Syniadau :: The Blog: Rail

Showing posts with label Rail. Show all posts

If it works for the Baltic, why not for us too?

This is from an article in today's Guardian about a rail tunnel linking Finland and Estonia:

The dream has been given added impetus by a recent preliminary study which suggested that the fixed link could be built for between €9bn and €13bn (£6.6bn-£9.5bn), would treble travel and boost trade between the cities in its first decade, and see 25m journeys by 2040.

The undersea tunnel is made particularly attractive because of a planned €3.6bn Rail Baltica high-speed train line, which will run from Tallinn to Poland and link into western Europe’s rail networks – and could also potentially connect Helsinki directly via train to Berlin and beyond.

The cities are, however, banking on Brussels paying several billion euros towards the scheme, and have applied for EU funding to carry out full feasibility studies.

The Guardian, 6 January 2016

Although the article seems to concentrate more on the benefits to the cities of Helsinki and Tallinn, one of the factors that would make the project feasible would be that it would form part of the already-planned Rail Baltica high-speed train line, linking the Baltic States to Poland and Germany.

I think this is a very good idea, and would like to see it happen. However it struck me that the economic and technical feasibility of a rail tunnel between Estonia and Finland is almost identical to the economic and technical feasibility of a similar link between Wales and Ireland.

First, the distances involved are about the same. The distance between Finland and Estonia is about 75km, and the distance between Ireland and Wales is about 80km for the southern link (or 95km for the northern link) although the actual tunnel length will obviously be greater. Both maps below are to the same scale.

Finland and Ireland are remarkably similar in that they are roughly the same size in terms of population (Finland has 5.5m people, Ireland has 6.5m) and are both relatively rich in European terms. Finland has a GDP per head of 110% of the EU average, Ireland (the Republic) has a GDP per head of 134% of the EU average ... although adding the poorer Six Counties will bring that down. So although the costs of such infrastructure links are very large, the benefits to the more remote country at a European-wide scale, and therefore the economic feasibility of the project, are probably greater for a link to Ireland than for a link to Finland.

But there is also a remarkable parallel between Estonia and Wales as the poorer, less remote, countries. This map (click here for an interactive version) shows GDP per head at a NUTS 2 level.

The GDP per capita of Helsinki-Uusimaa is €39,300, and is €38,800 for Southern and Eastern Ireland. Estonia's is €19,500, West Wales and the Valleys' is €17,900, East Wales' is €24,900. So in just the same way as Estonia will benefit at a more local level from better links to a richer next-door neighbour, so will Wales benefit at a local level from better links to our richer next-door neighbour. Should anyone need reminding, the Republic of Ireland has a higher GDP per head than the UK.

I'm sure some people would dismiss the idea of a rail links between either Finland and Estonia or Ireland and Wales as a pipe dream. However I would say that long-term planning of this sort is necessary. We have to decide what we want our continent to look like and how we want it to work. If we suffered from a similar lack of foresight, we would have neither the Channel Tunnel between France and England, nor the Øresund (or Öresund) Bridge between Denmark and Sweden ... and I would find it hard to imagine a Europe without such links.

My point is simply that if there is a case for a rail tunnel between Finland and Estonia, then there is an equal, if not better, case for a rail tunnel between Ireland and Wales.

Traws Link Cymru

Thanks to a comment left by Old Miwl on this post, I've just found out about a new website dedicated to re-opening rail links in west Wales so as to provide a new north-south route.

This is what they say about themselves:

Traws Link Cymru is a campaign to re-instate rail links in west Wales. We’re calling for rail links between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth and between Afon Wen on the Cambrian Coast line and Bangor to create a rail corridor along the west coast of Wales. We believe that closure of these routes was a mistake which should be put right. We need a rail link to boost the economy, protect the environment and connect the nation.

Traws Link Cymru

There have been a number of different groups campaining for this, and I don't know whether this is a brand new one or a re-incarnation or amalgamation of old groups, but contact them at post@trawslinkcymru.org.uk to find out more.

Meanwhile, I thought it might be a good idea to remind people of a video I put together some five years ago showing my suggestion for how a north-south rail link could be reinstated ... although my northern section isn't the same as the route proposed by Traws Link Cymru.

