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Just as the back to basics discussion on HST2 starts, DfT Rail gives potential builders an out-of- date aspiration
This column refers frequently to ‘OJEU Notices’ – advertisements placed in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) detailing a requirement and inviting potential suppliers to submit expressions of interest. Less common is the Prior Information Notice (PIN) which alerts potential bidders that something is afoot so that they can get their brains in gear ready for the proper OJEU Notice.
DfT Rail had been expecting to start procurement of HST2 – the replacement for IC125 – around now. Instead, reflecting developments reported in last month’s column, on 9 February it issued a PIN which said, among other things, that the call for expressions of interest had slipped to September 2006.
That was the hard news. The rest of the PIN was a combination of a wish-list driven by political correctness and a morass of uncertainty as far as a business requirement was involved.
According to the PIN, the capital cost of the replacement fleet will be around £1 billion. Well, it’s easy to see where that number came from.
Assume £2 million per power car and £1 million per coach, then a 2+10 formation comes out at roughly £15 million a set. The IC125 fleets in service with Greater Western, GNER and Midland Main line total 66 sets.
Do the math and 66 sets at £15 million a copy is almost exactly £1 billion. DfT Rail adds that further expenditure will be required on depot upgrades and related works. However funding arrangements have ‘yet to be considered’.
With funding the real world intrudes for the first time. Currently it looks as though DfT Rail and its recently appointed HST2 programme managers, consultants Mott MacDonald supported by Steer Davies Gleave, will be handling procurement – if it happens. This will leave the Rolling Stock Companies, who are anathema at DfT Rail (Informed Sources March 2006), out in the cold. My chums in red braces are already wondering whether that game is worth the candle.
But as last month’s column showed, IC125 replacement is in a state of flux. And enthusiasm for maximum life extension of the existing fleet is in the ascendant. Here is Moir Lockhead, First Group chief Executive and Deputy Chairman waxing lyrical about Greater Western’s ‘beautiful HSTs which are only 30 years old’.
Moir was giving the CILT Sir Robert Reid Memorial Lecture in February. He said that ‘HST performance has never been better’ and that ‘our customer love them’. He promised ‘every HST will be rebuilt – I kid you not. We believe in these trains’.
So with Moir Lockhead making Captain Deltic seem lukewarm about IC125, and backing his enthusiasm with money, early replacement is not on the cards. But when it comes, the ebullient First Group Chief was clear about one thing – ‘I want to put it on record – DMUs are not the solution’.
Meanwhile, there those who have started asking the Batemanesque question ‘do we need HST2? And the emerging consensus seems to be ‘not as a like for like diesel train’. On Greater Western, for example, it probably won’t be a DMU, but it could be an EMU.
Getting back to the PIN, the message to the putative builders is, don’t bank on that figure of £1 billion to keep factories occupied. Wait ‘til you see the black and white of their specification is always a good philosophy in the UK train market. And then treat it with caution.
As already mentioned the PIN is a ragbag of worthy aspirations. So there is a references to the ‘proper’ testing of a prototype train.
By the 1980s, British Rail had learned that prototypes don’t tell you much. In the case of the High Speed Diesel Train (HSDT) – the IC125 prototype, the curtailed trial running period and the undemanding duties meant that endemic weaknesses were not exposed. It took 125 mile/h timetables, binary driving and maintenance depots under pressure to sustain availability, before problems began to emerge.
Or, going back a really long way, when the English Electric 16CSVT diesel engine, on which I worked as an apprentice in the development department, was put into DP2, on which I also worked, it ran faultlessly. But production engines in the Class 50s had severe problems.
Why was that? Well, someone detected slight overheating around the valve seats, the cylinder head was redesigned and the new casting started cracking around the valve seats. Captain Deltic reckons that any changes made as the result of service experience with prototypes are usually for the worse.
What BR did with the Class 91s was build a pre-series batch of 10, hammer them up and down the East Coast Main Line and feed the lessons learned back into the remainder of the build on the production line. A similar approach was adopted with the Class 390 Pendolino, although much of the pre-series running was dedicated to acceptance rather than a good day-in/day-out thrashing.
And a reader has reminded me that to test the Class 91’s before the Mk4 coaches were available they were marshalled in IC125 rakes with a diesel power at the other end. And to stop the Class 43’s traction motor commutators glazing, the diesel engine ran normally providing some officially sanctioned super Power.
Sorry, I keep getting off the subject of the PIN. where we are now into the feel-good platitudes. Take maximising passenger carrying capacity. There are, says DfT Rail, three options: increase the ‘length, height or width of trains’. Another graduate of some university’s Depart of the Bleedin’ Obvious Studies has found employment in Marsham Street.
Also required will be a fast, reliable journey time. This, say the PIN, is a reflection of the link between increasing ‘per capita GDP’ and passengers’ value of time. So as we all get increasing cash rich and time poor, HST2 will need to ‘match or better competitor modes in terms of reliable end-to-end journey times’.
