International & UK Railway News Friday 11th January 2013

International Railway Journal

BRITAIN's Rail Freight Group (RFG) has expressed "disappointment" at changes announced on January 11 by the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) to track access charges for freight, which will be implemented from 2016.

THE Australian government has allocated $A 95m ($US 90m) to Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) to support investment in reliability and capacity upgrades on the Adelaide – Perth rail corridor.

CONFIDENCE in the British railway franchising process has been damaged by the Inter City West Coast fiasco but the system is not broken, according to Eurostar Chairman Mr Richard Brown, whose independent review of rail franchising concludes there is no case for major structural change.

A BIDDERS conference held in Tel Aviv today by NTA for a tender for a fleet of LRVs was attended by representatives from 22 companies from Israel and several European countries.

ARGENTINA's president Mrs Christina Kirchner announced on January 10 that the government has placed an order with China Southern Rolling Stock (CSR) for 409 1676mm-gauge emu cars to replace life-expired trains on the Mitre and Sarmiento suburban lines in Buenos Aires.



www.progressiverailroading.com US News

CN opens new intermodal terminal near Calgary
AAR: U.S. rail traffic still sluggish in 2013's first week
PATH resumes round-the-clock service in some locations
San Diego transit system launches low-floor trolley service on Orange Line

New York City Transit's FASTRACK repair program to cover more lines in 2013
Texas State Railroad tests connection to Union Pacific line
TTCI earns ASCE honor for work on Hybrid Composite Beam
Rail supplier updates from Bombardier, Freightcar America, Axion Power, Teknoware and Parsons Brinckerhoff (Jan. 11)



www.railway-technology.com Updates

Mermec to supply 15 detectors to Moroccan national rail operator Mermec Group has won a contract from Morocco's national railway operator Office National des Chemin de Fer (ONCF) to deliver 15 hot box and hot wheel detectors (HBD/HWD) along with three maintenance control positions and one central control unit. 
      
Wabtec to supply components for 300 New York MTA subway cars
US-based rail parts manufacturer Wabtec has won a contract to supply components for 300 subway cars being delivered to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) by Bombardier Transportation. 
      
Crossrail's fifth TBM starts tunnelling in south-east London
Crossrail's fifth tunnel boring machine (TBM), Sophia, has started work on the 2.6km Thames Tunnel between Plumstead and North Woolwich as part of the Crossrail project in London, UK.       

Transport for London issues tender for renovation of Vauxhall Tube station
Transport for London (TfL) has invited bids for the £45m renovation of Vauxhall Tube station in London, UK, over the next few years.

Other News at....
Shedmaster Railway News
From railwaygazette.com - UK: Network Rail has awarded EDF Energy a 10-year contract to supply around 3·2 TWh of electricity a year for the rail network.

World Heritage & Railway News
Including..Ghost trains: How locomotives from the early 20th Century would look if they were still running along their old routes (dailymail.co.uk)

Railway Engineering News
From railwaygazette.com - FRANCE: A public inquiry considering plans to build a 6·5 km branch of Paris tram route T4 from Gargan to Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil closes on January 24.

UK Office of Rail Regulation (ORR)

Rail freight charges to better reflect costs and give industry clarity to plan for the future - ORR

11 January 2013
ORR/3/13
A new package of charges for freight operators to access the rail network, to be introduced from 2016, will better reflect costs and give businesses certainty to plan for the future, the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) announced today.

Britain’s freight sector is flourishing, carrying an increasing volume of goods across the country over the past decade, and, supported by the regulator, benefitting from excellent access to the railways, investment to help the freight industry improve its productivity, and improving punctuality. In May 2012, ORR launched a consultation seeking views on charges freight operators must pay to use Britain’s rail network, as part the regulator’s assessment of what Network Rail must achieve during the five years from 2014 to 2019 (Control Period 5), the money it needs to do so, and the incentives needed to encourage delivery and outperformance.
ORR’s analysis highlighted the wider economic and social benefits of moving freight by rail rather than road. For example, without rail freight there would have been an additional 6.7 million road journeys in 2007-08. However, ORR’s work also showed that rail freight traffic creates costs of £280-400 million each year through factors such as the wear and tear on the tracks. Under the current charging regime freight companies only pay a small proportion of those costs, around 21-28%, with passengers and taxpayers covering the shortfall. Freight train operators currently pay minimal fixed costs, whereas in 2011-12 passenger train operators paid £887 million in fixed charges to Network Rail.
Following extensive input from the rail industry and its customers, ORR will:

