INFORMED SOURCES April 2013
This month’s column focuses on traction and rolling stock, which is perhaps a bit self indulgent. However, I hope, makes a welcome change from all the franchising, political mismanagement and regulatory wonkism which gets in the way of this column’s reporting on the real railway
IEP – more information emerges
Mentioned in dispatches
SWT – coping with perpetual growth.
Rolling Stock Strategy misses the point.
Crossrail rolling stock PFI dropped.
Having sent the National Audit Office a set of this column’s reporting and analysis on the Intercity Express Programme, going back to the original Invitation to Tender in 2007, the saga continues in the April issue. DfT has released the latest Train Technical Specification (TTS) plus the Master Availability & Reliability Agreements (MARA) and Train Availability & Reliability agreements (TARA) for the Great Western and East Coast IEP fleets. While the TTS is a mere stripling at 86 pages, the MARA and TARA downloads total nearly 50MB and open into 2100 pages.
As you can imagine, this provided a target rich environment, particularly the TTS, where the original idealistic specification has been updated to reflect the reality of what is on offer.
So, there are new specifications for Variable Track Access Charges, which, match those quoted by Hitachi, and maximum train weight, ditto.
While meeting the target weight merits a bonus, if the Actual Type Weight is greater than the Target Type Weight, the supplier won’t be taken to the cleaners. Instead the bonus will be zero.
Comparing the relevant sections in the two TTS on ‘efficiency and the environment’ was the most fun. You will see that quite a bit has gone missing.
All the old favourites are there. Take coupling, for example, where the nine minutes claimed for coupling a diesel locomot9ve to an EMU was a key arguments for the bi-mode.
According to the new TTS ‘IEP Units must be able to automatically couple or uncouple with each other in no more than 2 minutes’. This includes ‘all train borne system reconfiguration activities, for example, ETCS, GSMR, TMS and brake proving’.
Right. So what is the difference between a specially configured diesel locomotive which thinks it is an IEP and another IEP when it comes to coupling? Meanwhile, there are pages on provision for loco-haulage.
Something I must get round to is the hardware being specified for the current electrification programme. The TTS has lots of caveats on IEP running with two pantographs up and differentiates between performance under the new wires on the GWML and the old BR system between Paddington and Airport Junction. Oddly, there is no reference to the ECML OHLE in the same context.
Finally, we have the acceptance and delivery dates for the GWML and ECML fleets. Following acceptance deliveries will run at one set per week. As a general rule, during the build up there are always two cars spar. So when train No 8 is delivered, six sets will be available and so on.
IEP costs incomparable
For the first time DfT has used the four letter ‘F word’ in official correspondence. An MP raised a constituent’s concern about IEP costs, based on this column’s analysis. DfT’s reply was absolute gobbledegook
Predictably, it didn’t try to rubbish my analysis. It argued that ‘both capital and maintenance prices will change over time depending on changes to materials and labour costs, which tend to follow different rates of inflation to RPI. It is therefore likely that a portion of the recently reported cost discrepancy between the two trains is due to cost inflation from the years of manufacture and maintenance that were used in the Pendolino calculation, and the corresponding dates that were used in the IEP calculation’.
But we know
the capital cost of a new Pendolino, we know the cost of finance and we know
the current maintenance cost. And it
doesn’t add up to £74,000 per diagrammed vehicle per month.
When came
my moment of fame. The letter concluded,
‘Lastly, the National Audit Office (NAO) is exploring the scope for a piece of
work on rolling stock procurement as part of its Value for Money study
programme. As part of this exploratory work the NAO has met with the Department
and has discussed the issues raised by Mr Ford’. Don’t you just love the
dismissive ‘piece of work’?
SWT grows the railway
I’ve just written a piece for Railway Gazette International’s up-coming UK feature issue. It covers the rolling stock market and, as ever, writing for an international audience sharpens your own perspective – a form of ‘home thoughts from abroad’.
In particular, it has highlighted the problem of buying rolling stock growth builds in a market distinguished by short term decisions. The recently published Long Term Passenger Rolling Stock Strategy (see below) says that potential cascades and new build options should be indentified through the franchise bidding process. But as passenger demand grows you simply can’t wait for the next break point or replacement franchise in seven or ten year’s time.
