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What must really gall the CrossRail backers is that the Superlink boys are having so much fun
Any hopes that Superlink, the alternative approach to the Crossrail scheme, was an off-the-wall intervention by a bunch of old railwaymen who would briefly strut the stage and go away away have vanished. With the Crossrail Bill transferred over to the new parliamentary session and the second reading due to have started when you read this, Superlink has stepped up its jihad.
In essence, Crossrail vs Superlink is about three fundamental issues. The first is philosophical. Is the purpose of the scheme simply to relieve transport congestion in London (Regional Metro) or to serve London and the South East (Regional Express)?
This leads into the second issue of cost and fundability. After the central tunnel is open for business it has to provide a return on its construction costs.
Superlink argues that the scope for additional revenue generated by ‘metro' is limited, leaving an unbridgeable funding gap. They point to funding uncertainty sinking Crossrail the last time around.
In contrast, although costing more, Superlink claims that its ‘express', scheme would tap growth areas in L&SE, generating additional revenue which would more than offset the increased construction, reducing the funding gap. But Cross London Rail links (CLRL), the joint Strategic Rail Authority/Transport for London company responsible for Crossrail, claims that Superlink has got its sums wrong.
Its analysis suggests that the construction cost of Superlink would be at least £15.9billion, or 55% higher than the cost of Crossrail. Similarly CLRL's analysis suggests that Superlink's revenue forecasts are overstated.
CLRL concludes, ‘Given the underestimation of the cost of the proposal and the overestimation of the new revenue generation, it is difficult to accept the assertion that Superlink would be easier to finance than Crossrail'.
Then we come to the third issue. CLRL argues that, in any case, ‘t he number of (Superlink's) proposed routes, multiple starting points and long distances that trains would have to travel, would be operationally incompatible with the requirement to provide a reliable, high frequency service through central London'.
In other words, even if Superlink were funded and built, the operators couldn't guarantee the smooth flow of 24 trains/hour into each portal of the central tunnel that central London needs. Not surprisingly Superlink is contesting these counterclaims ‘con malizia', as Sir William Walton was wont to mark his scores.
As our Forum column has shown, Crossrail vs Superlink has polarized the railway industry. Broadly, the argument for pressing ahead with Crossrail centres on ‘the best being the enemy of the good'. In other words, Superlink might be the better option, but if it delays Crossrail we could lose everything.
For once, I don't buy the bird in the hand argument. Crossrail, effectively a Shenfield/Abbey Wood-Maidenhead/Heathrow shuttle, would turn back 14 out of 24 west-bound trains an hour through the central tunnel at Paddington. I can't see the point of a cross-London tunnel with little or no revenue from the Western side?
But Crossrail is part of London politics. London Mayor Ken Livingstone is concerned solely with its benefits in terms of relieving congestion within the capital. That London is at the heart of, and depends on, the London & South East Region is, apparently irrelevant. Several people have remarked to me that Crossrail is ‘Ken's railway'.
In contract, Superlink could be termed ‘John Prescott's railway', since it aims to generate the extra revenue by supporting the Deputy Prime Minister's housing development areas along the London-Stanstead-Cambrige corridor, around Milton Keynes , the Thames Gateway and the Reading-Basingstoke ‘Western Wedge.. In doing so, it contributes to the prosperity of London plus the SouthEast.
Now what I did not realise when this column described Superlink (Modern Railways January 2005 ) was that, as they say in East Enders, one member of the team behind the scheme had ‘history' when it came to Crossrail.
At the end of 1999, the Shadow Strategic Rail Authority invited proposals for improving London commuter services and easing capacity constraints at Waterloo , Liverpool Street and Paddington stations. This was when the late Sir Alastair Morton was sSRA Chairman and thinking big was the order of the day.
Also thinking big was John Prescott', That same month he told sSRA to review east-west travel across central London . This became the London East West Rail Study (LEWS).