• set a maximum cap of £1.68 per 1000 gross tonne kilometre (kgtkm) on the average variable usage charge that freight operators will pay to access the rail network in Control Period 5 (CP5). ORR expects the final charge to be lower than the maximum cap as part of its final assessment for CP5;
• introduce a new freight specific charge, payable for the haulage of coal for the electricity supply industry (ESI), spent nuclear fuel, and iron ore – all commodities that cannot easily or economically switch to road. For ESI coal, the charge will be capped at a maximum of £4.04 per 1000 gross tonne mile (kgtm); for nuclear fuel the charge will be capped at £11.64 per kgtm; and for iron ore at £2.96 per kgtm; and
• implement the new charges gradually to enable a smooth transition and to enable businesses to plan accordingly. The freight specific charge will not be introduced at all until 2016-17 and will then be phased in gradually over three years so that the full charge will be payable in 2018-19, allowing businesses time to adjust. ORR estimates that on average the overall price increases a customer will pay for the affected products will be between 3% and 5%.

ORR’s decision balances payments for freight costs more fairly between businesses, taxpayers and passengers, recognising the wider benefits that rail freight brings against the costs of subsidising rail freight that would not otherwise travel by road. ORR estimates that, on average over the period, the increased charges represent between 3% and 5% of the price of a trainload for each of the three affected products.
ORR’s Director of Markets and Economics, Cathryn Ross, said:

“Over the past decade the regulator has supported an almost 10% increase in freight traffic on Britain’s rail network by allowing greater access for freight services and setting targets for Network Rail to deliver improved reliability. However, under the current regime, freight companies only pay a small proportion of the costs they create using the network – and we need to redress this balance.

“Today, we have confirmed new charges for freight operators, to be gradually introduced from 2016, which better reflect the costs created by running freight services on the rail network and provide early certainty for business to plan for the future. The new charges, capped at manageable levels, will mean freight operators paying, at most, a third of the costs their services create. This will help to ease some of the burden from taxpayers’ and passengers’ shoulders.

“In order to make a fair and balanced decision, we listened very carefully to what the freight industry and its customers had to say. We have accommodated their views as far as possible – in particular by taking a conservative view on the levels of the charges, phasing in the new charges from 2016 to give businesses a chance to adapt, and removing plans for regional charges to ensure the regime remains simple – while recognising that charges to operate on the railways must better reflect costs, to give our railways a sustainable future.”

Notes:

1. To read ORR's freight charges consultation report in full, visit: http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/pr13/consultations/freight-charges.php
2. The current average variable usage charge that freight operators pay to access the rail network is £1.36 per kgtkm.
3. The freight specific charge will not be introduced at all until 2016-17 and will then be phased in gradually over three years. This will give the affected businesses time to adapt to the charge. In particular it will give the ESI coal industry greater scope to adapt at a time of particular change, for example, with the Industrial Emissions Directive coming into force in 2016.
4. Rail freight plays an important part of the rail sector and in helping the country achieve its sustainability objectives. The governments will continue to invest in rail freight infrastructure in the next control period. England and Wales will receive £200 million investment in infrastructure, while Scotland will receive £30 million investment over the same period.
5. As part of ORR’s decision, the regulator will consult in January 2013 on levying the charge on biomass on an equivalent basis to that for ESI coal.
6. The Office of Rail Regulation is the independent safety and economic regulator for Britain’s railways.

Christian Wolmar

 

Public bad, private good – or is it the other way around?

In his George Bradshaw lecture given at the Institution of Civil Engineers in October, Tim O’Toole, the boss of FirstGroup emphasised that the key reason behind the growth of the railways in the past 15 years was the fact that they were in the private sector. Moreover, he argued that it was the very complexity of the railways created by privatisation that has delivered that growth and therefore, the fragmentation and break up of the industry created by the sale must be retained.

