INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview October 2009
After the variety of topics last month, the November column marks the start of the new High Speed autumn offensive, with extended analysis of Network Rail’s New Lines Programme (NLP) proposals unveiled on August 26. Up to now I haven’t paid much attention to the various free-lance High Speed Line proposals being floated by Greengauge 21, among others, mainly because I judged winning the electrification battle more important. But now we have something official, to be followed by DfT Rail’s own High speed 2 Limited (HS2L) study by the end of the year, not to mention the latest Greengauge 21 proposal published as I was writing this, and there is now enough serious data to crunch and analyse.
· Network Rail’s New Lines challenge
· New Lines – international through services too difficult
· Network Rail governance – change is inevitable
At the press launch of the NLP I asked Network Rail Chief Executive Iain Coucher the question posed in last month’s e-Preview ‘what have new lines to do with Network Rail?’ He gently pointed out that while decisions on transport infrastructure are taken by Government, Network Rail ‘has a mandate to plan to meet future demand in the short, medium and long term. And to get the short term right we need to understand the next 30-40 years’.
Fair enough. So in June 2008, the NLP was commissioned, before High speed 2 Ltd was formed. The study is based on identifying future capacity constraints on the five ‘classic line’ corridors, the four main lines (Great Western, West Coast,
Next the potential to attract new traffic to justify construction of a new line was analysed for three corridors, London-West;
Options
From here on we have to grapple with a hailstorm of options, which I hope I have made comprehensible. The best London-North West ‘core route’ is London-Manchester with a high speed spur to
This ‘full house’ Option 1.4.1 gives a Benefit: Cost Ratio of 1.8 – just short of DfT’s ‘hurdle rate’ for ‘high value for money’ of 2.0. Note that a 66% ‘optimism bias’ has been applied to construction costs.
As part of the ‘optioneering’ the NLP looked at running over ‘classic’ lines to link
Blood
There is clearly going to be blood on the carpet when HS2L unveils its proposals and I suspect that ‘mixed running’ beyond the High Speed line is going to be a key battle ground.
HS2L Informed Sources are already fuming that the NLP hasn’t engineered its proposed routes. But Network Rail explains that its study has no ‘lines on the map’, and the column explains, what seems to me, the NLP’s sensible was of estimating route length and construction costs.
We will be able to compare the NLP ball-park estimates with HS2L’s engineered and costed London-Birmingham route in a couple of months’ time. But HS2L will also only ‘consider broad route options beyond [the
Something I hope to explore next month is the distortion of rail planning by the political conviction that High speed rail can save the planet by modal shift from air. Transport Secretary Lord Adonis seems to be able to face both ways on this by thinking modal shift a good thing while reassuring the public that developments in aviation technology will allow them to keep on flying as at present.
Anyway, the NLP prefers a link to Heathrow, either through a high speed spur or via classic lines, rather than routing the new line via the airport. Once again, it will be interesting to see where HS2 goes.
Continent isolated
Coming home from holiday, we left St Malo’s Gare TGV at 12.13 and arrived back at Welwyn Garden City at 19.31, running steel wheel on steel rail all the way, except for Line 4 of the Paris Metro. So, with the Network Rail high speed study suggesting a 46 min Birmingham-London journey time I assumed that there would be a direct link to HS1, bringing the West Midlands and Paris/Brussels within the 3 hour journey time where high speed rail beats air.
No chance. To say that Network Rail is lukewarm about High Speed rail to
Yes, there are two HS1 options in the NLP. One assumes ‘direct and easy interchange’ onto HS1 Services from the new London Central terminus, retaining the current customs and security arrangements. The other assumes that through trains would run into the international platforms at St Pancras and reverse.
However Network Rail notes that the through train option is ‘unlikely to be operated due to the significant difficulties in developing a timetable that has this level of interaction across long distance lines’. See my remarks about ‘firewalling’ above. Once again, it will be interesting to see what HS2L has to offer in December.
Lost time
What Network Rail seems to have overlooked is that its ‘London interchange’ time would take Birmingham-Paris/Brussels well over 3 hr. Start with the ludicrous requirement to book in 30 minutes before departure, add 15 minute connection time plus a margin for traipsing round London Central and you’re going to be lucky to get from to Paris and Brussels in under four hours.
Significantly Network Rail falls into the modal shift trap, concentrating on air passengers transferring to high speed rail. My experience is that the sheer convenience of rail, (Eurostar security aside) encourages people to make journeys which would be too much trouble by air.
Network Rail – trouble at t’mill
Having noted in last month’s blog that, somehow, my application for Network Rail Public Membership had been rejected yet again, this month I end with an up-date on what has become a matter of some concern – the governance of Network Rail.
Who’s concerned? Well the Office of Rail Regulation, so concerned that they commissioned a KPMG study, the Government, the opposition and some of the Public Members including my old chum
This ‘ginger group’ published its initial report, with 12 recommendations, in February this year and its final report was published in July in time for the Network Rail
In true Sir Humphrey mode, DfT Rail supported the Review but hoped that it would not lead to what the MRG calls ‘any unseemly public disagreements’. ORR on the other hand doesn’t give a stuff about public disagreements, seemly or otherwise. It wants the Network Rail Board and Senior Executives to ‘face the kind of scrutiny, challenge and pressures that a plc would ordinarily receive from its institutional shareholders’.
At the
Does it matter?
Network Rail’s Corporate Governance is another of those unsexy topics, seemingly far removed from the running of the real railway, which I occasionally impose on readers because I think it is important. With Network Rail soaking up over half the railway’s income and making vital spending decisions it really should be ‘held to account’.
So better governance is important, or, as the MRG put it ‘The key question for Members at this point is: do they wish to take account of the serious dissatisfaction with and perceived unacceptability of the present arrangements and seek change themselves, or are they content to wait until change is imposed from elsewhere?’ And the Conservatives are threatening to do just that.
Roger’s blog
Talk about hubris, my warm glow at having networked the home soon vanished when nemesis followed and a few days later my computer not only wouldn’t connect to the internet over broadband, the back up dial-up stopped working too. So the lap top came into its own as the prime communications system.
But
On our return it was back into the Network Rail NLP analysis which meant that I had to miss the High Speed Summit. By all accounts it was a bit like High School Musical – all teeth, smiles and youthful optimism, with dowdy Network Rail cast as the oh-so 20th Century old railway-fixated dork.
Last week there was the Alstom X’trapolis launch - at the Saatchi Gallery, my dears! For me the high spot of the presentation was a full size inter-car connection – so wide three people can stand abreast. This coming week sees the first Fourth Friday Club meeting of the new session at the German Gymnasium at Kings Cross.
Our guest speaker is Charles Horton of SouthEastern and the change of venue is to enable club members and guests to walk across to St Pancras International for a post-lunch blast to Ebbsfleet and back in one of Charles’ Class 395 Javelins. If you are coming make sure you have a £1 coin to hand as there have been questions about ride standards and I’m hoping to organise a mass ride testing session Cue Mrs F asking me why I was photographing a £1 coin balanced on the table as our TGV raced across France Details on www.4thfriday.co.uk
September ends my hat-trick of presentations on the trains competing for the Thameslink contract. I’m off to
Looking further ahead, the first full week in October sees the annual NFRIP train reliability conference organised by the IMechE Railway Division.
But for the moment, it’s back to recalcitrant computers.
Roger