INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview November 2020
INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview November 2020
This month I return to an issue I first raised 20 years ago but which remains just as topical. The column also provides the background to the Government’s approach to the transition from franchising to concessions. And TIN-watch analyses the progress of the new trains fleets over the past six months.
Constraints needed for accident investigation closures
TOCs ERMA challenge – hold ‘em, fold ‘em or walk away?
New train TIM-watch
Back in the December 2000 Informed Sources I wrote about the delay in reopening the East Coast Main line to traffic following the Hatfield Derailment that October. Why, I asked, had it taken 17 days to remove the last vehicles from the accident site?
With the Dundee-Aberdeen line likely to be closed for around 80 days following the Carmont derailment in August, I have returned to the subject, but in more detail.
I start with an analysis of the time taken to restore services after major accidents going back to 1944. The resulting chart shows that the approach to accident recovery changed with Ladbroke Grove in 1999. However, the seeds of the new policy were planted in the recommendations of the inquiry into the Clapham accident.
Two recommendations in the resulting Hidden Inquiry gave the police the lead role after an accident. Over the years this has seen the concept of the accident site as a ‘scene of crime’ take hold.
As I wrote 20 years ago ‘What were reasonable requirements for the accident site to be secured, so that only rescuers and investigators could have access and supporting each investigator with someone with forensic training to bag and record “evidence”, has encouraged the British Transport Police to take charge of the investigations and keep experts away from the Accident site’.
Thus, in the 21st Century, taking 10-15 days to reopen the railway after a major accident became the norm.
In last month’s column I published the Memorandum of Understanding between the Rail Accident Investigation Branch and the British Transport Police, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Chief Police Officers (Scotland), the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the Office of Rail Regulation on post-accident responsibilities. Here it is again because it poses worrying questions.
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Responsibilities on site
In the absence of a clear indication that serious criminality has caused the accident RAIB will normally have precedence in respect of the investigation and will assume lead responsibility for the investigation.
Where there is a clear indication that serious criminality caused the accident, it will normally be appropriate for the police investigation to take precedence. Any decision to this effect will be agreed between the police (and, in Scotland, where appropriate, procurators fiscal) and RAIB inspectors in co-operation with each other.
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Note that at Carmont Police Scotland took control of the site. Railway staff had to be accompanied by a police officer to enter the site. From this, the inference is that ‘there is a clear indication that serious criminality caused the accident’.
I find this improbable given that £1.8 million was spent in 2010 on stabilisation work in the cutting. A new drain was laid along the top of the cutting. It then runs down to the trackside before discharging into a ditch which flows into Carron Water
While the rock cutting changes to the steep earth slope where the washout occurred, in 2010 it was not considered necessary to extend the drain along the edge of the fields above the slope.
According to Network Rail’s report to the Transport Secretary, ‘Site investigations indicate the water causing the washout flowed from the adjacent land. It is not yet understood how new drains installed in 2010 and any pre-existing field drains interact.
RAIB’s second interim report published on 21 August said that it was ‘currently collecting evidence needed to identify factors relevant to the cause of the accident and its consequences’. The scope of the investigation was likely to include ‘the management of earthworks and drainage in this area, including recent inspections and risk assessments’.
This statement prompts questions. First of all, why was the accident declared a crime scene almost immediately, with Police Scotland taking control? Second, why did it take a further three weeks of investigation on site before Network Rail was able to start lifting?
And even when the railway was clear, so that the removal of the track and repair of the bridge parapet could start, the embankment area remained closed to Network Rail engineers who needed access to survey the earthwork, including intrusive ground investigations, to provide the information needed to design new drainage and embankment configuration.
At the time of writing there was no estimate of when the line would reopen. My best guess is early November.
No doubt there will be arguments that the protracted investigation was necessary to establish the truth. Time will tell. But if we can manage without a vital inter-city main line, what other minor routes could be cut back to reduce the cost of maintaining today’s under-used railway for the foreseeable future?
ERMAs could come at a cost
As further details of the Emergency Recovery Management Agreements (ERMA), announced by the Department for Transport on 21 September, have emerged, it is clear that the Treasury is determined to get back some of the money it is pouring into the Train Operating Companies to keep the railway running.
At the end of each ERMA, the existing franchise will be terminated and a new Direct Award Franchise Agreement signed. But under the terms of the ERMA each TOC has to agree with DfT, by December 13, whether, in an alternative universe where the Covid pandemic never happened, it would have defaulted on its existing franchise agreement before the end of the franchise term.
In other words, if there had been no pandemic, and rail travel and the economy had continued as normal, how long could a loss-making ‘zombie’ franchise have continued in business before the financial Parent Company Support (PCS) from its owning group, which had been keeping it afloat, ran out?
