News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, Edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.
Railfuture News Snippets 285 - 31/12/2016
- RAIL FRANCHISES [all issues]
- RAIL ROUTES [all issues]
- ROLLING STOCK [all issues]
- Greater Anglia's new-look Class 321 Renatus train launched at Liverpool Street station
- Wheel-slide guard to be rolled out onto Greater Anglia's trains to reduce autumn leaf-fall issues
- GUIDED BUSWAY [all issues]
As reported in [Snippets 284], Railfuture East Anglia organised a meeting in Sawston to set-up a new Rail User Group for Whittlesford Parkway and Shelford stations. Around 20 people attended - most were either parish or district councillors and are very knowledgeable of the many problems that beset the local rail and associated road networks. A chair and vice chair were nominated to carry the process forward. The group will be called SAWRUG and its next meeting will be held on 1st February 2017.
Chris Burton, media spokesman for Railfuture East Anglia, was quoted heavily in the Cambridge News on 31st December 2016 about the annual rail fare rises, which are averaging about 1.8% on Greater Anglia and Great Northern services, although nationally it is about 2.3%. He said "I don't think anyone believes people get value for money for their ticket. I can't see anything changing at the moment [as that would need a change in government policy]."
Network Rail will be completing more works at the site of Cambridge North station - principally commissioning new signals for passenger trains (indicating which platform to use) - on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Buses will be replacing trains between Cambridge and Ely. It is unclear why this work could not have been done in October when several weekend closures occurred.
The Greater Cambridge City Deal may look at building a series of large park and ride sites in satellite villages around Cambridge. The South Cambridgeshire villages of Meldreth, Shepreth, Foxton and Whittlesford, which all have railway stations, along with Swavesey and Oakington, which are both served by the Cambridgeshire guided busway, have been identified as possible sites for the hubs, which would be funded by a £7million tax on workplace parking. The lack of parking at Whittlesford Parkway railway station, for example, needs addressing as both of its car parks are regularly full by 10:00 on weekdays.
In December Railfuture East Anglia was one of the stakeholders invited by Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) to look around its new state-of-the-art train-care centre (i.e. depot) at Hornsey. The new building (which is in addition to the existing building that looks after GTR's class 313, 317, 319, 321, 365 and 387 trains) was built by Siemens (using main contractor VolkerFitzpatrick) to its new Class 700 fleet plus the Class 717 Moorgate trains, due to arrive in late 2018 for service in 2019.
According to the station figures from the Office of Rail and Road, in the year from April 2015 to March 2016 only 12 people used Shippea Hill station, and that figure adds together both boarding and alighting. The low figure is because only one train a day calls at the station. On 24th December 2016 former Great British Bake Off contestant Ian Cumming promised free minced pies to anyone alighting at 07:25 from the train that left Cambridge at 07:00. He was given publicity by the BBC and Cambridge News prior to the event and it helped to attract 16 people. In addition other people came to the station to meet them. A photograph of around 20 people, including a couple of families, holding a "Welcome to Shippea Hill" banner was taken. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-38426342.
A Reopen Fulbourn Railway Station campaign group is calling for a station at Fulbourn between Cambridge and Dullingham as part of a drive to boost rail connectivity in the area.
RAIL FRANCHISES
Greater Anglia Managing Director, Jamie Burles, reveals detail of nine-year franchise to Railfuture
Keywords: [GreaterAngliaFranchise]
People: [Jamie Burles]
By Jerry Alderson.
On Saturday 3rd December 2016 at Railfuture East Anglia's quarterly public meeting, guest speaker Jamie Burles, the Managing Director of Greater Anglia, gave a presentation on what is planned for the nine-year franchise and answered questions. Below are some of the key points that he revealed.
The £3.7bn premium that Greater Anglia (GA) must pay to the government over nine years equates to £400m per year, against the £150m per year it was paying previously under the direct award. This is an increase of more than 150%. Over the same period £1.4bn will be spent on new trains, although funded by a ROSCO with GA paying a leasing charge. Abellio was alone among the three franchise bidders in proposing a complete franchise replacement.