The video is just under 20 minutes long. If you click the bottom right hand button you can see it in full screen, but I've had to downgrade the quality slightly so that it still streams. Use the time slider to focus on any part of the route:

     Carmarthen ... 3:40
     Llanbedr Pont Steffan ... 6:30
     Aberystwyth ... 9:40
     Harlech ... 14:20
     Blaenau Ffestiniog ... 16:00

The new sections are from Carmarthen to Aberystwyth, and from the Cambrian line near Llandecwyn to Blaenau Ffestiniog. The first is mainly along the line of the old railway, but with some improvements (the old route is shown paler) and the second was mentioned in more detail here.

Public ownership and control

One of the best lines in Leanne Wood's speech at the Plaid Cymru conference last month was:

"The Wales that we want to create will be operated by a fairly fundamental principle: that services run for the benefit of people can only be properly managed in the interests of the people."

Leanne's speech to Conference, October 2013

She didn't use the exact word "owned" by the people, but it was clear from what she went on to say that the model that best seems to fit our circumstances now is that of a non-profit-distributing company along the lines of Glas Cymru ... which is effectively the same thing.

I don't quite know how I missed it at the time, but only a few weeks ago YouGov conducted a survey about public ownership and control of key sectors and services. The results are summarized here, and the full details are here.

These are the levels of support for public ownership and management of four key sectors:

This graphic shows the level of support for public ownership and management of energy and rail services by voting intention for political parties:

I think two things are surprising. The first is that even a majority of Conservative voters support nationalization of energy and rail services. In fact the margin of support is bigger than the graphic might suggest, for only 39% of Conservative voters wanted railways to continue to be run by private companies, and only 38% wanted energy to continue to be run by private companies. The rest were undecided.

The second surprise, to me at least, is that such a high percentage of UKIP voters are in favour of nationalization.

Another set of questions was about whether government should have the power to control prices:

Although the margin favour of private sector rent control was quite small, public opinion ties in exactly with what Leanne said at conference:

"Due to the failure of successive Governments to build sufficient council housing and cool the housing market, many young people are forced to rent from private landlords well into their twenties and thirties. This is Generation Rent.

"There are 190,000 households renting in Wales. 14% of all households are in the private rented sector.

"Even during this long recession, rent rises have continued to outstrip inflation. In Wales over the last year rent has on average risen by 5%, well above the UK average.

"This is completely unsustainable. I am therefore announcing our intention today to reintroduce rent control for the private rented sector during the next Assembly term."

These are ideas whose time has come, and it should be clear to everyone that we in Plaid Cymru have our finger on the pulse of public opinion to a far greater extent than other parties.

Misdirecting EU funds away from Wales

Last week, WalesOnline carried a story in which Jill Evans drew attention to Wales being omitted from a map of critical EU transport routes. She also wrote about it on her blog, here.

The map in question shows the main connexion between Britain and Ireland as being between Liverpool and Dublin. At first I wondered whether this was just a graphical error, so I decided to look at the actual document itself, which is here.

The document identifies nine critical Core Network Corridors, and Britain and Ireland form the northern part of the North Sea-Mediterranean Corridor. This map from the document shows things in more detail:

From this more detailed map, it should be obvious that the main link between England and the Irish Republic is across north Wales and from the port of Holyhead. Yet, incredibly, Holyhead is not even marked as a port, even though Liverpool is. To demonstrate how ridiculous this is, these are the latest figures for sea passenger traffic between Britain and the Republic of Ireland:

Sea Passenger Traffic, 2012

Holyhead-Dublin ... 1,709,000
Holyhead-Dun Laoghaire ... 189,000
Fishguard-Rosslare ... 364,000
Pembroke-Rosslare ... 329,000
Liverpool-Dublin ... 121,000

Sea Passenger Statistics, 2012 – Data Table spas0102.csv

The combined total for Holyhead is 1,898,000 ... this means that it is more than 15 times more significant than Liverpool as a port for traffic to and from Ireland.