From the Government’s point of view, the budget is set with the HLOS and SoFA every five years, which rarely coincides with franchise replacement. Because new trains won’t pay for themselves through the fare box, they will require more subsidy or less premium. And for most train operators with the end of a franchise in sight, the cost and disruption of procuring and commissioning new trains which will benefit the next franchise is not attractive.
So, reconciling intermittent contracts with smooth-ish year-on-year growth is not easy. But it can be done, as SWT is demonstrating
When Stagecoach retained the franchise for a 10 year term starting January 2007, SWT was handing 175 million passengers a year. This year, with the franchise just past the halfway point ridership will hit 212 million passenger journeys.
So it is interesting to compare the rolling stock commitments in the original franchise agreement with what has really happened. And the out-turn is very different.
The first two 458/5 units, formed from Class 460 vehicles, will be out-shopped by the end of May. By September SWT should have six sets, allowing the 458s to be released for their transformation into five cars using the rest of the Class 460 vehicles.
In addition, early next year SWT will started receiving Class 456 two car units cascaded from Southern by the current Class 377 Electrostar order. So by the December 2014 timetable, SWT should have all 24 units refurbished allowing them to form 10 car formations with the 455s.
With infrastructure work, such as platform lengthening and depot upgrades in the current Control Period, plus the reinstatement of the former International Platform 20, at Waterloo, SWT will have a 10 car railway on its busiest routes with three years of the franchise to run.
But growth is forecast to continue, which means that commuters can’t wait until franchise replacement in 2017 for something to be done about more capacity. Nor can Network Rail and the Office of Rail Regulation put infrastructure investment on hold for Control Period 5 until the franchise system catches up.
So, in the Network Rail Strategic Business Plan for CP5 (2014-2019), £300 million is allocated to increasing capacity at Waterloo. This will be part of a longer term enhancement programme delivering significant capacity improvements into CP5 ‘and beyond’.
Taking over the remaining four International platforms is the key. With these in service Network Rail can close the suburban side platforms 1-4 without any loss of capacity while they are lengthened to take 10 cars.
With a 10 car infrastructure on its suburban routes plus more platforms at Waterloo, SWT will need additional trains to exploit this capacity. However, the current SWT franchise expires in January 2017, two years before the end of CP5.
Conventional wisdom has it that providing additional rolling stock capacity, whether new build or cascade, will be down to the bidders for the replacement franchise in 2017. But by the time such trains were procured and delivered it could be 2020.
Fortunately, according to Informed Sources, SWT, or rather the Alliance partners, are already discussing with DfT how to keep capacity growing. What is needed are some high capacity mass-transit EMUs, similar to the LOROL Class 378 or Thameslink’s Desiro City.
But buying the trains is the easy bit. Providing a new depot to maintain the new fleet could prove very expensive and wreck the business case.
But suppose you could find more capacity at Golden Spanner garlanded Wimbledon Depot by extending the maintenance periodicity of the existing stud?
Not a problem with the ultra-reliable Class 458, but what about the Class 455s? Well, a proposal to replace the electro-mechanical dc traction system with a Vossloh Kiepe three phase drive package has been under discussion for some time.
This would extend maintenance periodicity and the depot capacity issue is resolved. Lots more on this topic in the column. But if all goes well I will have plenty to write about on my favourite subject in the months ahead, despite the next item.
Rolling Stock Strategy
Published by ATOC, the Rolling Stock Companies and Network Rail in February, the ‘Long term passenger rolling stock strategy for the rail industry’ provides little comfort for suppliers of traction and rolling stock. It is locked into the Majorite ‘the market must provide’ mode. It assumes that in replacement franchise bids, operators will be asked to identify options for delivering improved value for money by reviewing fleet deployment, diagramming, maintenance, life extension and new build options. The ‘best ideas’ would then ‘win through’.
I was offered a briefing on the Strategy and went along more through politeness. It puzzles me that the eminently sensible people I met can’t see that with franchising in turmoil, their process, which worked in 1996, simply can’t cope with today’s combination of a growing railway with franchising in a deep stall.
Am I being unkind? Not when I read in the document that ‘Individual class numbers have not been used in the associated analysis. The strategy is not a ‘cascade-plan’ for the deployment of rolling stock, nor is it in any way prescriptive. It is not intended to constrain TOCs and funders from making the best possible decisions about rolling stock procurement, maintenance, enhancement, life extension and replacement based on thorough business case analysis at the time’.
