Off the line

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As was widely-trailed in advance, common sense has prevailed on the issue of rail electrification, and the project will now terminate at Swansea rather than Cardiff, and include the Valleys lines.  It’s good news, as far as it goes (pun intended).

Transport expert, Mark Berry, was quoted as saying that “Without electrification [Swansea] would have been perceived as being off the end of the line”.  True, of course.  And, even with electrification, what will be the perception of Llanelli, Carmarthen, and Pembrokeshire?  The statement, surely, is just as applicable.  And the additional danger is that the need to change train at Swansea will increase as the proportion of electric services to Swansea increases, thereby also increasing the perception that we are somewhere beyond the end of the line.

It would have been unreasonable and unrealistic, of course, to expect today’s announcement to have included the electrification of our lines down here in the far west.  It would have been nice, though, to have seen today’s announcement placed in the context of a wider ambition to electrify the whole network, and to see some sort of outline timetable for achieving that.  It isn’t just West Wales that’s left out; the north is largely ignored as well.  And nor are the forgotten or ignored limited to Wales either.

I accept that it would be some years before the work could be carried out, and that there are real opportunities for us to get more, and improved, rolling stock as the hand-me-downs from those areas lucky enough to be electrified are redeployed.  Existing diesel rolling stock has probably got up to 30, maybe 40 years of useful life; so the timescale that I’d like to have seen put on completing the electrification of the network would be one which enabled the government to proclaim that ‘all new rolling stock will be electric’.  That lack of a strategic view of rail investment is one which has dogged the UK for decades, and it’s still lacking today.

I’m still unconvinced by the claim that saving 15-20 minutes off journey times to London will make a huge difference to the economic prospects of Wales.  The benefits of electrification as I see them are more around increased reliability, lower cost, and the environmental benefits (provided that the electricity is generated from ‘clean’ sources).  In that context, the announcement that it will be partly paid for by above inflation fare increases is rather less welcome.  The idea of investment in rail as a way of encouraging a switch from road to rail for environmental reasons still doesn’t seem to have been fully understood.

How much will we benefit?

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There seems to be a general welcome for the proposal to build a rail hub at Heathrow with a direct connection from South Wales, but I’m not entirely convinced that it will be as beneficial to Wales as is being claimed.  As with so much else, the devil is in the detail.

Whilst in principle, any improvement in the rail network will help to encourage a switch from road to rail, there have been no hard numbers in the reports which I’ve seen.  I don’t know how many people actually travel from South Wales to Heathrow in the first place, but that will surely be a key factor in determining how many trains run direct rather than involve a change at Reading, and thus how much benefit the proposal brings. 

My guess is that most of those travelling from South Wales to airports in London do so for leisure purposes rather than business purposes – which would make Gatwick a more likely destination.  It also seems that most of the services to Heathrow are likely to involve a change of train; and no matter how good or frequent the shuttle service from Reading to Heathrow, a change of train will always reduce to some extent the number of people choosing rail rather than road.

Linking into the European high speed rail network would be a definite plus, but from the information available to date, it appears that the link to HS2 is a one-way link – good for going north to Birmingham etc., but not for heading east to the Channel Tunnel, leading to a danger that the proposal encourages, rather than supplants, air travel to near continental destinations.

But the biggest claimed benefit is in terms of the boost to the economy, something for which I’ve seen no evidence at all.  Whilst it is clear that poor communications links can put us at a disadvantage, the negative doesn’t prove the positive, and I fear that the business benefits are being significantly over-hyped.

And one final question which none of the reports has answered as yet – is this an English project, which means a largish sum of capital money available for investment in Welsh infrastructure under the Barnett formula; or would I be right in suspecting that it will be regarded by the Treasury as a UK project - from which the Welsh share of the benefits is likely to be considerably less than the Welsh share of the costs?

A question of class

Tweet In times of austerity, it’s not surprising that politicians should start trying to compete with each other to see who is the most parsimonious – or at least, who can give the best impression of parsimony.  Today’s story in the Western Mail returns to the subject of our elected representatives’ use of first class rail travel.

I don’t always – or even often – agree with Tory MP Simon Hart, but there is one telling comment in his robust defence of his habit of travelling first class.  He said that “This is a hair-shirt competition”.  His comment helps to confirm the basic message of the report – that MPs still just don’t get it – but it’s also a fair summary of where the debate about the travel arrangements of public servants, elected and unelected, has got to.

Perhaps there is a deeper question here which is going unasked in the rush to criticise any public servant who dares to travel first class, and that is whether there is still any justification in this day and age for there to be a distinction between travel classes anyway.  Why should there be a distinction between two ‘classes’ of people travelling on the same train?

I used to travel extensively by train on business – sometimes standard class and sometimes first class.  I certainly understand the point made by some that it’s easier to work in a first class seat, but the main reason for that is basically the extra room and guaranteed table seat due to the smaller number of seats in a given space. 

The argument about discussing matters with constituents on the phone is surely a red herring – I would no more hold a private conversation in first class than I would do so in second.  It may seem quieter, and people may be seated marginally further away from you, but it is no more possible to have a confidential conversation.  Perhaps some of them just believe that having a better class of people overhearing you is OK.

But back to the main point.  Most local services, in Wales certainly, manage perfectly well with only one class of ticket and seat.  And the biggest challenge to the rail system at the moment seems to be providing enough capacity for everyone who wants to travel to be able to do so and to be guaranteed a seat of some sort.  Having two classes of seat – and traveller – doesn’t look to me like the best way of doing that.  A single class - less crowded that standard, but less privileged than first - might be a better and more flexible way of providing the necessary capacity.

Misunderestimating the numbers

Tweet The story this week about the funding of the railways seems to confirm the point that I made recently about the lack of a long-term strategy for our railway system.

What we need is an overall long term plan for investment in railways which deliberately aims to switch traffic from road and air to rail. What we have is an attempt to respond to demand as and when it is identified, based on estimates of growth which seem to be plucked out of thin air, and are significantly lower than recent actual growth.

Being entirely cynical, this does enable the government to claim that they've allocated adequate funding to meet the anticipated levels of growth. No doubt, when the rail chaos and overcrowding continues, they will say it's because the demand has grown faster than anticipated (code for it being our fault for wanting to travel by rail). However, understating the anticipated levels of growth to meet the planned levels of investment is just sleight of hand. This is no way to run a railway – or a transport policy.

Plans and assumptions

Tweet I thought that the admission yesterday by Lord Adonis, the Rail Minister that "our own forecasting model didn’t anticipate the scale of growth we were going to see in rail travel" was a really astonishing one for its utter candour about the state of rail planning in the UK. Effectively, he has admitted that there is no strategic plan for rail travel, merely an attempt to estimate likely demand and then respond to it.

Whilst most of Europe has been planning and investing in capacity to deliberately expand rail travel, the UK has been simply guessing at what might happen and responding on a patchwork basis. On that basis, supply will always lag behind demand.

This is not a criticism of the investments that have been made in themselves. In Wales in particular, we've seen a number of good schemes to re-introduce rail services on lines, build new stations, and increase the frequency of services, and there are more to come. But I can't recall a single one of these where the investment has been pro-active, as opposed to responding to campaigns by local groups and councils.

And that's my real criticism. Given that rail travel is the most environmentally sound mode of transport (short of walking, biking, or simply not making the journey at all), where is the overall strategic plan? Rather than assuming a level of growth and trying to respond to it, we should be setting ambitious targets for switching travel from road to rail and planning the capacity to facilitate that shift. That requires a step change in our thinking about travel planning.