of the time, not having a grab handle is a major safety
hazard. So London Underground is applying for an exemption which will
allow overhead grab handles along at least part of the wheelchair bay.
ETCS too
While on the subject of ETCS I missed an important detail in last
month’s analysis of the 2020 deadline. DfT Rail’s timescale for ETCS
implies fitment on the East Coast Main and Great Western Main lines by 2024
at the latest. If lineside signals are removed, existing stock on the
routes will have to be retrofitted at, say, £200,000 per cab.
Running on these routes we have the youngest ex-BR fleets, the
Networker Express and Networker Turbos. I reckon we are talking not far off
£4million to retrofit with ETCS.
While on the subject of 2020, an old chum has come up with a new
approach to RVAR compliance based on techniques used to evaluate safety
expenditure. To say more would give the game away, but it is a typical bit
of lateral thinking.
Rolling stock update
There’s an updated New Trains Table which includes the increase in the
number of vehicles from 1000 to 1300 announced in the White Paper.
Four coaches were written off in the derailment of Pendolino 390.033
at Grayrigg. Damage to the other vehicles can be repaired by cutting out the
effected areas and welding in new sections of extrusion, but the insurers now
reckon the whole train is a write-off.
Replacement of 033 depends on the Alstom production line reopening to
built the 106 cars needed to lengthen the Pendolinos from 9 to 11 cars.
The bad news is that following the failure of negotiations to extend
the franchise to cover the operational risks associated with the
lengthening work, Virgin has now withdrawn from the lengthening project.
Roger’s Blog
One of the aims of e-Preview is to allow updates after the column has
gone to press. In fact, I did manage to get a brief report on the
Intercity East Coast (ICEC) franchise award to the News Section, making us
first with the news.
A full analysis, together with the New Cross Country franchise, will
appear in the October column. The two go well together, because ICEC
suggests that the DfT Rail has realised that irrational exuberance among
bidders was getting out of hand.
National Express refused to get caught up in the kamikaze bidding,
plugged away with what it thought sensible bids and won ICEC with the
lowest premium and a profile that is more than just a straight line on the
graph. DfT Rail’s procurement team went for this deliverable option.
Informed Sources reckon that the runner-up was offering £300 million
more than NEG.
In the column I identify CAF of Spain as the fifth potential bidder for
IEP, but it doesn’t matter because on 16 August DfT Rail announced the
shortlist. This has the usual suspects, Alstom with Barclays,
Bombardier/Siemens with Angel and Babcock & Brown, and Hitachi with their own
‘Special Purpose Vehicle’ which will no doubt turn out to contain
Japan Inc. Now we wait for the Invitation to Tender.
About the only excitement in the last month was an appearance on
‘Wolmar’s World’ on the 18 Doughty Street internet news channel. I was one
of a panel analysing the White Paper. The rest of August promises to be
quiet, which means I can catch up with some time off before the nights
draw in and the normal round of conferences and events start again in
September.
On 25 September I’m presenting one of the papers at an IMechE
conference on weight saving and structural integrity vehicles being held at
Derby. E-mail me if you would like the details. And on September 28 it’s
the opening meeting of the new Fourth Friday Club season.
Finally, my Electrify! Petition on the No 10 web site closed on 26 July
with 3712 signatures. I had hoped for 5000, but thanks to all those
who signed up. If you did you will have received the response from the
Prime Minister’s Office which is beyond feeble. Here’s the URL
>http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page12872.asp
in case you haven’t seen it. Odd how, with a Scottish constituency the
PM supports electrification in Scotland but not in England and Wales.
A new slant on the West Lothian question?
Roger
