GW OJEU exposes passenger mileage collapse!

This from Ithuriel...

According to the Great Western franchise OJEU Notice issued by DfT on 19 December:

In the last year of BR, Intercity Great Western - which then didn't include Thames Trains and other later accretions - generated 14 million passenger journeys and 1,218 million passenger miles.

So in the 'bad old days' the average length of journey was 87 miles. Today it is apparently 199 feet 6 inches.

Another triumph of numeracy from those wonderful people who still haven't brought you the IEP.

UPDATE: This from the Blue Lamp...

I think Ithuriel is being a little unfair to Marsham Street.

Whilst this OJEU may have been issued in a hurry, this hasn't prevented the Department from planning ahead.

On page 26 DfT confirms that First will retain the franchise as it expects to sign an agreement with the Aberdeen based bus bandits on 22nd November 2012

That's forward planning for you!

UPDATE: This also from Ithuriel...

According to the same consultation document

"In the last financial year, franchise revenues were £694m, while a premium of £250 million was paid to the Department for Transport".

No mention of the fact that the franchise is in Revenue Support to the maximum level and costing the Taxpayer and FGW shareholders shedloads of money.

Inflexible

A banker writes:

According to DafT's press release today about the invitation to tender for 1,200 new Thameslink vehicles:

"Carriages will be joined together permanently to form a train and will stay this way in a 'fixed formation' for the rest of their working life. This will make the manufacturing process simpler and more economical, and allows the trains to work more reliably".

Shame then that these trains, although more economical to manufacture, will be relatively expensive to lease given the residual value risk associated with such an inflexible formation.

Poor old DafT, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Boiled Frog

Bowker's Law says there are only two sources of railway funding - from the fare box and the tax payer.

The Public Accounts Committee have kindly provided last year's figures for these.

In 2006/07, passengers paid £5.1 billion into the fare box.

Whilst the Department for Transport gave £3.4 billion to Network Rail and a further £1.7 billion to the Train Operating Companies.

Total amount of our taxes spent on the 'privatised' railways in 2006/07 = £5.1bn

Total amount of our taxes spent on the nationalised railway in 1993/94 = £1.46bn (figure corrected for inflation).

Beancounting

Train looking like a pigsty?

Less people wandering round with bin bags picking up rubbish?

A visible reduction in the number of contractors working at the coalface?

Welcome to Recession Rail - getting shot of the easy stuff first!

Self mutilation

Telegrammed by our International Correspondent
Brian Souter has told London's leading evening newspaper that leisure travel is down due to the credit crisis.


But what's this?

No mention that leisure fares have been all but been abolished by greedy SWT.

Perhaps the perfectly formed, carrier-bag wielding, Clause 28 fan is hoping the Treasury will bail out his franchises on the same, over-generous, terms offered to the bankers?

Diamond geyser?

***BBC reporting a chill wind blowing over BoJo's transport budget as TfL takes a £40m Icelandic bath***

Getting DafTer

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road

All four shortlisted bidders for the new Thameslink train fleet are expected to submit fully funded finance packages.

At an optimistic £1.5 million per vehicle that means ringing commitments totalling £6.6bn.

In these turbulent financial times that much finance simply doesn't exist.

Particularly when the customer is calling for price cuts on leases it was happy to sign less than a year ago.

So DafT has asked each bidder to come up with funding for a quarter of its fleet on the basis that the commitments from the three unsuccessful bidders can be transferred to the winner's financial pot.

Railway Eye finds it hard to believe too, but we are assured it is true by a harassed looking man in red braces down to his last Porsche.

Robbing Peter...

It's difficult to know whether TfL or the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) will run out of money first.

On current form it looks neck and neck.

TfL announced this week that it has descoped the proposed four tracking of the North London Line between Caledonian Road and Camden to a two track affair.

The grounds for this was the poor condition of a number of bridges along the route that would have required renewing.

By not four tracking throughout the project saves £40 million.

However, the removal of two platform faces at Camden will prevent the delivery of an 8 train-per-hour service throughout the day.

Which may disappoint the cash strapped ODA who are reported to have put £100m into the scheme to help move people to and from the Olympic site.

Poor BoJo. What looked like a £40m saving may soon turn into a very large bill from the ODA.

Saint Augustine refers

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
To judge by the following passage from NR’s response to the ORR draft determination, the Director's bonuses are working as advertised.

