Yes campaigners open new front in war of HS2

So. The battle for the country's hearts and minds over High Speed 2 is hotting up.

Latest into the fray is new campaign group Yes to High Speed Rail.

Led by David 'Beggy' Begg the new group has already signed up a legion of large underpanted individuals as members of its 'National Council'.

And of course Beggy himself is an industry big beast, listing his previous achievements on the new campaign's website...

...a former chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport and has an international reputation as a commentator on transport issues. He is the non-executive chairman of Tube Lines, and is a former Director of the Centre for Transport Policy at Robert Gordon University , Aberdeen.

Ah! Tubelines.

A word to the wise.

Probably best not to ask London Underground for a reference when suggesting PPP as a funding option for the new railway...

UPDATE:This from Leo Pink...

So now we have the 'commentators' lining up in the HST2 wars.

But how does David Begg's 'international reputation' compare with Wolmar's 'enormous depth of knowledge'?

Can we look forward to a commentator's Top Trumps to settle the issue?

LUL - In the Brown stuff...

Telegrammed by Spinning Charles Yerkes
The pink ‘un had an interview on Friday with London Underground MD Mike Brown.

Brown, recently restored to us from his sabbatical at Heathrow, throws full light on the fall out from the collapse of Tube Lines.

• Northern line resignalling delayed until after the Olympics

• Piccadilly line upgrade postponed sine die, with further development work required on the signalling interface between the Picc and District in west London where they share right of way but not Infracos.

• The interface between the Met line and the Jubilee line – another rubbing point between Metronet (dead) and Tubelines (almost deceased) – is cited as a project where things could have gone better.

• The £1 billion resignalling of the Sub-Surface lines is being rescoped and relet next year, much to the dismay of Invensys (formerly Westinghouse) who had been a shoe-in under the Metrodebt tied supply chain but must now compete in open contest. Completion is not expected until 2018, until when the new S Train fleet will potter around under the old electro-mechanical arrangements, with train stops, and not get anywhere near the 50% increase in capacity promised.

• Jubilee line resignalling, due for completion this autumn, won’t be. “We have not yet got into the detail of where we are on the programme and where its delivery schedule should get it,” Mr Brown told FT hack Robert Wright.
  

Beg pardon?

TfL agreed to buy Tube Lines in early May.

In two months, with full access to everything Bechtel and Amey ferrovial were doing, is it such a shag up that LUL still can’t discover an end date? (Yes. Ed)

Dame Shiti Vadera is 48 (ish, according to wikipedia) and Gordoom Brown is missing.

Tube Lines recruits old hand

Andie Harper has been named by TfL as the Chief Executive designate of Tube Lines.

Recruited from Aecom Andie was formerly the Chief Exec of Metronet - again appointed by TfL after the doomed private contractor was brought back in-house.

And he is no stranger to the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, having been MD of Infraco JNP when it was in shadow running mode, prior to privatisation.

Better the devil you know...

RMT has cake and eats it

This diatribe from the RMT...

RMT today repeated its pledge to fight the tube and TfL cuts, including the threat to jobs following the final collapse of the PPP shambles with the buying out of the Tube Lines contract

Not a word of praise, of course, for Boris hammering the final nail into the coffin of the despised Public Private Partnership

Nor indeed of criticism for the doomed scheme's architect...

One Gordon Brown, currently holed up under squatter's rights in 10 Downing Street.

So farewell Tube Lines - sister to Metrodebt

The Devil's Lantern appears much exercised by the Tube in Turmoil.

Eye is surprised that the Metropolitan media hadn't seen this coming.

To lose one Chief Exec to unfunded Crossrail, might be considered a misfortune.

To lose a second within weeks... to National Express!!!, looks like carelessness.

In the words of ITV's Simon Harris "Still the signals don't work."

Mystic Wolmar on the ball. Tube Lines not.

Telegrammed by our International Correspondent
Mystic Wolmar's crystal ball is working well these days.

On the 13th December he predicted the demise of Tube Lines, the other half of the dead and rotting PPP Siamese twin, Metrodebt.

Lo and behold today Regulator Bolt obliged, favouring LUL's projected £4 billion to Tube Lines demands for £5.7 Billion, creating a new £1.3 billion funding gap for Tube Lines' lucky owners - Bechtel (no laughing at the back) and Gruppo Ferrovial, or a descoping of the work the PPP delivers or, as is most likely, a windfall for Sue Grabbit & Runne.