But how can you organise cascades when ROSCOs would be accused of collusion if they collaborated? Anyway, franchise bidders will want to keep their whizzo schemes to themselves. And since new trains cost more money, DfT has to be involved.
So, a pretty pointless exercise all round. But it was ever thus. In 2004, the then Strategic Rail Authority published a Rolling Stock Strategy, which ran into the same self imposed constraints. I could almost have cut and pasted my comment at the time for this latest attempt. You can read it at: (http://www.alycidon.com/ALYCIDON%20RAIL/INFORMED%20SOURCES%20ARCHIVE/INF%20SRCS%202004/Informed%20Sources%2002%202004%20p3.htm)
Public funding for Crossrail rolling stock.On 1 March, simultaneous statements by TfL and DfT announced that the Crossrail total train service provision deal, including rolling stock and depots, will be publicly funded in full. This marked a major victory for TfL and common sense over Treasury dogma.
Together with IEP and Thameslink, Crossrail was the third of a trio of Private Finance Initiative rolling stock contracts. And as we have seen the first two struggled, or are struggling, to raise the necessary long term funding.This has been obvious for some time. In December 2011 TfL was arguing that ‘the recent financial crisis has resulted in a significant widening of the gap between the cost of finance under a private-financed concession compared with the public sector’. As a result ‘this level of “premium” does not represent sufficient value for the Crossrail rolling stock and depot, and that the benefits that do arise from private finance could also be achieved through a disciplined, wholly public procurement’.
That argument was unsuccessful. But financial reality was creeping in and at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in September 2012 Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander announced that Crossrail would be the first recipient of a new Government guarantee backing major infrastructure investment. Mr Alexander warned then that ‘difficulties raising the necessary private funding in the market’ could delay delivery.
And now we have Transport Minister Stephen Hammond explaining that moving to a ‘wholly publicly funded procurement’ would simplify the contract negotiations.
This ‘reflects the unique circumstances that apply to Crossrail’. As a new route any delay in the rolling stock order would place this delivery timetable in jeopardy’,
Naturally DfT ‘remains committed to the use of private finance in transport projects where it provides value for money and fits with our timetables for planned investment’. Quite.
Roger’s BlogI was glad I made it to the Railway Engineer’s Forum (REF) conference on 27 February. The topic was ‘Has third rail electrification had its day’?
We had some excellent speakers representing both for and against and a mix of technical and commercial presentations. So congratulations to the organisers, the Institute of Railway Operators on their REF debut.
It was an operator, Tim Shoveller, MD of SWT and the first Alliance who for me made the most cogent point. Why electrify the already busy Southampton-Basingstoke route at 25kV ac, when electrifying via Laverstock and Andover would eliminate current DMU mileage and provide a gauge cleared freight route with little passenger traffic to get in the way.
Like so many proposals, you have the feeling that Southampton-Basingstoke re-electrifications is the result of a bee in some influential person’s bonnet. You can probably guess who.
Last week I had a session with ORR on their response to the Network Rail Strategic Business Plan. With a year to go to the start of CP5 there seems to be more uncertainty than ever before. Then I went on to the House of Commons for the launch of Virgin’s vision for the development of rail travel in the UK.
This coming week is one professional social whirl. Tuesday evening First Class Partnerships is having a party and on Friday it is the Fourth Friday Club with guest speaker Howard Collins, COO of London Underground. After my trip up over the speaker at the Golden Whistles I must try to avoid confusing Howard, who is off to run my brother’s trains in Sydney, with Howard Smith COO Rail for TfL who’s the new Ops Director for Crossrail. Still, I can’t get the Christian names wrong.
At the end of March I have a catch-up session with Eversholt, in particular their IC225 life extension proposals for East Coast. One thing I must check on is the report that DfT has vetoed the Traxx loco upgrade option.
Then it’s half term and off to St Pancras International heading south in search of some warmer weather. Must start brushing up my Italian.
April is pretty quiet at the moment, but at the end of the month it’s Railtex time again. I’ll let you know when I’ll be tramping the aisles in my next blog. Until then, ciao!
Roger