Is it just me, or does this make the ‘Ladybird Book of New Train Procurement’ look technical? What competitor modes? And to what timescale?
To be fair, DfT Rail then admits that ‘nobody can forecast with total confidence demand levels or passenger expectations’ – although with a few hundred thousand waved under noses we can think of several consultants who would have a go. Assessments of how to optimise the carrying capacity of lines ‘may also change over time’.
With such uncertainty DfT Rail switches its aspiration to a multi-role train ‘capable of operating as many different types of inter-urban service as possible, eg non-stop or 20-stop London-Edinburgh services, on WCML as well as ECML, and possibly on longer-distance commuter routes’. Currently, GNER serves around a dozen intermediate stations between London and Edinburgh and readers might care to nominate their extra eight (roger@alycidon.com).
But hang on, how do 20 stops at, say, 5 minutes per stop help ‘match or better competitor modes in terms of reliable end-to-end journey times’? Confused? DfT Rail certainly is.
This is illustrated by, on the one hand, the need for a ‘clear understanding’ of the markets HST2 is intended to serve, while, on the other there is the ability to cascade the trains with minimal modification cost, for example by exploiting modular design, which ‘also has a value’. Whether modular design will include changing from end doors to one third/two third spacing when the all-stations London-Edinburgh stopper comes in is not revealed.
Among all these conflicting requirements an ‘environmentally sustainable solution’ will be required. Since fuel prices are expected to rise and environmental concerns increase, HST2 should be as fuel-efficient as possible, with minimum generation of noise and emissions. So no diesels, then?
Ah, DfT Rail has thought of that. The risk that ‘some combination of fuel-price increase and environmental concern renders diesel operation non-viable during the train’s lifetime’, must be factored into the design. No mention of the ‘E’ word, but electrification is hinted at since , emissions should be assessed ‘at whole societal cost’ rather than at point of use.
When it come to safety we get some worrying political correctness. As any fule kno, HST2 will be built to comply with the Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI) which include details like crashworthiness. And that is that. But, according to the PIN, ‘in a more affluent society, the value of life also increases. HST2 must also be as safe as we can reasonably make it’.
This is confusing the cold numbers of VPF with ALARP. And as we know from disability legislation, ‘reasonableness’ can only be tested in the courts. I am indebted to Professor Andrew Evans of Imperial College for making some sense of these statements.
For both rail and road investment DfT evaluates the safety benefits on the basis of the Value of a Prevented Fatality (VPF). This was determined from ‘willingness-to-pay’ studies (Informed Sources February 2002/on line archive)
When the willingness-to-pay based VPF was adopted in 1987, it was set at £500,000 – say £950,000 at 2006-07 prices. However the current VPF is £1.52 million. And in the intervening years there has been only one non-routine increase, of 10% in 1998.
Why the above inflation difference? Well, as Andrew explains, the road/rail VPF (and Government policy is to use a common figure for both modes) is indexed not against inflation but the index of Gross Domestic Product per head.
Since personal wealth influences willingness to pay, this seems a more sensible way of updating the VPF than simply keeping pace with inflation. And the result is that since 1987 the VPF has increased by 60% including the 10% one-off adjustment in 1998.
So the first part of the PIN statement is correct. Depending on the long term performance of the economy, the VPF could be double its present value when HST2 is life expired.
But linking this increasing VPF to the levels of safety built into a train and then adding a dash of reasonableness is to lumber today’s financially hard pressed railway with the expectations of the future. On top of which, with improving signalling, the risk of collisions is decreasing. Were I DfT Rail’s procurement adviser I would urge them to back-off this nonsense and go with the TSIs – as interoperability legislation requires.
After that, I hope, illuminating digression, on with the PIN. Design, says DfT Rail should focus ‘particularly’ on reducing the risk of fatal accidents and include consideration of collision/derailment survival and evacuation characteristics. I think they mean ‘fatalities in accidents’, since the risk of a train causing a fatal accident is slight.
That’s enough PIN bashing for one month. You can read it in full on-line in ‘Professional Stuff’ (www.alycidon.com). Anyway, according to very cross Informed Sources the PIN represents the situation some nine months ago.
A week after it was issued Mott McDonald held a seminar at which ‘stakeholders’ were discussing the issues raised in last month’s column. These include the timescale for replacing IC125, the market HST2 will be serving in 2035, electrification and a rolling stock strategy. None of which are addressed in the PIN.
And there was a further public airing of these issues at a Conference organised by the Railway Division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers on 8 February. Two remarks caught my attention.
Clive Burrows, DfT Rail’s Director Technical & Professional gave the ‘E’ word another airing saying ‘I think it is inevitable that there will be more electrification and that is the right way to go’. Network Rail Chief Engineer Andrew McNaughton, in characteristically provocative mood, dropped in the aside ‘assuming the country needs a new inter city train’. Perhaps he was thinking of those London-Edinburgh stoppers.