One respondent to the call for proposals was GB Railways, the Anglia Railways franchisee, progenitor of Hull Trains and parent of GB Railfreight. Surely too minor a player to be thinking about London 's capacity problems?
Aha! But one of the founders of GB Railways was Michael Schabas , who advised Canary Wharf over the Jubilee Line extension and worked with John Prideaux on the CTRL. Michael has no illusions about his abilities and by February had given sSRA, 10 copies of an 80 page proposal for ‘CrossRail 2'.
Features included an alternative alignment to that in the aborted 1992 Crossrail scheme, following the Thames , and the potential for longer distance commuting to help close the funding gap.
Then in November 2000, sSRA revealed that a recommended alignment for Crossrail had already been submitted to the Secretary of State for Transport. At meeting between SRA and, a no doubt, miffed Michael Schabas was arranged.
It emerged that the original Crossrail route had been perpetuated anyway because it would save planning time. This was obviously not well received and shortly after SRA said they would review the GB Railways proposals for a line at the eastern end of the tunnel, by-passing Stratford and Shenfield, at a later stage.
Then in May 2001, the LEWS report was published and the formation of a joint SRA/TfL body, now Cross London Rail Links (CLRL), announced. LEWS was a long way from the GB Railways proposals, and reading between the lines, I expect Michael Schabas did what he does best – make waves.
Because in December 2001 he was invited to make a presentation to CLRL of what was now called ‘Super Crossrail'. After which CLRL agreed to pay GB Railways for Michael's time while he helped CLRL engineers evaluate the alternative scheme.
This working arrangement occupied the first eight months of 2002. Then in September Mr Schabas was invited to a meeting with CLRL Chief Executive Norman Haste.
And the gist of the meeting was that whichever way you looked at it, in terms of cost, environmental impact, congestion relief or operationally, CLRL had concluded that Super CrossRail was a dead parrot. According to Michael , the cost and environmental problems were said to be ‘intractable'.
This must have been a fairly lively meeting, because afterwards the Chairman of CLRL, wrote to Lord Shepherd Chairman of GB Railways, confirming that Super Crossrail was off the agenda. He added ‘the matter of real concern is that [Schabas] may choose to use the media to further his cause, which may not be in the best interests either of GB Rail or may not be aligned with your strenuous efforts to support Crossrail through various London First initiatives.
This was, of course, the sort of velvet glove leaning on that the great and the good specialise in. But it was irrelevant because GB Railways' focus switched to retaining its only franchise and then the company was bought out by First Group as a possible way back into Greater Anglia.
So CLRL must have breathed a sigh of relief that Michael Schabas had been put back in his box. But it was really a case of ‘just when you thought it was safe…'
Because the next we knew was that Michael had teamed up with some of the leading lights in the old-railway intelligentsia and bought the intellectual property rights to Super Crossrail. Having extensively reworked the concept, including the Milton Keynes route, and renamed it Superlink, they took it to DfT last July.
Also that month, Transport Secretary Alastair Darling released the report into Crossrail by banker Adrian Montague, who would become CLRL Chairman in October, and announced that a hybrid Bill promoting the scheme was to go ahead.
One of Adrian Montague's first jobs as Chairman was to write to Superlink Chairman John Prideaux explaining that his brief did not include alternatives to Crossrail. Superlink went public.
So now we have the Crossrail Hybrid Bill going through Parliament while some very bright and heavyweight railway chums are analysing and deconstructing the proposals in real time. Not only does CLRL have to deal with Schabas, Prideaux and Stokes as the public faces of Superlink, the trio can't be lent on. Indeed, as Michael put it to me ‘ I'm in this to make the right thing happen and to have fun'.
Thus Superlink has used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) relentlessly. By the start of May, the number of questions had reached over 100 in 10 separate batches.
Why use the FoIA? In October 2004 Superlink wrote to DfT's Director Major Projects Mike Fuhr with a number of questions about Crossrail and the Montague report. There was no reply: so in February 2005 the questions were resubmitted, in the form of an FoIA request. And 20 working days later some of the questions were answered.
