Return to Archive -by date - by topic.
Virgin will now need compensation if Pendolino lengthening goes ahead
First of all, a quick reminder of the Ballybunion Vortex. If you duck an awkward decision, it doesn't go away. It just comes back, made even more awkward by the passage of time and events.
Typifying such a Vortex is the proposal to lengthen the Virgin West Coast Pendolino fleet from nine to 11 car units, where a contract had to be signed by 31 March if the project was to go ahead efficiently. Missing that date meant that prices would rise and delivery slip. If delivery slipped it would not be possible to combine the lengthening with the major H2 bogie overhaul when the train will be taken out of service and separated anyway.
None of this happened and the Ballybunion Vortex has been spinning for six months as you read this. One effect is that if the lengthening were to go ahead now, only about half the trains could be modified during the H2 programme which will end in June 2010.
This means that lengthening would extend into early 2011, only a year before Virgin's West Coast franchise runs out in March 2012. On top of this, the Virgin West Coast franchise plan, which, if you strip out increased track access charges, is pretty heroic, depends crucially on maximum availability from the start of the new high intensity timetable in December 2008.
Taking one train a week out of service for unscheduled attention over a period of six or seven months, when the fleet should be running flat out, is not an attractive proposition. And we should remember that modern software controlled trains don't take kindly to being broken up and reformed, so reliability could suffer as well as availability.
So now, thanks to the delay, Virgin sees lengthening of its fleet as a risk rather than an opportunity. On top of which, it doesn't really need the extra seats. As an Informed Source put it ‘we can run with the franchise we have, but by 2012 the railway will have run out of room'.
So now, DfT Rail, which despite protestations calls the shots on new traction and rolling stock, is deeper into the Vortex. If lengthening does not go ahead, in five years' time the Department will face re-letting an Intercity West Coast franchise which has no scope for growth.
True, there is talk of an early Intercity Express Programme (IEP) build which would be allocated to Euston-Birmingham-Wolverhampton services from 2014, but even that could generate its own mini-vortex. The order would need to be placed in 2009 and deliveries run in parallel with the pre-Series test programme (Informed Sources May 2007). And how would depot provision be handled? And so on.
Of course, lengthening of the Pendolino fleet just moves the pinch point. If more people can ride, stations will need more spaces to take their cars. But, once again, this capacity won't be needed until after 2012. And the work involved will affect the smooth running of the existing railway.
Remember, too, that when the West Coast franchise was reinstated in December 2006 the emphasis was on the December 2008 timetable. Transport Minister Tom Harris said that the new contract provided an opportunity ‘to put even more services in the December 2008 timetable… and strike a better value deal for the taxpayer'.
Meanwhile, the DfT's Annual Report for 2007 gives an update on the, now, £8.125 billion West Coast Route Modernisation. It confirms that the three outstanding schemes will be completed for the 2008 timetable. These are the Trent Valley four tracking plus the Rugby and Milton Keynes capacity enhancement schemes.
But the report adds that the Department is also looking at the situation after 2008 and how best to accommodate further growth in traffic. This investigation includes longer Pendolino trains and a solution to a ‘bottleneck' at Stafford '.
So, officially, DfT Rail is still ‘looking at', Pendolino lengthening three months after the contract should have been placed to minimise the cost and disruption of inserting the extra vehicles. Now there's a weasel for you.
Alstom: ‘Do you want to buy?' DfT Rail: ‘No, we're just looking'. Do they really expect us to believe this sort of guff when negotiations on funding are in limbo and Alstom and Network Rail have been testing two Class 390s in multiple between traction packages configured to simulate an 11 car unit? The testing between Aston and Hillmorton was aimed at measuring the effect of the increased traction return current.
So its all very messy, with lots of risk all round for both Virgin and DfT Rail. To recap: providing the capacity not needed until after 2012 could hit service reliability over the remainder of the current franchise; not providing it could leave DfT Rail with an unattractive franchise to let in March 2012.
Virgin is now arguing that since it will gain no benefit from the additional capacity the company needs to be able to recover any losses incurred by implementing the lengthening programme. The solution it is putting forward is a three to four year extension to the franchise. This would allow the franchise to be relet in, say 2016, as a high capacity route, with longer Pendolinos, IEPs on EBW and enhanced station facilities.
Now having revived the West Coast franchise only last December, I can't see DfT Rail being overjoyed at the this proffered way out of a Ballybunion Vortex of its own making. But, equally, Virgin and Alstom can happily run the franchise out to March 2012, making steady money. They then hand over a franchise bursting at the seams and with the incoming franchisee having to sign up a new maintenance contract and sort out the H3 exam which has to start in September the same year.
Meanwhile I suspect that nothing will happen until after the High Level Output Statement and the Statement of funds Available are published together with the Railway white paper. With Parliament going into Recess on 26 July, look for publication in the week starting 16 July. Then brace yourself for the ensuing analysis in the September column.