In the lecture he stressed: ‘The industry structure that best promotes the aspiration and drive for growth is one that involves private, Train Operating Companies (TOCs). Private TOCs must deliver growth to survive; a monolithic, publicly owned authority doesn’t have to.’ He characterised British Rail as having ‘a dated mindset that the railway is ours, that its residual purpose following the end of British Rail is to remain the sustaining engine of the only thing to which some truly owe allegiance, the pension plan…In other words, growth is just a further burden instead of an ambition and reward.’ Gosh, bet he never said that to his workers and managers in London Underground which he ran from 2002 to 2009.

He then spoke about how complexity had also been a source of growth: ‘Our industry has become very complex with multiple TOCs and FOCs where once there was one authority, and its complexity is set to increase with Network Rail’s devolution, but the greater complexity has generated and absorbed the greatest sustained growth in passengers in history.’

In other words, it is the mix of privatisation and the complexity which it brought in its wake that has been the catalyst for the recent success of the railways. I could not disagree more with both propositions, even though Mr O’Toole is a man for whom I have enormous respect.

When Mr O’Toole ran London Underground, he did so with real dedication to public service and he did much to improve the service such as putting up those boards setting out service delays on every line at each station. It was a period of growth during which, for the first time, the London Underground reached the figure of 1bn users in a year, and that number has continued to rise.

During Mr O’Toole’s time at the Underground, I used to meet him regularly and he railed against the Public Private Partnership that had been created by the Labour government which involved separating out the operations, which remained in public hands, from the infrastructure. When he left to go back, temporarily as it turned out, to the USA, I interviewed him for the Evening Standard (on my website, 17^th April 2009) and he was strongly critical of the whole arrangement: ‘So many things about the PPP were wrong. Separating the track from the infrastructure was wrong. The theory was that these private companies would come in and introduce all this innovation but fundamentally we have not had the level of innovation that justifies the extra cost of the PPP.’ He added that far from innovating, the private companies had played safe and not introduced risky new technology but rather have milked the system for what they could get.

Now, though, he suggests that public sector companies lack the impetus and drive to grow, and only the private sector has the vision and desire to promote expansion. He said ‘ there is a fundamental difference in mindsets between entities that are trying to make money and those whose central purpose is to spend it. Over time, the latter simply lack the day to day obsession with finding ways to grow.’

Let’s though, examine this proposition. Take, for example London Overground which while being run by a private company works entirely to the specification of Transport for London. It is a concession rather than a franchise and thanks to investment, good marketing and station staffing it grew by a staggering 110 per cent in the first year after it reopened and already extra coaches on the trains are having to be provided to meet demand.

Then there is Directly Operated Railways which has been quietly running the East Coast franchise for the past three years and was on standby to run West Coast, until at the last minute a deal was reached with Virgin. DOR took over a poorly run franchise and has had notable successes. Passenger numbers between London and Edinburgh have risen by more than a third and recently the company celebrated the best ever monthly performance figure, which has consistently been higher than Virgin’s efforts on the West Coast. Oddly, too, East Coast is top of the league table of complaints, but according to Passenger Focus many of these apparently relate to overzealous checking of tickets, something which is not suppose to happen in the O’Toole world of public sector management.

Possibly most interesting is the often forgotten example of Northern Ireland. Because of fears of arising political difficulties, the small railway of Northern Ireland has remained a publicly owned integrated operation which has recently benefitted from investment in both rolling stock and track.
Passenger numbers there have increased by 70 per cent over the past decade, an even higher rate than on the mainland, thanks in part to the investment programme and there are plans for further expansion and growth.

Mr O’Toole, who is also head of the bizarre Rail Delivery Group which has the task of delivering the cost reductions required by the McNulty report, seems on an ideological path up the wrong track. The result of the West Coast omnishambles is that for the next two years Virgin will be running the basis of a small management fee, just 1 per cent and the company has promised that the money will go to good causes (not, one hopes, for wildlife management on Branson’s personal Necker Island in the Caribbean). It will, therefore, not be a franchise but effectively a concession like London Overground which actually points the way forward. If the next Labour government proves to be too timid to actually take back the franchises into public ownership which is the obvious solution to this mess, the party could see concessions as the ideal compromise. No longer would we have the tortuous bidding process based on the voodoo science of futurology, but a much more easy process that would be far less costly and complex.



