INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview June 2012
Having been worried that the column is being taken over by boring – but essential – regulatory stuff, this month has turned out to be almost entirely about things on wheels, starting with an update on everyone’s favourite train.
IEP – commercial close next month?
Change in reliability measure trims expectations
Who benchmarks the benchmarkers?
‘Total railway’ Northern Line prepares for TBTCS
Rolling stock ‘strategy’ off the agenda.
It’s been a while since I wrote about the Intercity Express Programme (IEP), so time for an update.
A point to note is that the IEP fleets to replace IC125 on the Great Western and East Coast main lines are being funded separately. Financial close for the ECML bi-modes is not now expected until 2013, according to DfT.
However, the ‘A bank’ phase for the 300 odd vehicles for the GWML was oversubscribed. The final ‘B bank’ approvals process started in May and, my chums in red braces tell me, could be completed by the end of June with a following wind.
DfT’s previous deadlines for signing the IEP deal had been the end of May. But, in addition to funding issues, DfT has continued to make changes affecting both scope and strategy.
Meanwhile, in terms of vehicle numbers IEP has continued to shrink. There’s a table showing how the vehicle numbers have fallen since the IEP Invitation to Tender in 2007 which itemised up to 1665 vehicles that might be ordered.
Today, IC125 replacement requires 434 diagrammed vehicles. Clearly, the actual quantity will depend on the bravery of the supplier when setting availability. Assuming 90% availability, I make the actual requirement around 480 vehicles – say 500 to be on the safe side.
This is not too far short of the 525 vehicles which DfT told Sir Andrew Foster was the minimum requirement. But it is significantly below the 685 which DfT identified as justifying a
One solution to the numbers gap which has been mooted would see DfT underwrite a minimum initial quantity of say, 600 vehicles. Train operators would then be able to call-off extra sets as additional requirements emerged. DfT would carry the financial risk of the unallocated trains not being taken up. However, this was proposed before franchise reform restored rolling stock procurement to the train operators.
We should not make too much of the falling numbers. From the start,
Recalibrating reliability measures
In the January 2012 issue the Informed Sources annual Rolling stock reliability review was affected by the changeover from the traditional Miles per 5 min delay (MP5MD) reporting regime to Miles per Technical Incident (MTIN) which is based on 3 minute delays. The change came into effect from the start of the new railway year on
Because the reliability review and the associated Golden Spanners awards are based on performance as at Period 7 each year, this meant that we did not have a full year of MTIN data to calculate the new Moving Annual Average. With every fleet starting from scratch, all it needed was a couple of untypically high, or low, reporting Periods to give a misleading picture of a fleet’s reliability.
This made it difficult to assess the impact of the change on reliability statistics. But with the MTIN figures for Period 13 2011-12 available we now have true
In the case of the ex-BR fleets my analysis suggests that MTIN mileages are 25% lower than MP5MD. For the new EMU and DMU fleets the fall is around 10%. This difference could be commercially important where reliability is a contractual requirement.
For example, in the case of IEP the reliability requirements in the Invitation to Tender were 60,000 miles per casualty for electric and 45,000 miles for diesel/bi-mode. Thameslink requires 50,000 miles between Service Affecting Failures.
All these were based on a 5min delay. If we accept the 10% drop
To put these numbers into context, the column has a table showing the top 10 most reliable fleets, with the IEP and Thameslink reliability specifications interpolated. Only the Class 458s and Class 350s are above the electric IEP MTIN. The Class 444 Desiro, which is the nearest thing to a long distance EMU is 4,000 miles short. However, the Class 220 Voyager fleet is only 1,500 miles short of the IEP Bi-mode 40,000 MTIN.
Which reminds me, I must check the Crossrail reliability specification.
Benchmarking uncertainty
In last month’s magazine my old chum and sparring partner
In the last Periodic Review, consultants for ORR and Network Rail fought over this data. And when the dust had settled ORR estimated an efficiency gap at the end of Control Period 3 (204-2009) of around 35%. According to ORR ‘all the other qualitative and quantitative, top-down and bottom-up, international benchmarking undertaken in PR08 by us, and also by Network Rail, confirmed a substantial efficiency gap in line with the results of the econometric analysis of the
But now ORR is not so sure. Network Rail has continued to work with the
It now seems that there are potential issues with ‘completeness and consistency’ of some of the historic
ORR has revisited its earlier analyses using the more recent data and guess what? The efficiency gap between Network Rail and its European peers has narrowed by more than would have been expected on the basis of Network Rail’s efficiency gains.
ORR reckons it knows why. One reason is that Network Rail has adjusted its renewals cost data to make it more consistent with other European railways. As we have seen with targets such as hospital waiting times, you manage your processes to suit the way performance is measured.