The reason for the EU's TEN-T project is outlined in the foreword to the document I linked to:

... experience shows that planning and budgets from a national perspective do not give a sufficiently high priority to multi-national cross-border investments to equip the single market with the infrastructure it needs. This is one more example of the added value of the EU budget. With the Connecting Europe Facility, it can secure funding for the pan-European projects that connect the centre and the periphery, to the benefit of all.

Parts of these corridors already exist, building on the success stories of the past TEN-T policy. But essential missing links, especially cross-border links, East-West connections, still need to be joined up.

In other words, this EU funding is meant to be specifically allocated to facilitate those projects which a member state's government does not consider to be in its immediate national interest to develop, but which are of significance in terms of linking member states. It is therefore of very great concern that the UK Government identifies these as the specific, pre-identified, projects to receive this EU funding:

Belfast ... Port, multimodal connections
Upgrading

Glasgow-Edinburgh ... Rail
Upgrading

Manchester-Liverpool ... Rail
Upgrading and electrification, including Northern Hub

Birmingham-Reading-Southampton ... Rail
Upgrading of the freight line

Dublin, Cork, Southampton ... Ports, Rail
Studies and works on port capacity, MoS and interconnections

Felixstowe-Midlands ... Rail, port, multimodal platforms
Rail upgrading, interconnections, port and multimodal platforms

The only one of these projects in the immediate area is upgrading and electrifying the Liverpool-Manchester rail link and creating a Northern Hub. This is, of course, a worthy project in and of itself ... but it is already budgeted for and set to go ahead, and has very little (if anything at all) to do with improving the transport links between two EU member states. It therefore seems clear to me that the UKG is attempting to divert EU funds specifically designed for another purpose towards an internal project that it has already allocated funds for.

This new EU funding would be far better directed at upgrading and electrifying the line between Crewe and Holyhead as part of the essential rail corridor to Ireland, a project that is still very much in the balance. In fact this EU funding could make all the difference to whether it happens any time soon or not.

So what is now required is concerted action to make sure this new EU money is used for the purpose for which it is intended, rather than diverted to subsidize a project which has already been budgeted for. The Welsh Government needs to make this point, and so does the Secretary of State for Wales. After all, David Jones is on record as wanting to make the case for electrification of the north Wales main line. A fair share of the €26bn of EU funds on offer will probably make all the difference to the business case for it.

We got it

The news that Wales has secured a Barnett consequential for Treasury expenditure on HS2 is a huge victory for Plaid Cymru.

I'll write more on it later.

Update - 19:15, 23 October 2013

Owen has just provided a link to David Cornock's article. It appears to be Jane Hutt's gaffe, but I don't want to do recriminations. I'm just glad that at least three parties, Plaid, Labour and the LibDems all agree that we should get a Barnett consequential.

In fact, now that the LibDems have said this in such an explicit way, Danny Alexander as Chief Secretary to the Treasury might now be honour-bound to pull his finger out and make sure we get it. Or he might just say, "Peter ... who?" The battle goes on.

There's an interesting take on the non-story here. And the Six Counties obviously want the consequential too. It's quite impossible for anybody to argue that HS2 benefits the north of Ireland.

Getting an hourly service on the Cambrian Line

One of the better things that Ieuan Wyn Jones did as the minister responsible for transport in the One Wales Government was to produce a National Transport Plan, which put a much greater emphasis on public transport and non-car solutions than before.

Chapter 6 of the NTP focused on the east-west corridor in mid-Wales. In parallel with improvements to roads, the Welsh Government committed itself to introduce an hourly rail service between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury by 2011.

Even after the 2011 Assembly elections, the new WG reaffirmed that this remained a priority in its Prioritized National Transport Plan of December 2011, although the implementation date had now slipped. But nothing was actually delivered, and in July this year the current Minister responsible for transport, Edwina Hart, issued a Written Statement saying that:

In terms of the Cambrian Main Line hourly service, the way is clear for an operator to introduce additional services though it is important to be mindful of the tough financial settlement we are facing. I have asked the Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth Railway Liaison Committee to co-ordinate work with the other rail interest groups to investigate the demand for rail services ...

