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Is it really ten years ago this month that Great Western and South West Trains ran their first franchised train services? Our surprise is ambivalent.
On the one hand so much has happened since 4 February 1996 . Nine out of the 25 franchises have had to be rescued, Railtrack was put down by Government after a short and unhappy life, as was its pown brainchild the Strategic Rail Authority. The 10 Year transport plan offered much and delivered nothing. Mark 1 stock has been replaced. Can this all have occurred in just ten short years?
On the other hand, the direction and financing of the railway, heavy and light, remains as problematic as ever. Every month, it seems, we burn up more brain cells understanding and analysing the rolling output of consultation documents from the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR). The West Coast Route Modernisation, also 10 years old this year, always seems to have more to do. In October, Intercity 125, a back-up in case the Advanced Passenger Train ran late, celebrates its 30 th birthday while debate on its succssor continues. Ten years is surely a long time in which to make such little progress.
When you look at the statistics of the real railway, the operational, commercial and techical railway which has been Modern Railways' focus for the last 44 years, the emerging impact of political inertia makes ten years seem a lifetime. British Rail managers knew that when the economic good times rolled, you pulled out your investment plans and got the best proposals approved by the Department of Transport before the economy turned down.
Much the same was true of the Underground. It would be interesting to plot the dates of the current train fleets on a time chart of economic growth.
Speed of implementation and value for money was ever the key to successful investment. Today, it seems, everything takes forever and then costs too much. and, as we have seen with light rail schemes, the longer it takes, the impact of inflation makes a project even less affordable.
Anyone who listens to the Radio 4 ‘Today' programme will know what New Labour meant by ‘momentum politics'. Every day fresh initiatives are unveiled, new policies floated, existing policies and past initiatives attacked and defended in a blizzard of statistics. But readers will note that railways almost never feature.
This is no accident. Transport Secretary Alistair Darling was brought in three years ago as a ‘safe pair of hands' with the remit of taking transport out of politics. He has achieved this through a relentless policy of ‘manana politics'.
As we can see from the railways, difficult and expensive decisions are put off for as long as possible. This usually means that when a decision becomes unavoidable, those concerned have been worn down and projects go gently into the dark night.
Fortunately, in Neil Scales, Director General of Merseyside PTE, we have a fighter who is prepared to rage against the dying of of his project. We wish his judicial review of the Governmwent's Merseytram decisionall success. Would that the main line railway was so resolute in defending its future.
Take, for example, the fitting out of the Thameslink Box at Kings Cross – estimated cost £60-70 million. That's equivalent to around 30 individual franchise bids. DfT has weaselled and wriggled at avoiding this tiny but important item of expenditure and is now seeking to lose it in the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Phase 2 bill.
On this, as on almost anythging involving rail expenditure, Mr Darling makes Quintius Fabius Maximus, Cunctator, seem impetuous. And when there is no alternative bit to spend, there is always the Network Rail Credit Card, otherwise known as the Regulatory Asset Base (RAB).
But, as you can read in Informed Sources this month, years of putting off the evil day by use of the RAB and Network Rail's state backed cheap debt are now coming back to haunt the Transport Secretary and his ally, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. According to the ORR, from 2009, Network Rail will be paying interest on its debt of £1billion a year and will also need an amortisation allowance – representing the cost of renewing worn out assets, of a further £billion.
Correction, the ORR is minded to authorise amortisation of £1 billion against an average annual spend on renewals of betweem £1.4 billion and £2.0 billion. Where does the difference come from? Right first time, more borrowing.
While, as on anything to do with pound signs attached, the Transport Secretary dissimulates when challenged on the likely cost of the railway in the next five year Control Period starting in April 2009, the mechanism designed by his civil servants to prevent a repeat of Governmental radio silence in the last Review in 2003 is already ticking away, with a deadline of July 2007 for the Government to specify the railway it wants.
But really, the industry can't wait until then to know what level of public financial support it will enjoy from 2009. And as ORR Chairman Chris Bolt points out, whatever funding the Government allows for the five years will set the baseline for long term spending.
Meanwhile, out on the real railway, operators and engineers are achieving new levels of asset utilisation in getting more train miles, passenger miles and tonne miles out of much the same fleet sizes and infrastructure as we had ten years ago. And still demand grows.
Yet little or nothing is being done to increase capacity. Network Rail's busines plan recognises this with a forecast of zero growth in passenger train miles from 2007-08 onwards.
Adding extra capacity is not about spending billions. There are many small schemes, or rather what would have been small schemes in the past, which would ease bottle-necks and smooth flows, such as flyovers at flat junctions. Longer trains are a no brainer with, once again, modest works lengthening platforms and depots.
Infuriatingly, with DfT Rail now directing the railway, the industry has become a rudderless ship in a fog bank. Theoretically, the need to provide the ORR with a High Level Output Specification (HLOS) could see the fog lift and some engine power restored, but that will not be for another 18 months and the longer the current fudge and mudge goes on, the harder it will be to restore progress.
In any event, one lesson we have learned from the last 10 years is never to underestimate the cynicism of governments when it comes to hard decisions on the railways. The DfT Rail Sir Humphreys may think that the 2005 Transport Act has stitched-up the Transport Secretary. We would be surprised if the artful Mr Darling had not already found a way out.