As a result, ORR is now having to review Network Rail’s work on the
I suspect it may be irrelevant. I am expecting Network Rail to take a more business-focused approach during the current Periodic Review for CP5. Instead of consultants arm wrestling over efficiency benchmarking, look for Network Rail go for a contract negotiation based on outputs and prices – after all, that is what the HLOS and SoFA are all about.
Northern Line in good form
Informed Sources has been following London Underground’s Northern Line train fleet since I joined the car park watchers at 55 Broadway on
My first visit was in 2001 when London Underground had just hailed the Northern as the Tube's top performing line. When I went back at the end of last year the Northern was still the Underground’s best performing Line.
Of course, the intervening years saw a lot of unhappiness. Especially when the inadequate incentives in the Alstom
A new agreement remedying this was signed off by Alstom and Tube Lines in September 2007 and by the time of my next visit to Golders Green, in March 2009, train performance had improved significantly. The purpose of my visit last November was to learn how a total-railway approach to performance had seen the Northern Line beat its aspirational benchmark, which is half the Lost Customer Hours in Tube Line’s contractual agreement with the Underground, for seven periods in a row.
This level of performance is achieved only if all the Northern line assets – stations, track, signals as well as trains – are delivering. Since June 2010, when Tube lines became a subsidiary of Transport for
Anyway, you can read the details in the column. Now the triumvirate of LU, Tube Lines and Alstom is going to have to run much harder just to stand still, because installation of the Thales Transmission Based Train Control System is under way.
All the trains are now TBTCS fitted. Northern line is benefiting from following the Jubilee Line with TBTCS. Lessons learned the hard way are being applied.
Migration to TBTCS in revenue earning service is scheduled to start in 2013, beginning with the low risk section between High Barnet and
One statistic stood out from my briefing. London Underground has calculated that the Northern Line fleet sees over four million door openings per week. A concerted door upgrade programme by Alstom, has reduced failures from 30-40 to one per week on average.
Rolling stock ‘strategy’ conundrum.
This is being written having just returned from a session with the chaps at ATOC who were behind the just-published ‘Rolling stock requirements 2014-2019 – an ATOC overview’. This is the industry’s contribution to what the Department of Transport calls a ‘pipeline’ of potential rolling stock requirements.
To be fair, while it contains nothing readers of Informed Sources won’t know already, this is only an overview
ATOC now intends to get into more detail with the ROSCOs and the supply industry. This will lead to an initial strategy document to be published ‘by October’.
But don’t hold your breath, because, as ATOC explains, Government policy means that in the current franchise replacement process, it will be for bidders to assess ‘whether rolling stock requirements are best addressed through new builds or continued operation of existing vehicles, with or without refurbishment and re-engineering’.
Nine franchises are being re-let or merged, each attracting three or four bidders. Each bidder, reportedly, is evaluating two or three rolling stock options for each franchise as they seek to find the cheapest solution.
So the main importance of the document is its exposure of the consequences of linking rolling stock policy to franchise replacement. ATOC says that its full strategy due by October will provide ‘a general indication of the national fleet requirements up to 2029’. Where franchise bidders’ rolling stock plans offer better value for money than the proposals in the strategy, ‘this will put them in a good position to win franchises’ says ATOC. Hmmm.
Roger’s Blog
A day spent roaming the aisles at Infrarail filled a fair few pages of the notebook and, as ever, produced a mix of updates from firms I know well and a chance to meet exhibitors with something new that caught my eye. As always you bump into chums during the day and swap gossip in the aisle or over tea and a bun. However, I am still kicking myself for not using a spare half hour at the end of the day-long trek to pop into the Intermodal exhibition next door which had more rail equipment than usual on show.
As reported above, last week ATOC invited me in for a background chat on their contribution to DfT’s rolling stock ‘pipeline’. It also gave me the chance to discuss with their ever-helpful PR people, a future briefing on Rail Settlement Plan’s contribution to DfT’s £45 million London & Southeast smart ticketing scheme.
Next week it’s the Rail Freight Group’s annual conference and later in the week I am having a formal interview with an old Alstom chum, Terence Watson, who has returned to head-up up the Group’s
June is quiet at the moment. The Fourth Friday Club on the 22nd hosts the innovation awards. Sitting in the ATOC reception I noticed that their trophy wall included the award in 2004 for the development of the LENNON ticket revenue system.
At the end of the month it is the Stagecoach annual summer reception where, as is traditional, I shall try to provoke Sir Brian Souter into saying something outrageous. But these days he seems to see it coming and is a master of diplomacy – well, almost!
I’ll end with an attempt at a joke about DfT’s rolling stock ‘pipeline’. The characteristic of a pipeline are that you can’t see what’s inside it, whatever is inside it emerges a long way away and if it is an eyesore you can bury it.
Roger