I have been clear that this should complement the work of the Local Growth Zones and be consistent with the tourism strategy. Accordingly, initially for the Cambrian Line and the Heart of Wales Line, my tourism sector panel will provide a view on the feasibility of proposals for summer tourist trains on a trial basis. I will make an announcement for summer 2014 in due course.

Written Statement, 18 July 2013

This was a shameful and disappointing announcement. What had been a firm commitment under the One Wales Government, and then reaffirmed as a commitment by the new Labour Government, had now slipped off its list of priorities altogether; and Edwina Hart was in fact questioning whether to go ahead with hourly services on the line at all. In referring the matter back for public consultation she was acting in almost exactly the same way as the Tories have reacted to devolving Stamp Duty to Wales. It was a breathtaking display of double standards.

The tragedy of the situation is that the infrastructure work to allow trains to run hourly has already been completed, at a cost of some £13m. This expendure is currently going to waste. It is a perfect illustration of the lack of joined-up thinking.

The news today is that a survey to assess the demand for an hourly rail service has now been launched by the Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth Rail Liaison Committee. As well as questionnaires handed out on trains and at stations, the survey can also be completed online at midwalesrailsurvey.co.uk, or click the image below:

Yes, it's disappointing that we have to go through the process of demonstrating that there is a demand for an hourly rail service all over again. But it will only take a few minutes to complete the survey, and I'd urge everyone with an interest in using the line to do so, even if you might only use it occasionally.

For some reason, the current Welsh Government seems to have got it into its head that additional tourist trains might be some sort of half-way option. Of course tourists will be one of the groups that will benefit from an improved service in summer, but everyone will benefit from a year-round improvement in services. Commuters, business users, social users, students, young people and everyone without a car (either permanently or temporarily) will benefit ... and, as always, the more disadvantaged will benefit more than the better-off. It's a complete no-brainer. Alongside the hourly service, longer trains and more earlier and later trains should be considered, as well as on-board services such as wi-fi. Just say so in the boxes at the bottom of the survey.

Let's leave the Welsh Government in no doubt whatsoever that there is an across-the-board demand for an improved, hourly service on this line.

A new bridge

I came across a couple of rather dramatic images of the new Loughor Rail Bridge, taken by Gareth Lovering over the weekend:

Another week, and both the bridge and the track redoubling should be complete; bringing much better rail connexions between civilization and the more benighted regions to the east. It can only help.

Lots more pictures here.

Closed to business

I suppose Tory politicians can't help it, but their most hackneyed cliché must surely be "open for business". Cheryl Gillan is as prone to it as the rest of them, telling us yesterday that the electrification of the Great Western Line from Swansea and the Valley Lines would mean that Wales was open for business.

Electrification across South Wales shows 'country open for business'

It's hard to know whether she meant anything by this or whether it was a natural and involuntary emission of air. But were we to take her seriously, then her message must be that south Wales and the Valleys won't actually be open for business until somewhere after 2017, and that the rest of Wales will remain closed to business for the foreseeable future.

More Stations

It was good to see that the disused railway station at Wdig has been rebuilt. There are many people who can rightly take credit for this, but undoubtedly the main factor was the decision to increase the train service from just two trains a day timed to link with the ferry service to seven trains a day in each direction, which enabled the service to be used for by local people for commuting or shopping too.

Ben Davies of Arriva Trains Wales was excited and asked where else in the world a new station was being opened today. But in fact there are several more in various stages of planning that I can think of:

• Energlyn in Caerffili is advanced enough for Network Rail to have produced a video of it.

• Holywell/Greenfield, Queensferry and Broughton on Deeside are mentioned in this document from Network Rail.

• Bow Street and Carno on the Cambria line to Aberystwyth when an hourly service is introduced, see this document.

• In the SEWTA (south east Wales) area, this document mentions new stations at Brackla, Crymlyn, Pye Corner, Hirwaun, Trecynon, Albany Road/Crwys Road in Cardiff, Upper Boat, St Mellons, Coedkernow, Caerleon, Llanwern and Sain Ffagan.