TrainsThe new trains should be exceedingly reliable; especially as Stadler's near-equivalent trans running in the Netherlands (where Abellio's parent is based) have very infrequent failure rates. Jamie said he expected MTIN (miles between technical incidents) rates above 100,000 and went on to reveal the figures for some if its current fleet. The Class 379 trains, its most modern, are at 60,000 miles between incidents. GA's intercity stock that runs between London and Norwich are the most reliable intercity stock in Britain (better than Virgin's Pendolinos, for example) despite being among the oldest.
Stations and DepotsA lot of infrastructure improvements will need to be made, primarily for the new train fleet. The rural routes will be operated by three- and four-car trains. Many station platforms will need to be extended. GA has produced a list of the ones that it feels are necessary and Network Rail has produced an even longer list - now the two organisations just need to agree on the final list. Some, such as Hertford East station (in the Railfuture London & South East branch area) will be particularly challenging. GA will spend £120m on train depots. There will be a new one at Manningtree, which will need a new rail connection from the mainline, and depot extensions (for longer trains and/or a larger fleet) at Norwich Crown Point and Ilford. They had hoped to build a new depot at Chesterton sidings (close to the new Cambridge North station) but Network Rail has recently sold off the land for housing. Mr Burles said "we tried to stop the sale but we were unable." GA is now negotiating with Arriva for depot facilities at Cambridge. (Railfuture is eager to see later services to/from Peterborough and Ipswich, which may need trains to be stabled at Cambridge overnight.)
TargetsAbellio has signed up to challenging performance targets. GA train punctuality is currently 89.3% but it has a target of 92.9% at the end of the franchise. The target will increase each year and GA will be fined £6m each year that it fails to meet the target - the first time that a TOC has faced a direct pre-defined 'fine' for poor punctuality. Because of the reliance upon Network Rail to achieve this, Jamie Burles described it as the "biggest challenge of the entire bid." At the moment Network Rail is identified as causing 60% of all delays to GA trains, whilst GA is responsible for 30% and other operators (including freight trains) are responsible for the remaining 10%. GA aims to halve the delays it causes, so that others will be responsible for 85%. In addition to the punctuality 'fine', GA will also face a £9m per year fine if it fails to meet a series of key performance indicators to meet Customer Experience Performance (CEP) levels. This potential £15m a year fine could be, Mr Burles said, the difference between GA making a profit and a loss.
Passenger ExperienceGreater Anglia has already committed to providing an 'app' that will allow passengers to confirm that they were on a delayed train so that payment can be made directly into their bank account. It is now in financial talks with the DfT to reach agreement to provide Delay Repay payments for journeys delayed by between 15 and 29 minutes, which could be introduced by summer 2017. It is a DfT initiative that it wants to roll out across new franchises (GTR is the first TOC to offer this, from 11th December 2016). Another technical innovation that GA is encouraging is the use of smart cards to hold season tickets and carnets. Around 25,000 season ticket smartcards are being issued each month. One of the problems with mobile phones is that the rural parts of East Anglia including along railway lines have a poor or non-existent signal. The government has agreed to fund improvements to mobile telephony in rural area and this will directly benefit GA passengers who want to use the station and on-board Wi-Fi services.
Abellio had met the DfT's franchise specification: a key example being the number of seats (as opposed to carriages or trains) that must be provided. A Railfuture criticism is that this will being achieved on some of the new rolling stock with 3+2 seating. Jamie Burles revealed some good news about the new intercity trains: there would be six toilets per train rather than the five previously announced. Abellio had also proposed and agreed improvements that went beyond the specification. One example was the doubling (from two-hourly to hourly) of the Ipswich-Peterborough service. This was "a bit difficult" according to Network Rail because of the capacity constraints of Ely North Junction but GA proposed it because it was a big priority for Stakeholders. Mr Burles mentioned the negative impact of Network Rail not being able to fund vital "growth enabling schemes", such as Ely North Junction, to boost the economy.
