Train firms neglectful, says Darling
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent
ALISTAIR DARLING accused train companies yesterday of neglecting their passengers and failing to fulfil their commitments to improve services.
The Transport Secretary, in his first speech about the railways, told the companies that the Government would not write any blank cheques and he wanted to see better performance with existing resources. “Train operating companies account for over half the network’s delays,” Mr Darling told the Railway Forum.
The 25 passenger companies should run services that suited the travelling public rather than attempting to “shoehorn customers into operational convenience”, he said. “They need to bring in the flair and efficiency they promised. And they can point to some successes, new rolling stock for example, but there are still problems to be overcome.”
A fifth of trains were still running late 18 months after the Hatfield train crash, according to punctuality figures published last month. Only 81 per cent of trains were on time in the first three months of this year compared with 90 per cent in the three months before the Hatfield crash in October 2000.
Figures from the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) show that train companies have continued to push up fares above inflation despite the poor performance.
Long-distance train operators like Virgin and GNER force passengers to book in advance for cheap tickets and penalise those who try to change their journey times. Mr Darling said operators should give customers proper choice by offering easy-to-book tickets that are easily changed.
His attack on the train operators was interpreted by senior industry figures as an attempt to shift the focus away from Network Rail, the company set up by the Government to replace Railtrack. Brian Souter, chairman of Stagecoach, which operates South West Trains, said he had seen little sign of how Network Rail was going to improve on Railtrack’s performance. “Our main concern is how fundamental the change is to the industry,” he told the Transport Secretary.
Mr Darling ruled out any further structural change, however, saying that a period of stability was needed. He rejected suggestions by his predecessor, Stephen Byers, that the Government might choose one area, possibly Scotland, in which to experiment with allowing a train company to run its own tracks. “The public want trains to run on time and I don’t think another examination of the structure would benefit that,” he said.
He also rejected calls from rail unions for renationalisation, which he said would result in “three to four years of uncertainty during which nothing would happen”.
Richard Bowker, chairman of the SRA, said the railways would be unable to expand unless Network Rail reduced the rising costs of operating and maintaining the railway. Railtrack’s original budget for the West Coast Main Line upgrade was £2 billion, but the latest estimate puts the cost at £13 billion. Mr Bowker blamed this mainly on Railtrack’s failure to manage its contractors.
Mr Darling confirmed plans to establish a new independent rail accident investigation branch, as recommended by Lord Cullen’s inquiry into the Paddington train crash. He will give further details later this month in a consultation document.
posted by Charles at Tuesday, July 02, 2002
Railway network overspending by £1.5bn
By Juliette Jowit, Transport Correspondent
Financial Times; Jun 29, 2002
The Strategic Rail Authority is to appeal to the rail industry to get a grip on spiralling costs as new figures show the network is overspending allocated funds by ý1.5bn a year.
Network Rail, which is bidding to buy Railtrack out of administration, has found that the company is spending ý1.5bn a year more than allowed by the rail regulator in order to maintain the infrastructure.
The figures follow mounting evidence about the rising cost of large projects and demands by train operators for more subsidy.
The most high profile case is the upgrade of the west coast mainline from London to Scotland, which experts believe has risen in cost to ý13bn - or ý30m a mile.
Industry and government concern has prompted Richard Bowker, chairman of the SRA, to warn that it could eat into much-needed investment funds.
"The whole cost of running the railway is in danger of running ahead and I believe it has to be curbed," Mr Bowker told a meeting of transport leaders this week.
"Over the next few months and years we have to address the rising cost base of the industry. If we don't do that we crowd out the investment we desperately need."
Network Rail said it planned to spend 18 months assessing what the money was being spent on and completing a full register of Railtrack's assets.
Using the information, the not-for-dividend company plans to apply to the rail regulator in 2004 for more income for the current period and future years. The government will make up any difference and has set aside ý8bn to cover it.
Iain Coucher, Network Rail managing director, said: "At this stage we're unsure what this money is being spent on, whether value for money is being achieved, and whether it's improving the network."
Mr Coucher refuted claims that Network Rail would not have proper incentives to cut costs because it was underwritten by government.
Managers will be incentivised according to a basket of measures to provide "a safe, efficient and reliable network", he said.
The National Audit Office said yesterday it would investigate the up-to-ý21bn of grants and guarantees provided by government through the SRA to help Network Rail buy Railtrack out of administration.
The inquiry into the package of support, announced on Thursday, was a matter of course, said an NAO spokesman.
The NAO confirmed it wanted Network Rail to be a subsidiary of the SRA, an independent government agency.
However the Office of National Statistics has ruled that the company's debts will not be included in the public sector borrowing requirement - a key Treasury demand.