Say goodbye to more accessible stations on the JNP network, new trains for the Piccadilly Line. And a big cheery welcome to a lot of empty desks at the glitzy Westferry Circus Tube Lines HQ.

Tube Lines was not happy and Dean Finch, outgoing CEO told financial news agency Bloomberg "A settlement at this level is not conducive to private- sector involvement in the Underground, nor does it reflect the reality of the Underground working environment".

Strong words from a man already leaving the troubled world of PPP for pastures new at errrr.... doomed National Express.

Genius behind the PPP to leave the Government?

Sky News reporting that Business Minister Lady Vadera is expected to leave Government.

The railway industry will remember her fondly for the masterful way she broke the Underground.

Gordon next?

UPDATE: This from Leo Pink...

Nor should we forget that Lady Vadera was also instrumental in breaking Railtrack thus making her responsible for the 2004 Periodic Review which saw annual railway subsidy soar to £100 million per head of population!

UPDATE: This from Lazarus...

According to Leo "the 2004 Periodic Review which saw annual railway subsidy soar to £100 million per head of population!"

No wonder there's an exclamation mark, that's a total of £6,000,000,000,000,000 per year, or roughly 1500 times the UK GDP. Wow!

UPDATE:This from Leo Pink...

My apologies.

I was calculating the size of my bonus when I broke off to telegram Railway Eye with my thoughts on Lady V.

As a result I was thinking in millions.

The sum should of course be £100 per head..

PPP woes bode well for Crossrail

Yet more good news for Londoners!

According to Tube boss Richard Parry, quoted in today's Gruaniad...

"Regrettably, we now harbour grave doubts over Tube Lines and Bechtel's ability to deliver the upgrade of the Jubilee line by the end of December, which they are contracted to do."

Strange.

Surely Transport for London is not calling into question Bechtel's project management skills?

Surely not.

Why only four months ago the TfL Board rubber stamped Crossrail's decision to award the £400m Project Delivery Partner concession to err... Bechtel - based on the US company's supposed ability to deliver complex projects on time and to budget.

Of course every cloud has a silver lining.

With Crossrail looking set to be caped after the next General Election there'll be no risk of the project overrunning.

Nexus "not being privatised".

One of the bidders for the Tyne & Wear Metro may be about to drop out according to NEBusiness:

Last night The Journal was informed of rumours one bidder was preparing to pull out of the bidding process, a claim Nexus said it could not comment on.

There are currently four bidders for the Tyne & Wear metro concession: Deutsche-Bahn, Serco-Ned Rail, MTR Corporation and an in-house Nexus team.

Tyne Bridge MP David Clelland, who as a member of the transport select committee should know better, claimed that Nexus "...is not being privatised".

Which means that he is either deluded or that the smart money is on the in-house team.

How effing much?

More good news for the beleaguered Prime Minister.

The NAO report on the collapse of Metronet says it has cost the taxpayer £410m (this figure of course excludes the millions paid to consultants to set up the deeply flawed part privatisation of the Tube).

Caroline Pidgeon, quoted in the Grauniad, tells it like it is...

"This is simply a devastating report for the architect of the public private partnership contract – Gordon Brown. It is unforgivable that as much as £410m of taxpayers' money has been wasted. The PPP deal that was forced on Londoners by Gordon Brown has been totally exposed as a bad deal for taxpayers and for passengers."

Sadly it's not worth pointing out that had Brown and Vadera presided over such a monumental balls-up in the private sector they would have been out the door so fast their arses wouldn't have touched the ground.

UPDATE: This from Accountancy Magazine...

Ernst & Young was paid £33m in fees for handling the administration of Metronet, the firm set up to modernise the London Underground, a report by the National Audit Office reveals.

Why?

A good day to bury piss-poor news

Telegrammed by The Raver
The NAO report on Metronet's collapse is due to be published tomorrow morning.

As Brown and Vadera are personally responsible for the disastrous PPP, which has cost Londoners billions and nearly brought the Underground to its knees, no doubt the report will receive an appropriate level of media coverage.

After all Friday is bound to be a slow news day...

UPDATE: Wolmar takes up the tale...

Better the devil you know...

Outgoing Tube Lines boss, Terry Morgan, has let rip at TfL in the FT today.

