INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview February 2012
With so much going on it was a particularly severe case of WIXC (Words In Excess of Capacity) when I submitted the February Informed Sources to the Editor this month. Fortunately we print on special elasticised paper so, hopefully, it has all squeezed in
Southern ends rolling stock order hiatus
Captain Deltic’s rolling stock up-dates
Next replacement franchise OJEU Notices published
Great Western - the ultimate franchise
Network Rail performance under fire
Freight Performance – ORR tasks operators with solutions
ScotRail signals tough negotiations over CP5 targets
Was it coincidence that the Department of Transport, authorised the Bombardier Electrostars for Southern on the 1000th day since the last new train order? Well, I can’t recall a major contract being announced between Christmas and the New Year, so I think I may have speeded things up.
Valued at £188.8 million Southern’s new Electrostars will combine Class 377 equipment with the Class 379 body shell which meets the latest crashworthiness requirements. Production will start in the second half of this year and all 130 vehicles are due to be in service for the December 2013 timetable change.
Southern will now hold a competition to fund the addition to the fleet. As owner of Southern’s existing Class 377 Electrostars Porterbrook Leasing should be on pole.
According to Informed Sources some tough negotiating was needed to get the deal home. At the Fourth Friday Club meeting in September Informed Sources were expressing bewilderment at Bombardier’s apparent death wish, reflected in prices which were far from affordable. But the eventual £1.45 million per vehicle is in line with the market.
DfT must be also pleased with a politically astute move. The order neutralises the lobbying over the closure of
SWT Class 458
That wasn’t the only deal announced around Christmas. The long running plan to create five car Class 458s for SWT’s
While the obvious solution was more Class 450 Siemens Desiro vehicles, Porterbrook suggested the much more cost-effective Class 458/460 mash-up which won the day. Ian Walmsley of Porterbrook describes the project in this month’s magazine.
Alstom is setting up a 25 strong team to engineer and manage the £42 million conversion program. Wabtec will undertake the car-body structural work.
Several readers assumed that just the 30 Class 458s were being lengthened and asked what about the rest of the 64 ex-Gatwick Express Class 460 vehicles? In fact all but four will be used to create 36 Class 458/5 five-car units.
Rolling stock news
Techie subscribers will find a photo in the magazine of the bogie Siemens is proposing for its Thameslink contract. Ho hum? Not at all, because Siemens is bringing back tread brakes for the powered bogies. So I have a welcome break from politics analysing the pros and cons of this move.
GW IEP
Then it’s back to politics with the latest allocation of trains to the Great Western franchise under the Intercity Express Programme (IEP). This was gleaned from the Great Western replacement franchise consultation document.
In the year since the last allocation was published the IEP has become even more bonkers. There are now only 49 diagrams to be covered and only 11 for the newly electrified main line will be all electric. The majority will be bi-modes. Truly, deeply bonkers or what?
Naughty
Meanwhile DfT has revealed that ‘for reasons outside of the Department's control’ commercial close on IEP has slipped back to May. The cause of the slippage was ‘delays to securing planning permission and the need to conclude commercial discussions with the Agility Trains consortium and their banks’.
Planning permission issues include the proposed depot at Stoke Gifford outside
He was backed up by a chum from
Franchise replacement starts
One reason for this month’s WIXC was the simultaneous public on December 19 of the OJEU Notices for the Essex Thameside (c2c), Thameslink and Great Western replacement franchises. There was also a public consultation document for Great Western.
Sir Roy McNulty’s Rail Value for Money study has added to the provisional nature of the Notices. The OJEUs warn that the contracts ‘will be based on the Franchise Agreement currently being revised in line with Government policy’. Not sure whether ‘Government policy’ is an oxymoron when it comes to railways.
Anyway, Essex Thameside seems fairly innocuous. But Thameslink is much more exciting and has the odd known unknown.
Some time in 2014, Thameslink will take over the services currently operated jointly with Southeastern plus, maybe, some others. Then, some time between July 2014 and July 2017 Thameslink will swallow Southern. All this while managing the railway through the Thameslink infrastructure works.
Conceding that rebuilding
Great Western
Every football World Cup qualifying round has to have a ‘Group of Death’ and in the three OJEUs, Great Western has to be the franchise of death – although Thameslink runs it close. I worry for any innocents from the European state railways lured into bidding. And there is more naughtiness.
In the OJEUs some of the figures quoted are so inaccurate they are not even wrong. And some information is less than complete. Consider this statement regarding Great Western ‘In the last financial year’ revenue was £694 million and ‘a premium of £250 million was paid to the Department for Transport’. Err, what about the Cap & Collar revenue support payments being made to FGW – a small matter of £141.3 million in the 2010-11 financial year?