All of GA's stations will offer passengers the same facilities, such as Wi-Fi. However, it is bringing innovation by introducing an efficient and cost-effective way of providing them. A 'totem' on the platform will house the Wi-Fi, help point, CCTV, digital CIS i.e. everything on one piece of apparatus.
Despite £millions having been spent on making Cambridge station fit for purpose (such as the new ticket hall), there was still money available for further improvements and GA intended to spend more at Cambridge once the right schemes had been identified. One item could be more direct pedestrian routes to the station from various directions (especially the eastern side of the station).
There is enormous financial pressure on the Greater Anglia franchise and Mr Burles repeated that "there is no Plan B." About 70% of its business is the season ticket market, and they do not see this changing. Off-peak will make the difference between making a profit or loss and to this aim GA will be quadrupling its marketing budget to attract leisure travel.
Something that Jamie Burles omitted to mention is that Greater Anglia will be removing refreshment trolleys from Stansted Express services at the end of 2016, presumably as a cost-saving measure.
RAIL ROUTES
Secretary of State for Transport unveils plans for private company to build and operate East West Rail
Keywords: [EastWestRail]
By Jerry Alderson with input from Phil Smart.
On 6th December Chris Grayling, Secretary of State for Transport, effectively resurrected the concept of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to manage significant rail enhancements, as preferred by Sir Alastair Morton when he was chair of the erstwhile SRA until 2001. Grayling's proposal is for a new East West Rail company to design and construct the full scheme and then operate train services on the line, leveraging in private investment at each stage by linking transport infrastructure development with the economic and housing development around it. In fact, 15 years earlier, Skanska with the involvement of GB Railways PLC had proposed something similar for the East West route, although at the time major housing expansion was not envisaged - a key reason why the project fell through along with complete lack of support from the SRA and government. Today, however, nearby Milton Keynes, the fastest growing place in Britain, along with Oxford and Cambridge require good rail connections other than the existing routes radiating out of London.
Grayling's proposal removes Network Rail from managing the project - following some serious mismanagement of major upgrades such as the electrification of the Great Western mainline - and the route would be passed to a standalone company. Seen by some as effectively privatising part of the rail network, bringing back bad memories of Railtrack, Grayling said the aim "put the passenger at the heart of delivery" by delivering Britain's first integrated rail operation since British Rail in the 1990s. He claimed that that the "assumption that Network Rail should always do everything does not ever give us any benchmarks to judge whether someone else can do it better", and continued "I want to use this as an opportunity, in a way that does not affect the rest of the network, to test the way that we are doing things, and to see whether we can do them quicker and better." Actually there have been attempts to undertake major rail projects without involving Network Rail - construction the Borders Railway along with maintenance for the next 30 years was originally put out to tender but after all bar one bidder dropped out it was passed to Network Rail to construct and maintain. Days after the announcement it emerged that the DfT had not carried out a thorough evaluation of the time and cost benefits of using a SPV.
Apart from announcing that the SPV (to be chaired by former Chiltern Railways Managing Director Rob Brighouse) will be established in early in 2017 and 'work hand in glove with the National Infrastructure Commission as it plans the development of this nationally-important transport corridor to identify the best way to deliver the project', the government has revealed little detail. There are many questions to be answered. A design-build-operate model is common for tram systems, because they are isolated systems, but may be less suitable for part of the rail network that is shared by long-distance passenger and freight trains. Although the company would maintain and renew the track, presumably the route would be controlled by one of Network Rail's Regional Operating Centres (ROCs), not by the company's own control centre. Would other trains have to pay a premium to use the route and, moreover, would there be premium fares for the new company's own trains, akin to the Javelin trains on HS1? Railfuture would, obviously, campaign for all nationwide and regional railcards, rovers and flexible tickets to be accepted on the route.
Hopefully the route will be built to be future-proof and capable of being enhanced relatively easily. Many will hope that it will be electrified from the start, and operated by trains with in-cab signalling. This is easier said than done, of course. Simply passing the design and construction to a private company will not entirely avoid the problems that Network Rail has encountered when put in charge of major investment projects. The skills needed by the new company to build East West Rail will still be in competition with those employed by Network Rail on other projects, but at least it will be a leaner organisation, and will not have to follow Network Rail's management processes, even if it, presumably, will be required to follow its technical standards.
