INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview November 2009
Four topics in the November Informed Sources. All, in their own way, are controversial and will, I hope spread some light and heat.
Manifesto: Intercity redux
Facing up to hard tines
Thameslink: Alstom’s articulated gamble
Tram-train on life support.
First off is only my second Manifesto since privatisation. The first, published in the September 2001 Informed Sources was about creating a functioning railway. Despite being presented at worthy academic conferences, it eventually sank without trace in the tsunami following the collapse of Railtrack.
But people will keep on asking ‘how would you reorganise the railways’ to improve matters’? And I have had to mutter ‘dunno’.
But our recent journeys by TGV on holiday brought illumination. A case of ‘home thoughts from abroad’.
What we lack in
My Manifesto argues that long distance rail services define the national railway. Today there is no coherent image, just a plethora of liveries, company names, web sites, ticket offers, variations in on-board services, exclusive timetable books and operators going bust.
So, time to recreate InterCity, one of the most successful brands ever created.
A 21st Century InterCity would re-integrate the four main lines plus Cross Country. There would be a common fares structure, a single InterCity web-site. Passengers would know what to expect on board, ticket validity would be unambiguous and ticket purchase would have been considerably simplified.
Benefits from a revived InterCity would go beyond passenger service and perception. For example a traction and rolling stock policy embracing all five routes would simplify cascades and help manage the transition from diesel traction to electrification. Similarly, instead of individual operators developing smart card schemes in isolation, all the effort could be focused on a national InterCity card or whatever the coming e-ticketing revolution throws up.
Or take the running sore of Network Rail’s governance. With a £2billion turnover and paying a third of Network Rail’s fixed track access charges InterCity would have real clout.
People
Something else to be considered is the dwindling band of managers who have the experience to run a fully featured railway. These nearly all rose though British Rail’s management training schemes. InterCity would concentrate this talent for maximum effect and, with a stable future be able to restart career progression.
For Government InterCity would manage long term issues. It would also save the cost, manpower, disruption and short-termism of re-letting franchises every seven years or so.
Structure
Which brings us to how a national InterCity business would be organised. Experience has taught us what doesn’t work. Nor is a ‘Nationalised’ InterCity what we are looking for, even if it were acceptable to the Treasury.
What is needed is long term stability, one stage removed from direct Government control. Perhaps some kind of agency relationship? I am hoping one of the smart policy think tanks can come up with an answer – that is if the Informed Sources readership can’t.
A final word on the predictable objection of ‘not more disruption’. All the main line franchises come up for replacement, or reach a break-point, by the end of 2013. So as franchises were terminated they could be brought into the new InterCity which would be fully operational by the start of Control Period 5 (CP5) in April 2014.
How to cut costs
Before we get to CP5 our industry has to get through the current economic crisis. With all political parties promising cuts in government spending I have spent some time looking at possible economy measures over the remaining four years of CP4.
There is a belief within the industry that the combination of the Periodic Review determining Network Rail’s income for five years at a stretch plus franchise agreements, mean hat subsidy is guaranteed, come hell or high water. Bill Emery, the Office of Rail Regulation Chief Executive has confirmed this to me.
Anyway, Network Rail already has to find savings of around £2.5 billion just to match expenditure to the income allowed by ORR for CP4. And with all those TOCs on Cap & Collar life support the passenger railway is costing more, rather than less.
So where can economies be found? The big train fleets seem obvious candidates, but because the new fleets and depots are being funded privately, in practice the actual savings from deferring Thameslink deliveries or binning IEP are limited to rental payments in tens, rather than hundreds, of millions.
North of the Border the Scottish Parliament has swung the Claymore and cancelled the Glasgow Airport Rail Link saving a claimed £170 million. And other than Crossrail, that’s about it for the big capital schemes.
So the rest of my list pulls together smaller schemes and activities that wouldn’t be missed – including a few sacred cows. For example, ITSO on Prestige, the ETCS Early Deployment Scheme and Tram-train.
While I can achieve the Chancellor’s 9.4% saving over four year based on capital expenditure, all those rented trains halve the value of my economy drive to around £600 million.
Suggestions for further savings will be welcomed. Do we really need three bodies involved with safety, for example?
X’trapolis described.
After all those months when this column was dominated by business plans and periodic reviews, what the poet Yeats called ‘the fascination of what’s difficult, it has been a tonic to have manufacturers offering briefing sessions on their Thameslink trains. Sorry, I’d better rephrase that because the three bidders – Alstom, Bombardier and Siemens - are not allowed to talk about their specific offers to the press. So any resemblance in my write ups to current projects living or dead is entirely intentional.