If the massive works programme of the Great Western Route Modernisation were not a big enough challenge (I have a new killer chart) ‘in line with the government’s aspiration for decentralisation, the franchise may be let so as to permit future changes in the way that discrete parts of the network are financed, monitored and managed by organisations other than the DfT’.
On rolling stock the OJEU says that ‘currently’ the franchise operator will be expected to take responsibility for the provision of rolling stock, including the procurement of trains for the electrified suburban services. But it also says that from 2017 new Intercity Express Trains ‘are anticipated to be delivered to the franchise operator with the full fleet available from early 2018’. Make your mind up.
Despite all the engineering work, plus Crossrail taking over the relief (slow) lines, the franchise operator will be expected to take cost and revenue risk. But revenue risk will be subject to a support mechanism ‘probably linked to economic factors’. This would be ‘complemented’ by a mechanism to share higher than expected profits. So DfT still doesn’t know what will replace Cap & Collar.
Network Rail performance
On 19 December, Office of Rail Regulation Chief Executive David Price gave Network Rail notice of two Enforcement Orders. These will require Network Rail to develop new ‘robust plans’ to help recover performance for Long Distance and Freight services.
Following a stroppy letter from ORR in June 2011, Network Rail produced a plan showing how the PPM target agreed for 2011-12 would be achieved. But as ORR now points out, ‘since June performance across the network has continued to deteriorate’.
And, ORR is ‘clear’ that not only will Network Rail miss the long distance PPM target for the current year, the company has itself confirmed that that performance is unlikely to recover between now and the end of CP4 in 2014. Long distance punctuality is currently 87.1%, compared with a regulatory target of 90.9%
Oddly, failing to meet targets is not a Licence breach – yes, really! What matters is whether Network Rail is achieving targets to the ‘greatest extent reasonably practicable’. And Network Rail has yet to produce ‘robust evidence’ that it has plans to meet the targets. This is why a Licence breach is imminent.
Under the proposed Final Order Network Rail and the long-distance train operators will have to provide by February 28 ‘fully quantified and robust plans’ showing that they have understood why performance is lower than required in 2011-2012. And Network Rail must show that it is doing everything ‘reasonably practicable’ to deliver its performance commitment in 2012-2013. If this target cannot be met Network Rail must explain ‘clearly’ why it cannot be done.
Freight operators rule
Network Rail missed its freight target by 25% in 2010-11 and is ‘very likely’ to miss it again this year. Network Rail has been developing new measures with the freight operators which have been running in shadow mode and are due to be reviewed in March. However, ‘unless and until’ a change, is agreed by ORR, Network Rail will be judged against the existing measures.
Hence the Final Order, under which the FOCs will set up a new ‘Recovery Board’. ORR argues that Network Rail’s customers ‘are better placed to decide what steps are needed’ and the Recovery Board will specify what Network Rail has to do to remedy the breach and by when.
But individual FOCs have different priorities. The intermodal operators need their container trains to run fast and reliably to quasi-Intercity standards of reliability and punctuality, for example. Trying to get the Recovery Board to agree on a set of new measures sounds like cat herding. We shall see.
ScotRail sympathy
But is not all bad news for Network Rail., Despite the ScotRail PPM declining when it should be improving, there is no Enforcement Order. According to ORR parts of the new December 2010 ScotRail timetable were ‘less resilient’ than the one it replaced. This has been a ‘key factor’ in ScotRail’s poor PPM as performance has not matched the modelled outcome.
But this timetable was developed in partnership with Transport
That does not absolve Network Rail of its ‘primary responsibility’ for both timetabling and performance across the network. ‘It is important that you satisfy yourselves that proposals from your customers will not have adverse effects before you accept them’ ORR admonishes.
In other words, Network Rail is being told by the Regulator that if it is asked to do something which it believes to be counter-productive, don’t cave in to the political pressure from train operators and DfT, make a stand and we will back you - perhaps.
Network Rail has taken the hint and is already arguing that cost, capacity and performance are interrelated. Changing one parameter affects the others. Think of the classic ‘fast/cheap/good’ situation, where you can only have any two from three.
Roger’s Blog
As you can see from this month’s topics, I have been slaving over a hot word processor for much of the time since the last e-Preview. The only excitement was the last minute cancellation of the Modern Railways lunch trip due to railway politics.
Last year’s trip – lunch on First Great Western on the way back from
FGW’s
While it’s been mostly desk research, I have got out for a briefing on SWT’s Desiro fleet, using the new Southbank entrance of the extended Blackfriars station for the first time. An hour door to door from home to Friars Bridge Court.
This week, of course, it’s the first Fourth Friday Club meeting of the New Year which also includes the Golden Whistles award for operating excellence. February is pretty quiet at the moment, but is sure to fill up. I’ve got an interview booked with ORR Chief Executive Richard Price later in the month, as you can see, I won’t be short of questions to ask.
Meanwhile we wait for the promised command Paper and the new franchising policy and ………
Roger