The undoubted good news is that Grayling has raised even higher the profile of East West Rail (above the Expressway road scheme), reaffirmed the government's commitment to it (helped by the November 2016 Autumn Statement announcement of £110m funding), hopefully enabling the opening date of the link to Cambridge to be brought forward (before Network Rail's suggested 2032 opening), and lastly made it much more difficult for the government to backtrack in the future. Railfuture continues to point out, and did so on BBC Look East on the day of the announcement, that the economic benefits of the full scheme means that the country is currently losing £1m every week because it has not been built.
East West Rail Consortium statement: http://www.eastwestrail.org.uk/2016/12/07/transport-secretary-announces-new-approach-to-deliver-east-west-rail/.
ROLLING STOCK
Greater Anglia's new-look Class 321 Renatus train launched at Liverpool Street station
Keywords: [Class321]
On 16th December 2016 Greater Anglia publicly launched its refurbished Class 321 Renatus trains at London Liverpool Street station. Eversholt Rail, which owns the EMUs, has committed to total interior refurbishment of 30 of the Greater Anglia trains (see [Snippets 268] for details of the work being done), even though they will be cascaded to a new operator by the end of 2020. The train used at the launch is now in passenger service and the remaining 28 should be in use by early 2018. It was actually the second train converted; the first is out of service as it is currently being fitted with a new traction system. The Renatus project, which is a total interior refurbishment of the trains along with a new AC traction package, has seen a long design process. The demonstrator unit was unveiled in 2013, and feedback from passengers has largely been taken account of. At the launch event Greater Anglia described the Renatus trains as "an appetiser to the main event" meaning the new trains arriving in 2019.
Dominic Lund-Conlon who is a wheelchair user and works as a transport manager for Essex County Council was invited to see the refurbished train and he was very impressed at how it caters for passengers with reduced mobility, as his complimentary blog article says: http://blog.lund-conlon.co.uk/the-feng-shui-of-the-class-321-equilibrium/.
News: http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/Rail-News/greater-anglia-launches-new-look-class-321s.
Wheel-slide guard to be rolled out onto Greater Anglia's trains to reduce autumn leaf-fall issues
Keywords: [GreaterAnglia]
During the leaf-fall season in 2015 the service on Greater Anglia's Felixstowe and Sudbury branches were devastated by complete closure for almost two weeks because too many of GA's 1980s-era Class 15x trains were out-of-service following wheel-slide damaging the wheels (see [Snippets 273]). As well as damaging GA's reputation it was also raised in Parliament. The trains' owner Porterbrook has developed a system of wheel slide protection to install on the affected fleet, which has performed successfully during the trial of it on a Class 156 throughout the autumn without needing to be taken out of service for wheel re-profiling. The wheel-slide guard will now be installed on the whole of Porterbrook's diesel fleet used by Greater Anglia.
GUIDED BUSWAY
Car overturns on the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway blocking route during morning peak-time
The guided busway between St Ives Park and Ride and Swavesey was closed until around 08:00 on Friday 16th December after a Nissan Pathfinder car overturned on the tracks just after 06:00. The vehicle was abandoned and is believed to have been stolen. No-one was reported to be injured.
News: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/overturned-car-tracks-causes-guided-12329692.
Drunk driver gets car stuck on the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway
A driver whose car got stuck in a car trap on the busway near to the Trumpington Park and Ride site before 07:00 on Friday 30th December 2016 was arrested by police on suspicion of drink driving. According to Stagecoach buses were diverted on to the Addenbrooke's relief road and there were no delays, although buses had to omit stops on Foster Road. It took until 09:15 to remove the vehicle from the busway.
News: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/one-person-arrested-after-car-12384455.
Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 285 - 31/12/2016
[Prev Issue (284)] [Snippets Issues] [Next Issue (286)] [Category List] [Keyword List] [People List] [Story List] [Branch Dashboard]