Terry Morgan... said the comments of senior figures at Transport for London, the London mayor’s transport organisation, were sometimes based “on emotion, not fact”.

“I think people have to think through the consequences of some of the things they are talking about,” Mr Morgan said.

Comments surely designed to delight senior figures in TfL, for whom Mr Morgan will be working when he joins the transport organisation's Crossrail subsidiary as CEO.

Mind you.

No doubt all will be forgiven the moment Dean Finch takes over at Tube Lines.

"PPP a success" says Nobody

This from Supply Management...

London Underground (LU) and supplier Tube Lines (TL) have only a few months to resolve a major dispute over maintenance costs.

The organisations have a difference of more than £3 billion in their calculations of the cost of upgrading the Jubilee, Piccadilly and Northern Lines by 2017.

No shit Sherlock

Chapter of faults

The battle to be Terry Morgan's successor at Tube Lines has begun.

The Independent on Sunday is touting internal candidates Andrew Cleaves (commercial director ) and Steve Hurrell (finance chief).

Mind you the Sindie also touted Rob Holden for the Crossrail top job.

And yes, The Fact Compiler got it half wrong as well.

Silver lining

Telegrammed by The Raver

Which senior LUL director was overheard saying that Metronet's collapse was a blessing in disguise?

The reasoning from the 7th floor of 55 Broadway is that Crossrail would have been almost impossible to build due to the over complicated PPP contracts.

These would have provided greedy private sector Metronet with infinite opportunities to hoover up vast sums of public money in frustrated access compensation claims.

Presumably Tube Lines, under Terry Morgan's direction, will be taking a more pragmatic approach; unsurprising as the wily poacher will turn gamekeeper at Crossrail in 12 months time.

Keep up!

RMT has welcomed the publication of TfL's 10 year Business Plan.

General Secretary Bob Crow said

“TfL has made vague statements about the need to reduce headcount across TfL and that can only cause alarm among our members.

“Reducing the use of over-priced outside consultants is all well and good, but there can be no question of any job losses among the people who deliver the services that London depends on".

And delivering is key Bob - hint

Whither ED?

So Metronet staff are finally to transfer over to London Underground in December.

And not before time.

The amount of duplication and man marking that has taken place within London Underground, as it sought to rein in the errant contractor, grew to epic proportions before Metronet collapsed.

And still the swollen headcount remains.

First in Tim O'Toole's sights must be LU's bloated Engineering Directorate.

In the heady days of Shadow Running it numbered a mere 16 people, now over 400 are on it's books; most of whom are too busy peering over the shoulders of their now in-house infraco colleagues to add a shred of value to the business.

Whilst the omens aren't looking good for the massed ranks of paper pushers in ED, the future of LU's Engineering Director, David Waboso, looks much more rosy.

Waboso, a former SRA man, has been lobbying hard to take on the Metronet top job since the infraco was nationalised in May this year.

With current MD Andie Harper, and most of his team, coming to the end of their interim contracts can it be long before Waboso and his trusted lieutenants fulfill their dreams and Metronet posts?

Granny hater

The Treasury's plan to shore up the banks appears to have received a cautious thumbs up from the City.

But what's this?

A brooding presence at Tuesday's late night discussions with panicky bankers was one Baroness Vadera.

According to The Times, Vadera "serves as Gordon Brown's eyes and ears".

According to Railway Eye Vadera served up the disastrous LU PPP and hates "grannies".

Memo to Bankers - Those who sup with the devil should use a long spoon.

Memory loss

The Tories are having a field day putting the boot into Gordon and Shriti's disastrous Tube privatisation.

Quick to jump on a bandwagon, and shift the blame for bad news, is the instantly forgettable Tory shadow Secretary of State for Transport who is now blaming Tube Lines' cost overrun for the likely cancellation of the Cross-River Tram.

Read the Boris Watch story here

A bit rich coming from the party which privatised British Rail, resulting in a massive increase in interfaces and costs, leading to many desperately needed network improvement schemes being shelved as too expensive.

Busted flush

After Metronet went bust it couldn't be long before the wheels fell off Tube Lines as well.

Today they have - see BBC piece here.

One piece of good news.

Metronet overspent by £2bn, Tube Lines by a mere £1.4bn

And the name of the two dullards behind the disastrous PPP scam?

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Lady Shriti Vadera. Hang your heads in shame!