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What's happening? Lots of paperwork
Several readers suffering with big project withdrawal syndrome have asked why Modern Railways hasn't written about the West Coast Route Modernisation project lately. Bad news, I'm afraid. While this is traditionally the time of year when we publish our annual West Coast progress report blockbuster, this year's feature is on hold.
All the writing team is sitting in dispersal, kitted up, digital recorders and cameras with batteries fully charged and memory cards emptied, waiting for the tannoy to ‘scramble'. But the phoney war continues.
As of mid June, the hot news was that the latest Railtrack sit-rep commissioned from contractors Bechtel – who have succeeded Parsons Brinckerhoff and Brown & Root as flavour of the month on the West Coast, have produced the first draft of their project review. It is, I am told ‘horrific', with the cost now well north of £10billion – but you all expected that anyway.
Railtrack chums warn me not to get too excited since the report is not worth the paper it is written on. No disrespect to Bechtel, of course. The Strategic Rail Authority is carrying out its route capacity study which will determine how much traffic, allocated between the various operators, the West Coast can be expected to carry. This is interlinked with the renegotiation of the Virgin West Coast franchise to match the lower specification for route capacity and capability.
Speaking at the Stagecoach integrated transport conference at the end of May, Graham Eccles Executive Director, Rail Stagecoach Holdings, which owns 49% of Virgin Trains confirmed that ‘The original Virgin business plan is now in complete tatters. The emerging railway that we conceived will operate at 125mile/h rather than 140mile/h. There will be little or no opportunity to compete head-on with the airlines, and the train plan that was envisaged at franchising has had to be completely redesigned to cope with lower speeds and reduced capacity on the railway.'
So, until the SRA says what it wants, or, rather, can afford to pay for, Bechtel can't really work out how much the de-specced modernisation, which you will recall was mainly renewals rather than enhancements, will cost. But as soon as thereis something to say, be sure we will be in there like a flash.
What other good news is there on the project front? Well, you may remember that when I tried to price the SRA's Strategic Plan (it's called nailing jelly to a tree), I costed the gauge enhancement between Southampton and the West Midlands at £500million. This round number came from the last quoted figure I could find multiplied by a conservative Ford Factor of two.
According to the Strategic Rail Authority, in evidence to the public inquiry into the proposed Dibden Bay container port on Southampton Water, the cost of providing W12 gauge clearance, plus capacity enhancements and diversions to handle an additional two trains an hour by day and three by night is now – wait for it - £1billion.
We should not be surprised, since Hope's Law states ‘the unit cost of Railtrack projects doubles annually'. About 60% of the cost is down to capacity. However, the £1billion includes the cost of resignalling the whole of the Reading control area.
Oh yes, and the cost of the Southern Region power supply upgrade to feed those power hungry lardbutts is now £500million, according to SRA Chairman Richard Bowker. Having seen the OJEC Notice for the scheme, I suspect that figure is optimistic.
More on PP No sooner had I penned last month's tribute to Sir Peter Parker than Charles Long, MR's Editor during PP's Chairmanship of BR was on the phone to remind me of another Parkerism.
In the current situation, can I commend it, in all seriousness, to SRA Chairman Richard Bowker and new Transport Secretary Alistair Darling.
‘From the ashes of yesterday's corporate plan rises the phoenix of tomorrow's cock up' |