This from Ithuriel...
Railway Eye has been remarkably quiet about those who advised the DfT West Coast Franchise team?
Does the Fact Compiler perhaps have shares in the relevant consultancy?
No!!! Ed
This gem from Local Transport Today...
The Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE) has hit out at the Government’s approach to cutting costs of infrastructure projects.
“Industry wants to deliver high-quality, good value services to its clients, but simply asking suppliers to reduce their prices is no magic bullet,” ACE chief executive Nelson Ogunshakin said.
Just fancy that!
Telegrammed by Our International Correspondent
MVA – a UK based consultancy jointly owned by RATP and SNCF – recently completed a report for NR and ORR into West Coast performance.
Regular followers of the ongoing West Coast Main Line saga will recollect that following the introduction of the Very High Frequency service in 2009 performance has been, ahem, disappointing (76.4% "on time" in Q4 2008/9 with 559 complaints per 100,000 journeys - a record even for Beardie Rail).
Authored by the eminently respectable William Barter (who knows train planning inside out) the MVA report said, in language carefully designed not to offend the notoriously moody client, that WCML went to ratshit because no-one knew how to model a timetable that worked.
But, MVA’s own understanding of the West Coast may not be quite as robust as they would like us to think.
On their website the “How to find us” map for their Birmingham office helpfully shows that useful and heavily-used direct rail link between New Street and Moor Street.
Of course anyone wanting to know what Birmingham’s rail network really looks like should refer to Stuart Baker’s excellent Rail Atlas which is now in its 12th edition.
That would be the very same Baker who is the DfT's rolling stock and timetabling supremo and who, in a previous life, decided that diesel Voyagers should run under the West Coast wires.
Trebles and no IEPs all round.
Telegrammed by Bulldog Drummond
Interesting that two very similar stories (Alistair Osborne in Friday's Daily Telegraph and Tom Winsor in the Times today) suggest that the Government could trouser £12bn by selling off Network Rail.
This is based on the accounting wheeze that the Regulatory Asset Base is really 'worth' £36bn.
The figure is arrived at by deducting the debt of £23bn which supposedly leaves an equity of £12-13bn.
Complete fantasy of course as the RAB is not a realistic asset valuation in commercial terms and it conveniently overlooks the question as to who would want to invest in a business that has such huge debts, which can only be propped up by massive government subsidy and borrowing that, in part, goes to cover normal running costs and paying debt interest.
Network Rail is a complete dog's breakfast of a business and is only viable with huge levels of taxpayers' moolah.
The only people who can have any possible interest in selling off this business are the huge army of bankers, lawyers, consultants and general hangers on who are experiencing thin pickings at the moment.
It is certainly not in the interests of the taxpayer or those who want a properly run and cost-effective railway.
This from today's Gruaniad...
A study by Booz Allen Hamilton, a consultancy, argues that building and operating a new north-south rail network in England will generate more CO2 than taking the same route by air over a 60-year period.
No doubt it will be a similar length of time before the Noble Lord invites Booz Allen to undertake further work for DafT.
Good news for Scott Wilson.
According to Building magazine:
"Scott Wilson has emerged as the big winner from the latest round of contracts awarded by Crossrail to help design the £16bn London rail scheme."
But what's this?
Can this be the same Scott Wilson that undertook an assessment of noise and vibration prior to the opening of the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine (SAK) route for Clackmannanshire Council?
An assessment that was subsequently heavily criticised by engineering consultancy Arup, for failing to follow "standard practice".
Hopefully environmental impact assessments won't form part of their new Crossrail work.
UPDATE: This from Dan...
Could that be the same Arup that competes aggressively with Scott Wilson for the same contracts?
The phrase "They would say that, wouldn't they" springs to mind.
Thank you Dan. So Scott Wilson did follow "Standard Practice" then?
Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
In February 1998, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Railway Division held a conference on Rail 2020.
A paper by a consultant from Halcrow Transmark concluded:
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