Sundry other requests followed. But all this was warming up for when CLRL published the formal
Crossrail Environmental Statement (ES) with the draft Bill on 22 February. The ES included references to CLRL's evaluations of Super Crossrail and Superlink, including findings from a NATA (New Approach to Assessment) assessment.
An FoIA request for the full NATA assessment brought the response that it would be published shortly'. When asked to define ‘shortly', the answer was ‘two months'.
That was on 5 April. Since the deadline for comments on the ES was 17 May, Superlink asked whether they could see the draft NATA Assessment in its current form, since if it had been used in the ES it must be almost complete. Or the deadline could be extended?
In the event, the NATA assessment was put on the CLRL Web site on 26 May. Three days earlier, new Transport Under Secretary Derek Twigg had announced that consultation on the ES was being extended to 10 June. To avoid making DfT even crosser with this column than they are already, I hasten to add that I am not suggesting a link.
But it does mean that the jihadis have had a chance to put on their web-site yet another of their 20-30 page detailed critiques, rebuttals and counter-rebuttals aimed at persuading the emperors of DfT and TfL that their new clothes are see-through.
Of course, the Government hasn't rolled over.
In a letter dated 11 May, responding to Superlink's latest FoIA requests, DfT said ‘although we hold information relevant to your requests we are unable to provide you with this information'.
Section 12 of the FoIA states that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request if it estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate amount. The Freedom of Information and Data protection(appropriate limits and fees) Regulations 2004, set the ‘appropriate limit' for Central government at £600 and other public authorities at £450.
Superlink's two requests to the DfT and eight to CLRL under FoIA since the beginning of February had already exceeded the £600 limit.
On top of which, where multiple requests are received from an organisation within 60 consecutive working days, the limits apply to the aggregate costs of answering. This meant that Superlink would not be able to use the FoIA again until June 23.
Naturally, Superlink stropped back, asking whether they could pay DfT to have the information they had requested copied. They also raised the ante by suggesting that the failure to release the NATA assessment before the original deadline could be in breach of the Aarhus Environmental Convention for Europe and related legislation and directives.
Superlink are not alone. T he Crossrail Bill includes draconian powers to place Crossrail services outside regulatory control and override franchise access agreements. This would undermine independent regulation to which successive Transport Secretaries have paid lip service.
Alastair Darling was reminded of this in a joint letter from the Association of Train Operating Companies, the Rail Freight Group and Network Rail complained. It must be a serious threat to get Keith Ludeman (ATOC) Iain Coucher (Network Rail) and Lord Berkeley signing the same letter.
They complained that the Bill would give Crossrail services priority on, or exclusive use of, the surface lines East and West of the central tunnel. While it might be possible to develop a timetable integrating Crossrail services, ‘the Bill would allow Crossrail to demand 24 trains/hour on these lines in the future. In such as situation there is nothing that the regulator or the industry could do about this'.
CLRL explains that the powers are necessary to under pin Crossrail's business case and thus give the project credibility: the industry is over-reacting. But clearly, while industry has in the past regarded regulation as a pain, the prospect of an unregulated operator determining their timetables and altering their business plans makes regulation suddenly desirable.
Chairman of the Office of Rail Regulation Chris Bolt is clear that, as it stands, the Bill undermines independent regulation since it would allow the Transport Secretary to direct the ORR. He told me, ‘the challenge in Crossrail is to show that there is an alternative way of delivering that project which does not require the provisions in the Bill as published'.
ORR is discussing with DfT ways in which existing regulatory ‘technology', such as access options, can provide enough contractual certainty for the Crossrail promoters to underpin investment in their project without the provisions to direct ORR wnich would then no longer be independent.
So, a turbulent time ahead for Crossrail the second time around. And this is before the communities along the route, environmentalists and other special interest bodies – and their lawyers – get stuck in. Watch this space.