Not all of these will come to fruition, but many of them have positive benefit-to-cost ratios, with some of them rated as good (i.e. a BCR of more than 2:1) particularly if the service frequency can be enhanced.

So yes, let's celebrate the opening of one new station ... but it's a celebration that we could repeat many times over in the next few years if we have the foresight and political will to press ahead with these plans. It's exactly the sort of capital investment we need.

Wales should now get £1.9bn

I'm very pleased that the UK Transport Secretary has today announced that the HS2 line between London and Birmingham is to go ahead.

This investment of £33bn is entirely within England. By all rights Wales should get a Barnett consequential of 5.83% in so far as it is funded from the Treasury or other public funds. On the full sum, this would equate to just over £1.9bn.

The priority now is to make sure we get it, rather than have to put up with the same sort of fudge that we had to endure over the expenditure on the Olympic Games. Having seen coverage of the statement in Westminster, I think our politicians would do far better to concentrate their efforts on securing this money for Wales rather than talking about about tunnels through the Chilterns.

Update - 18:45, 10 January 2012

For those who aren't aware of it, just before Christmas the current UK Government were obliged, under the inter-governmental disputes procedure, to make a U-turn over the Barnett consequential for the Olympic Games in London ... but only for that period in which they have been in power. Details here.

Sadly, the vast majority of the expense was incurred before that when Labour were in power in Westminster, so we're only getting a small fraction of what we should have got. But the point of principle has been established. Therefore the question is whether the Welsh Government will fight for a similar Barnett consequential in this case.

Getting a direct rail service to Heathrow

I'm very pleased to see the news that the UK government is planning to build a rail link from the Great Western Line to Heathrow Airport from the west. This would mean that rail passengers from south Wales and south west England would not have to travel into Paddington and then back out again, saving about an hour.

Plans unveiled for £500m rail scheme linking Wales to Heathrow
Hammond Heathrow £500m rail link plan consideration

As the Western Mail story notes, the case for a link was put forward with new urgency a couple of months ago by Mark Hopwood of First Great Western. But in fact the key to its viability was not to consider this link in isolation, but to combine it with the spur from the new High Speed 2 line which provides a direct link to Heathrow from Birmingham and, in due course, further north. Although I haven't seen the plans, the written description exactly matches the proposal I outlined in this post:

If the spur does go ahead as reported today, it finally kills off any idea of the Heathrow Hub on the Great Western line itself, as had been proposed by Arup. I think that's a shame, but it won't be the only good idea that's not been built. However the effect of the decision is that High Speed trains from the midlands and north of England will terminate at Heathrow rather than pass through Heathrow, so the frequency of service will be limited.

The key for passengers from south Wales and south west England will be whether the station is designed to allow normal intercity trains to pass through Heathrow on the existing Heathrow Connect/Heathrow Express line. If it is, there will be the potential for more direct services between south Wales and Heathrow, because these trains will also carry people travelling on to London. But if it isn't, the number of direct trains will be limited by the numbers that want to go to Heathrow. I'd be very surprised if the numbers would justify more than one or two trains a day, if that, so it is much more likely that the normal pattern of service would be a shuttle between Reading and Heathrow, with passengers having to change at Reading.

Obviously changing at Reading is better than having to go into London and then come back out again, as at present. But it would be even better if at least one train every couple of hours was direct, which could only realistically happen if trains passed through Heathrow. So if we want a direct service to Heathrow, there's still some lobbying to be done.

Update - 6 September 2011

I have no idea why this link was reported as something that would particularly benefit south Wales, yet it seems to be the main topic of debate elsewhere. So perhaps it's worth clarifying that this link will benefit everybody who wants to get to and from Heathrow in not only south Wales, but the whole of south west and southern England from Southampton westwards, plus the Thames Valley and Cotswolds.

I think we should also question the timescale. 2021 seems like a very remote date, and I can't see why it should be left that late. The link will be useful from the time that the GW main line is electrified, but this will be done in stages, from east to west, and the section to Reading will be complete by 2016 or 2017. So there's no reason why a shuttle from Reading couldn't operate from that date.