'Network Rail has always recognised that an element of judgement is required in reaching a view on these matters and that our targets should be reasonably challenging’.

Perhaps they should have added “but not so demanding that we risk losing our incentive payments”.

As St Augustine said 'Lord make me chaste but not yet.'

100% safe

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
Safety - what inconveniences are imposed in your name!

Only 13 lines into the Executive Summary of Network Rail's 400 page demand for more money with thinly veiled threats the dread phrase 'Safety remains our over-riding priority' appears.

If this were really the case Network Rail would prevent trains from running past high output machinery on adjacent lines while work was in progress, thus causing massive inconvenience to passengers and inflating costs of mega projects like the West Coast Route Modernisation.

Thank goodness that Iain Coucher and his board know that safety and economy have to be balanced and that a risk-free railway has infinite reliability and zero maintenance costs.

Because nothing moves.

Have cake and eat

The increasingly potty Office of Rail Regulation has handed down yet another loopy pronouncement.

The Holborn Mafia announced today that Network Rail is 'turning journeys into marathons'.

It found that only 80% of scheduled weekend passenger services operate without being diverted, cancelled or replaced by buses.

The ORR partly blamed 'cost-cutting' measures.

The Fact Compiler wonders if this is the same ORR that wants NR to implement a whopping 21% 'cost-cutting' measure to reduce its CP4 budget by £3.3bn?

Surreal!

Whelk stall

It's no surprise that the economy is going to rack and ruin when Government is so profligate with our money.

The Fact Compiler received a gratuitous puff-piece release from DafT today, about Thameslink 3000, which offered the following glad tidings:

"New trains - 92 new class 377 carriages - worth around £53100m - are on order, which will be deployed on First Capital Connect services between Bedford, London and Brighton and Southeastern services between St Pancras International and Bromley South, Orpington and other Kent stations from March 2009"

This was swiftly followed by an arrow from a Rosco chum pointing out that the IEP, at £3m a vehicle, is positively good value compared to the £577m per vehicle that DafT is prepared to spend on the new Thameslink fleet!

Strangely enough the release has disappeared from DafT's website. As a service to the industry it is reproduced in full below:

20/08/2008 12:31

Department for Transport (National)

(DFT) Passengers set to benefit from extra carriages

Passengers on one of the UK's busiest rail networks are set to benefit from new carriages, longer and more frequent trains as well as a greater choice of destinations due to changes to franchise agreements agreed between the Department for Transport and the train operating companies Southeastern, First Capital Connect and Southern Railways. The changes are a key milestone in the wider £5.5bn Thameslink modernisation programme and mean that passengers will see: * Increased frequency - the number of trains running through central London on the Thameslink route will increase from 8 up to 15 per hour during peak hours from 1 March 2009; * New trains - 92 new class 377 carriages - worth around £53100m - are on order, which will be deployed on First Capital Connect services between Bedford, London and Brighton and Southeastern services between St Pancras International and Bromley South, Orpington and other Kent stations from March 2009; * Extra seats on First Capital Connect - the introduction of additional class 319 carriages will boost more peak services to 8-car length on the First Capital Connect Thameslink route. With the class 377 and class 319 carriages, there will be an additional 1150 seats in the morning peak and 2080 seats in the evening peak on First Capital Connect services from March 2009. * Extra seats on Southeastern - passengers travelling on Southeastern's Kent suburban routes will benefit from longer trains, providing 3700 extra seats each morning and evening from March 2009. * More direct journeys - from March 2009, some Southeastern services will join First Capital Connect Thameslink route services, meaning passengers can travel between Sevenoaks, St Pancras International and stations in north London without changing trains. Rail Minister Tom Harris MP said: "We are committed to improving the travelling experience for passengers on one of the country's busiest rail routes. That's why we have secured a range of improvements, from more frequent train services, to newer trains and more seats that Thameslink passengers will benefit from for years to come." "The changes we are making are part of the £5.5bn Thameslink programme, which will deliver a dramatic increase in capacity for passengers in London and the South East." Notes to Editor 1. The franchise changes are part of the wider Thameslink modernisation programme. The £5.5bn Thameslink modernisation programme will transform the Thameslink network by 2015. The programme will deliver: * Up to 50 per cent longer trains across the current Thameslink route; * New direct services from the southern Home Counties to destinations on the Thameslink and Great Northern routes; * A dramatic increase in capacity, with up to 12 carriage trains running up to 24 times an hour through central London by 2015; * New trains across the Thameslink route - there will be an entirely new fleet of trains by 2015, with extra carriages providing around 14,500 extra seats each day for passengers; * Three London mainline stations, Blackfriars, Farringdon and London Bridge stations, will be improved, giving the stations the capacity to handle more passengers and easing bottlenecks. * Blackfriars station will become the first station to span the Thames and by the end of 2011 the station will be able to handle 12 car trains for the first time. * Platform extensions at 50 stations outside central London, including stations along the Bedford line. 2. First Capital Connect's extra class 319 carriages form part of FCC's current franchise agreement. Press Enquires: 020 7944 3108 Out of Hours: 020 7944 4292 Public Enquiries: 020 7944 8300 Department for Transport Website: http://www.dft.gov.uk Client ref 136 COI ref 164745M