Of the three bids Alstom’s is by far the boldest. After the Juniper EMU debacle the only way back for Alstom was to come up with something radically different capable of blowing the others into the weeds. And the articulated X’trapolis is nothing if not different, exploiting the advantages of articulation, in terms of usable floor space, speed of loading and unloading and light weight.
In the Invitation to Tender DfT Rail and its consultants Interfleet came up with an optimistic maximum weight for the full length (240 metres) unit of 401 tonnes. Both Alstom and Bombardier have come in under this figure by a healthy margin. This, of course translates into lower energy costs.
X’trapolis is lightest of the three contenders by 5 tonnes, thanks, in part, to the smaller number of bogies needed by an articulated train. But fewer bogies means a higher axle load when Thameslink trains will have to meet Route Availability 4 (RA4). Crush loaded X’trapolis is right on this 17.5 tonne axle load limit.
Adding spice to the bidding is the way articulation is treated by the Vehicle Track Interface Strategic Model (VTISM). This is a computer model which takes the various train parameters, such as bogie suspension dynamics and axle load, and then calculates track damage and wear, which can then be fed into a whole life cost model.
All three bidders have copies of the VTISM software. Bombardier and Siemens assure me that it penalises articulation on track wear. Alstom obviously take the opposite viewpoint. I asked űber civil engineer Andrew McNaughton to adjudicate and he assures me that VTISM is ‘neutral’ when it comes to articulation. Track wear from the extra axle load is offset by fewer axles to cause the wear.
Tram-train – Phase 2 first
Criticising Tram-train is like kicking a kitten. Everyone concerned is so well meaning and enthusiastic, that it seemed unkind to point out that looked at rationally the exercise was misguided, pointless – and expensive.
Anyway on 15 September a DfT Rail press release revealed that ‘passengers in
Yes indeed, but that original bonkers plan, to lease five diesel electric Tram-trains and run an hourly service on the Penistone line between
Phase 2 of the original plan could have seen Tram-trains running onto Sheffield Supertram. Now, subject to affordability, the pilot scheme will start with the previous Phase 2 – less the diesel engines.
Three miles of freight line from Rotherham to a connection with the Sheffield Supertram network at Meadowhall, will be electrified. Tram-trains will run over the Network Rail track and onward into
While more sensible, the new trial is still unnecessary. DfT Rail waffles on that it will help identify standards ‘that will need to be changed to enable operation of Tram-train vehicles on the heavy rail network’ Rubbish! Tyne & Wear Metro has already pioneered what is known as the ‘Karlsruhe Model’ on its
So why not use a fraction of the money allocated to this boondoggle to electrify to
Roger’s blog
September’s Fourth Friday Club was a cracker. We had a very high class picnic lunch in the German Gymnasium at Kings Cross, enjoyed an excellent presentation on SouthEastern from MD Charles Horton, then went across the road for a return trip to Ebbsfleet on one of his Hitachi Class 395 EMUs.
And, yes, I did invite those at the lunch to join me in the biggest mass ride monitoring exercise ever and throughout the trip you could hear the clicks of pound coins failing to balance on tables. Finally I got a coin to balance on the floor in a vestibule.
Am I being picky? No, market research results quoted in Charles’s presentation showed that 35% of passengers were unimpressed by the ride. Given that British Rail Research solved the incompatibility of high speed stability and low speed curving coming on for 40 years ago I’m not impressed either.
On the last day of September I went to
Bombardier also showed me their Orbiter remote train monitoring system while I was at
Last week it was off to the IMechE for the Railway Division’s annual National Fleet Reliability Improvement Programme conference. The good news is that NFRIP has met its five year target of having the impact of trains’ unreliability on operating performance. The sad news is that NFRIP seems to have lost its mojo – in part because it’s become very difficult to make business cases for reliability improvements in the current financial climate when TOCs are already meeting performance commitments in franchise plans.
So NFRIP is going to become the Fleet Reliability Focus Group. Which seems premature when the gap between the Golden spanner winners and the rest is widening.
Meanwhile, when I finish writing this I’m off for a briefing with High Speed 2 Ltd. This is more for background because my general policy on high speed is not to write anything unless it’s down on paper. But given the way HS2L jumped on my RAIL chum Phil Haigh, for what I thought an enviably good report, my digital recorder will be running.
Coming up, on 19 November I face a choice between a conference on ‘Managing out of the recession’ and an IMechE Railway Division seminar on Braking. Hmm. And on the 27th it’s the Fourth Friday Club meeting where the Golden Spanners get presented. Which reminds me that I must toddle down to my local motor factors for the usual bulk order of 11mm and 9mm spanners.
And as I’m over length I’d better sign off.
Roger