The Rail Link to Heathrow ... Plan B

It was interesting to read that Mark Hopwood, the Managing Director of First Great Western, is calling for a direct western link between Heathrow airport and the Great Western Main Line. This would enable passengers not only from south Wales, but from all over south west England to be able to reach Heathrow directly rather than travel into London and than back out again.

Speaking to a meeting of Cardiff Breakfast Club yesterday, Mr Hopwood, whose company’s franchise includes operating the South Wales to Paddington intercity service, said he had identified a potential route into one of the world’s busiest airport for commuters travelling from South Wales.

He said he recognised the frustration of the current position of passengers having to first take a train to Paddington and then head back westwards again on the Heathrow Express service.

He said: “We are looking at the benefits of a western access into Heathrow rather than first having to go out to London and then come back. It would only take around four to five miles of new railway across land which is currently not really used for anything. We think getting a link into Heathrow would not be as difficult as other railway projects being thought about.”

Mr Hopwood said the proposed route could exploit one of two empty rail platforms at Terminal Five.

Western Mail, 1 July 2011

Until recently, I had hoped that the route chosen for the new high speed rail link between London and Birmingham (and beyond) would have included Arup's proposed Heathrow Hub, as had been Tory policy before they were elected. Details are here and here. But I think everyone except Cheryl Gillan has little choice but to accept that the Tories are sticking with the more easterly route that happens to go through her back garden, and therefore we need to focus our attention on Plan B instead.

At present Heathrow Connect and the Heathrow Express run on the GWML from Paddington before turning off to Heathrow at Hayes and Harlington. The intention was to continue the branch that currently stops at Terminal 5 on to Staines as Airtrack, but this scheme has now been dropped. However the platforms for it are already built, so they can just as easily be used for this link instead. The black dotted line that I've added to the diagram below shows in schematic terms how the western link would branch off the GWML west of Iver and connect to the station under Terminal 5.

The image below, taken from this study, shows how the link works in more detail. The tunnel is necessary because the stations at Heathrow are already underground. The route cuts through a golf club, but that shouldn't be too big a problem. Click the image for a larger version.

I reckon the scheme would cost a few hundred million pounds, but it would shave at least an hour off the journey to Heathrow (two twenty minute journeys in and out from Paddington, plus a change and a wait) from any station served by the Great Western Main Line. Most trains would probably still run directly to Paddington, but others would divert via Heathrow. There could also be a shuttle service from say Reading.

We in Wales (or at least in the south) should be right at the forefront of the group lobbying for this to happen. But we'll be joined by people from Oxford, Swindon, Gloucester, Bath, Bristol and all points west, who will get exactly the same benefit from it as we will.

Responsibility? ... No thanks

I read with interest the interview with Gareth Jones on rail infrastructure investment in today's Western Mail; in particular the differences between Wales and Scotland, as outlined in these extracts:

Unlike in Scotland, the Welsh Assembly Government does not have direct statutory control over Network Rail’s activities.

As part of the Railway Act 2005, devolved responsibility for specifying the outputs from Network Rail – a not for dividend company that owns and manages the UK’s rail network – passed to the Scottish Government, coupled with a transfer of funding from the Department for Transport. This in 2008-09 was £324m – or 11.7% of Network Rail’s UK operation, maintenance and renewal activities.

The arrangement in Scotland is allowing it to support more than £1bn of rail investment in the next five to 10 years through Network Rail’s own financial borrowing powers. While it has a healthy settlement in its block grant it is also directing more funding into rail from its overall budget – around £600m a year until 2014.

-

Even with the “high levels” of investment in Wales being claimed, it still would appear that the £200m quoted by Network Rail for 2009-2010, and an assumed steady investment to 2015, only provides £1bn against the £34bn for the UK as a whole over the next controlled spending period. This is 3%, despite the fact that Wales has 5% of the UK population.

Western Mail, 16 March 2011

I'm actually quite pleased to see these figures, for I remember reading that Wales received only 2.5% or 3% of Network Rail's spending, but then couldn't find the source to link to it. The figures confirm that we are losing out on maybe £135m of rail infrastructure spending each year.