Following the offer for Railtrack plc, Railtrack Group has said it hopes to return 245-255p per share to investors. Last night the shares closed 1?p down at 222?p.
posted by Charles at Sunday, June 30, 2002
Journey of discovery sees rail network fail all points
By Juliette Jowit
Jun 28, 2002
York station at midday is busy with travellers waiting for late trains. The delays allow Professor Roderick Smith time to start totting up the first signs of the problems that lie ahead.
The head of mechanical engineering at Imperial College can see from the platform at least eight temporary braces holding damaged rail tracks together; joints are worn; the track is thick with black grease used to reduce the wear on curves; and clip pads and clips left by maintenance workers are lying about on the tracks. The gravel-like ballast is clearly not "tamped" properly so that the rails and sleepers have a stable cushion to lie on, says Prof Smith.
The 12:07 to Sheffield leaves more than 20 minutes late.
It is an ignominious start to a trip past some of the most significant landmarks of railway history: from York, one-time centre of Britain's pre-eminence in rail design and home to the National Railway Museum with its model of Stephenson's original Rocket steam engine, via Sheffield where track that was revolutionary in its day was once forged, through Derby and on towards St Pancras, one of the capital's majestic stations. It is a journey that throws up shocking evidence of just how badly the national railway has deteriorated.
Defenders of the rail industry point to strong passenger growth, increased services and thousands of new trains in use and in production since privatisation in the mid-1990s. But experts such as Prof Smith - an acknowledged authority on the British and Japanese rail systems - say that growth has highlighted the underlying weakness of the infrastructure, which undermines the whole railway. Fast, modern trains cannot disguise the inadequacy of the tracks on which they run.
Sheffield once stood at the forefront of railway innovation. The city's mills produced the world's first steel rails to replace the original iron ones. But today any signs of the great railway age are long gone. As the train draws into the station there is a trail of stone slabs, car hubcaps, tyres, bottles, skateboard parts and exposed wires - all handy for the trespassers who account for over 27m incidents of vandalism a year, warns Prof Smith.
In the station it is, if anything, worse. Litter is piled up and tracks are strewn with waste from the many trains that still use open lavatories.
Ballast is piled up over sleepers and clips, meaning maintenance workers cannot see if anything is missing or cracked, says the professor.
Patches of sleepers and ballast are frequently a pale coffee colour, and dried up like a river bed in drought. This is pumping, explains Prof Smith, where gaps under the ballast allow the sleeper to move up and down, throwing up mud and dust.
"This is just incredible. That's as bad as I've seen it in a long time," he says.
Every metre or two there are pock marks on top of the rail. Nuts lie loose beside the line - they are not necessarily needed, but as missing nuts were blamed for the fatal Potters Bar crash last month they catch the eye.
These problems may not be a high safety priority in stations where trains are crawling - although they would be at higher speeds. But they reflect the wider state of the network and the industry, claims Prof Smith.
"How can there be an engineer in charge of this?" he demands. "In the old times somebody would be going beserk. I wonder how drivers can react with professional pride when what they see from their cab is dereliction. What message is it giving to drivers? Nobody gives a damn about the system."
At least the train south from Sheffield leaves on time.
Just outside the station four tracks narrow to two, one of the many bottlenecks that cause frequent delays. These congestion spots and lack of electrification are big constraints on the ability of the network to recover from problems and grow, says the professor.
A waitress serves tea as the train gathers speed. She carefully fills the cups only halfway as, again, the train sways and jolts.
Even by British standards this line seems bad. "The ride quality has become much, much more patchy," says Prof Smith, who uses the service regularly to commute between London and his family home on the edge of the Peak District.
"There are stretches where it's okay, but there are a lot where it's not."
After Derby, home of British Rail's old research laboratory and training college, Professor Smith points out plants growing through the ballast, sometimes even between the rails. They look innocuous, but they create voids in the ballast, again weakening the support of the track.
As the train nears London, more plants - often buddleia - are growing out of the walls of embankments and bridges. Again, these weaken the structures and can cause them to collapse, says Prof Smith.
Fifty years ago experts called the railway "a poor bag of assets". Generations of underinvestment by government and then Railtrack made it worse, says Prof Smith.
"If one phrase epitomises our problems it was sweating the assets," he says. "This is a culmination of railway managers given a defective set of tracks and told to work them into the ground under a notional efficiency system.
"You can do it for a while, but like any other maintenance problems it all comes back to haunt you when the railway starts running out."
These problems are more subtle than the dramatic images of cracked rails and broken points after recent accidents, but they cause regular failures that damage performance and inhibit capacity. Indirectly, there is also an impact on safety because "if trains are in the right place at the right time they can't collide", says Prof Smith.
"We're running the system at the margin of crisis management."
posted by Charles at Sunday, June 30, 2002