Great Railway Revolution
The Epic Story of the American Railroad...
 - Find out more
 - Order online




www.heritagesteamers.co.uk .
Preserving and making accessible the heritage of British Paddle Steamers.

Share Offer steams past £1million mark
We’re delighted to announce that the SVR Share Offer has hit the £1m mark in less than three months. Launched on October 1, the Share the Passion campaign has received an overwhelming level of interest and support from both existing and new shareholders and the wider SVR family. Share Offer applications have been arriving at Bewdley at an astonishing rate - over £12,000 a day on average! Money raised so far will allow us to start planning key projects including the Heritage Engineering and Building Training Academy and the restoration of our flagship locomotive 4930. Further investment, will be essential however in order to scope out essential longer term developments including SteamWorks at Bridgnorth. The Share the Passion campaign will be promoted throughout 2013 with a further communications push in the springtime. This will include advertising and publicity across a range of media and a further initiative at Members & Shareholders Weekend on April 20th and 21st.

For further detail on the Share Offer, please refer to the Share Offer document on the SVR Main Website.
Thank you for your on-going support with this scheme.
Nick Ralls General Manager

Question & Answer Sessions Reminder ... Saturday January 12th 2013

Kidderminster - Valley Suite 4.00pm – 6.00pm

Bridgnorth - ‘All Forces Club’ (formerly British Legion) Low Town 1pm – 3pm

Network Rail

National train performance for period 10 is 88.2%

Punctuality on the railways reached 88.2% during Period 10, according to monthly performance data released today by Network Rail.

The data for Britain's train services covers the period from 09 December 2012 - 05 January 2013. This compares to 88.8% for the same period last year. The moving annual average is now at 91.4%.

Franchise	Punctuality % Period 10, 2012/13	Punctuality % Period 10, 2011/12	Moving annual average (MAA)
Arriva Trains Wales	91.6	92.1	93.5
c2c Rail	98.0	95.7	97.5
Chiltern	93.7	92.4	94.7
Crosscountry	81.4	87.3	87.8
East Coast	77.2	84.5	86.5
East Midlands Trains	89.3	92.7	93.1
First Capital Connect	82.9	87.6	89.5
First Great Western	84.0	89.5	89.5
First Scotrail	91.1	82.7	93.1
First Transpennine Express	90.0	92.9	92.8
Greater Anglia	93.4	88.1	92.2
London Midland	77.7	88.2	87.6
London Overground	96.9	97.0	96.8
Merseyrail	94.5	94.7	95.3
Northern Rail	88.0	89.6	91.4
Southeastern	90.8	89.5	91.7
Southern	82.4	86.9	88.7
South West Trains	89.5	86.8	91.7
Virgin Trains	75.8	80.6	85.7
Total national performance	88.2	88.8	91.4

Notes:

• Severe weather with multiple flooding, landslide and embankment slip events caused severe disruption over a number of days to many train operators and particularly impacted our long-distance customers
• The 97.5% MAA recorded by National Express operator c2c is a new UK record for PPM train punctuality. c2c, which runs services from London Fenchurch Street to east London and south Essex, had set the previous record in October 2012 and also holds the UK record for PPM punctuality over a single four-week period
• Arrived on time - the measure of train punctuality also known as PPM (public performance measure) means trains arriving at their destinations within five minutes for commuter services and within 10 minutes for long distance services. This measure of punctuality is commonly used throughout Europe
• National train punctuality is measured for all trains across the whole network, including cancelled services and delays caused by external factors (such as vandalism, extreme weather, suicides etc). Punctuality did not start to be recorded in this vigorous and thorough way until 1997. Before then Railtrack, and BR before, did not measure all services and also excluded external factors and other items from their numbers
• These figures represent provisional data for the period and individual operators' performance data may vary slightly from the full period performance report that Network Rail publishes on its website every month
• Network Rail and the train operators run more trains across Great Britain than are run in most European countries - almost 20% more than in France and 60% more than in Italy. Great Britain's 24,000 trains per-day is also more than Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Norway combined
• Right time train performance data (% of trains arriving within 59 seconds of schedule) both for period 10 and for the year to the end of period 10 are also available by using this link http://www.networkrail.co.uk/about/performance/