If it would have defaulted before the end of the franchise, then DfT wants the rest of the PCS. Plus the value of various bonds which would have been forfeited when the franchise defaulted.
If these termination payments are agreed, they fall due at the end of the ERMA and the TOC, having coughed-up, gets a Direct Award. However, if agreement can’t be reached by 13 December, then the DfT has the right to terminate that ERMA early, with the TOC reverting to ‘substantially all of the pre-existing franchise terms’ from mid-January 2021.
This, of course, would be commercial suicide. Reverting to the previous premium or subsidy payments with perhaps a third of the pre-Covid revenue coming in, plus rising lease rentals on any new trains, would see an already loss-making TOC burn through the PCS and default and lose the money anyway.
Of course it is not that simple. Note the objective is to agree if, and how much, PCS or other sums would have been payable had the pandemic not occurred. For the owning groups, the aim will be to prove that a failing TOC would have kept afloat financially, with some cash left in the PCS kitty when the franchise expired.
For example, in this parallel universe, would Network Rail’s imaginary falling performance have resulted in imaginary Schedule 8 payments to the TOC? Would a continuation of ridership growth have brought in enough revenue to save the day? Ditto compensation from tardy builders of unreliable trains? All totally bonkers.
In this event, payment would be limited to some of the currently unused PCS, but the bonds would remain untouched. FirstGroup hints at just such a situation with the TPE ERMA. This has the ‘potential’ to be extended to 19 September 2021, plus a further six-month option, should the termination assessment indicate that the PCS would not have been fully utilised over the franchise term.
There’s a Table in the column listing the TOCs and their status. Plus an analysis of their prospects. Meanwhile, DfT is bracing itself for legal challenges.
New train TIN-watch
A fair criticism of TIN-watch is that, while it provides a monthly snapshot of fleet reliability, to find out whether performance is improving you need to get out the back numbers. So, this month there is a fleet-by-fleet analysis answering the simple question: ‘has reliability improved over the last six Reporting Periods?’
There are three charts, the first showing the progress of the ‘magnificent six’ fleets which featured in the first TIN-Watch table. This provides a reminder that the best of the new fleets, South Western Railway’s, Siemens Class 707 Desiro City fleet took only seven Reporting Periods to reach the 50,000 MTIN MAA ceiling above which new trains are deemed to have become established.
I expect to be saying goodbye shortly to the ScotRail Class 385s as they too pass the 50,000 MTIN MAA mark and leave the reception class behind.
For the six-month reliability review I have categorised the manufacturers into the best and the rest, with a chart for each. The charts show the change in MTIN MAA since Period 13 2019-20.
I thought it would be a good idea to end with an example of a second division fleet improving steadily period-by-period. The Moving Annual Average is slow to recognise improvement, so I plotted the performance for each of the six periods covered in the analysis. After a frustrating series of ‘one step forward, two steps back’ bar-charts composed of ups and downs, just one fleet provided what I was seeking.
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Video previews
Each month we produce two video previews explaining more about what’s in the new issue of the magazine.
Go to our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/modernrailwaysmag) to see the Editor talk to Roger Ford and Ian Walmsley in a ‘Zoom’ call, or head to our YouTube page (https://rb.gy/jog4f7) where Ian Walmsley hosts a longer video with individual contributions from the magazine’s writers. Both videos are usually published on the day the magazine goes on sale, normally the fourth Thursday of the month.
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Roger’s blog.
The biggest excitement since the last e-Preview was the sudden loss of e-mail at the end of September. I’ve kept the same e-mail address for 25 years, which I appreciate is unusual. When my original provider was taken over the new company maintained my legacy account.
And then, on Friday 25 September, the company launched a major upgrade and from 10.00 all of us legacy customers lost our e-mail services. They weren’t restored until the Monday, by which time I had a new account.
Fortunately I use Roger@alycidon.com which is quicker when people ask for my address and this was rapidly routed to my new account. My new address is Roger.Ford9009@gmail.com so if I am still down as ‘eraf’ in your ‘address book’, please update.
A much more pleasant excitement was Siemens’ virtual trade press annual lunch. This was held using Teams and for the lunch part Siemens sent us a chilled box the day before containing some savoury bites, to be heated in the oven, a scone with jam and clotted cream and some cake.
It was all very well organised and both useful professionally and a bit of fun in these difficult times.
Another remote session was the Railway Industry Association’s virtual fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference featuring Rail Minister Chris Heaton-Harris and Transport Committee Chair Huw Merriman. As it was a 9.00 start it would have been good if RIA could have emulated Siemens and had bacon butties delivered beforehand.
Meanwhile I have plenty of writing to keep me busy, with our annual The Modern Railway and a piece for our Innovation Awards review.
Roger