Half full or...

Retail Price Inflation for July published = 5%

Regulated fares increase in January by RPI+1 = 6%

What impact on demand?

UPDATE: More in today's FT here

Rounding error?

Telegrammed by The Raver
Rewriting history is plainly becoming something of a habit for the denizens of rail privatisation.

Railway Eye readers may recollect Nigel Harris's recent confusion over the average age of rolling stock at privatisation

The latest purveyor of samizdat history is one Richard Bowker who, in a Sunday Telegraph puff-piece this weekend, claimed that 14,000 trains a day were running on the network in 1997 compared to approximately 20,000 today.

The true figure for the number of trains operating on the network in '97 is much closer to 18,500.

In the scheme of things not overly important, but National Express shareholders may wish to scrutinise this year's annual report and accounts a little more closely - just in case.

Cost control

From today's Standard.

"It could cost £50 million to convert the mothballed Waterloo Eurostar station into a commuter terminal".

Why?

For the record it cost a mere £135m to build. Read the Evening Standard article here

Overheads

Good news from Network Rail.

The following request has been circulated to members of the Best Practice Club

Budget Control, Network Rail
We are looking for ways to reduce the bureaucratic overhead of budget approval and control. We need to maintain the same level of control but with a ‘lead’ process. We are very interested to hear from companies who have remodelled their budget control processes.

The Fact Compiler suggests removing very expensive Directors from the approvals process, or indeed payroll, may achieve the desired results.

Do the math

Telegrammed from our man in 222 Marylebone Road
According to the press this weekend the Ministry of Defence has a £2bn hole in its budget.

This may lead the MoD to cancel or defer the improved Lynx helicopter so desperately needed by our gallant troops in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, in Modern Railways, Captain Deltic says the difference between the amount which Network Rail says it needs for the next five years and that which the ORR says it is going to get is now £2.58 billion.

So, a matter of life and death versus the high-life and bonuses.

Follow the money

***The Crossrail Bill received Royal Assent last night.***

Still no news on who will pay for it!

Thamesfunk

From our man at 222 Marylebone Road
If DafT reckons it can spend £1.4bn on 1100 vehicles to a specification no current design can meet...

...and with the first of these Technicolour Dream Trains (TDTs) reliable enough to dive into the Thameslink tunnels after only five months testing it could be in for a nasty shock.

Well tried Bombardier Electrostars off a live production line are costing £1.5million per vehicle. compared with DafT's estimate of £1.27 (recurring) million.

And that's before you allow for price inflation as the Chinese buy up all the steel, copper, aluminium and other raw materials they use at Litchurch Lane.

Is there a Doctor in the house

More mutterings about the PassengerFocus National Passenger Survey.

Regular readers will recollect that publication of the survey was delayed for two months to allow figures to be massaged and that when published National Express cried foul when it's East Coast franchise with spanked with other dire operators despite a claimed 4% improvement in NEEC passenger satisfaction.

The saga gets murkier still.

The Fact Compiler has received the following note from a TOC source:

"NPS is somewhat flawed as they hang-around stations giving out surveys indiscriminately to people - a certain percentage of whom actually work for TOCs.

"The easiest way to get your score up is to find a survey team, flood the station with people in suits from HQ and pretend to work for the NHS!!"

The Fact Compiler awaits the PassengerFocus press release celebrating the record numbers of NHS staff travelling to York with interest.