But I was much more concerned by this statement:

Back in 2005 the Welsh Assembly was offered a devolved settlement on rail alongside Scotland, but it was rejected. It is understood that WAG officials had some concerns over a transfer of liabilities.

Mr Jones, who stands down as an AM in May, said : “It was a missed opportunity [devolution of rail spend], but I think it should come around again in view of the situation we find ourselves and the comparison we made with the Scottish model.”

Now I wasn't particularly active in politics in 2005, so I don't remember the circumstances, and I'd be grateful to anyone who could point me in the right direction. Yet it seems incomprehensible to me why the then Welsh Government rejected this opportunity. £135m a year over the last six years alone would have resulted in an additional £800m of rail investment in Wales. To put that in perspective, it would probably have been enough to electrify the north coast line to Holyhead.

I can't help but think that the Labour party in Wales seems to have an inbuilt reluctance to take financial responsibility ... and it's costing us dear.

Rumours about Electrification

There are two potentially good stories today from Adrian Masters and WalesOnline about the electrification of the Great Western Line to south Wales:

Adrian Masters, Electrifying news for St. David’s Day?
Rail electrification decision to South Wales expected tomorrow

But I would like to add a note of caution, if not warning. This is what today's Bristol Evening Post has to say:

It is rumoured the Secretary of State for Transport will sanction the electrification of the Great Western line from London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads. And it looks like a deal to build the next generation of inter-city trains is edging closer.

The Department for Transport has developed a plan, which will be put before the Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond.

The complex arrangement would include electrification of the Great Western line as far as Bristol. But it has been decided there is not a sufficiently strong business case for electrification through the Severn tunnel to South Wales.

Bristol Evening Post, 28 February 2011

I very much hope the Bristol Evening Post is wrong, so let's not get too excited until we know for sure.

The Size of Wales

It's nice to see the size of Wales continue to be used as an international standard of measurement:

China is planning to create the world's biggest mega city by merging nine cities to create a metropolis twice the size of Wales with a population of 42 million

The Telegraph, 25 January 2011

It may have 14 times our population, but what if we had a fourteenth of the investment mentioned in the article? That would work out at £13.5bn. In terms of rail investment alone we would get two brand new rail lines, with a total of 221 miles of new track and a maximum travel time of one hour between the existing city centres.

If we want to be world class, this is the sort of infrastructure investment we need to keep up with.

Improving Our Rail Services

After two excellent articles by Mabon ap Gwynfor and Welsh Ramblings it might seem a little superfluous for me to write something else on Plaid Cymru's proposal for a not-for profit-company to take over the train operating franchise currently held by Arriva Trains Cymru; but I will, because transport is a subject that particularly interests me.

The first thing to say is that I'm very pleased with this development, not least because it's something that I have argued for, as I said here a few months ago.

Arriva Trains Wales were awarded a 15 year operating franchise in December 2003. This was before the 2005 Railways Act and 2006 Transport (Wales) Act ... in other words before responsibility was devolved to the Assembly.

One of the problems with this is that the service criteria were set when the franchise was awarded, so it is quite difficult to negotiate new services or improvements to services. As things stand, the franchise will not expire until 2018. There is a performance review due in 2013, but unless ATW do something wrong I'm not sure it can be used as a pretext to cancel the contract. However, as soon as it can be done, I would like to see the franchise taken over either by the Welsh Government, or by a not for profit company (or one which reinvests them) which can be more flexible to service improvements as laid out by the WG.

Now of course I was just one of many who wanted to see this. The context in which I said it was in answer to a question about how we were landed with Arriva in the first place. So although there's plenty to be said about profit (which I'll come on to later) for me the main reason for being dissatisfied with the present model is because it severely limits our ability to improve the standard of rail services in Wales.

Ramblings has noted that the political consensus for privatization—something shared equally by both Labour and the Tories in Westminster—is what resulted in the current model by which railways operate in the UK. Like him, I don't think very highly of the model, but we have to accept that this is the way things are, so we need to work within those parameters in the immediate term.

In setting down 15 year franchises, the idea was to provide the TOCs with a term of contract that was long enough to enable them to make a long term investment, and each tender was bid for on the basis of providing a certain level of service. Now of course there would be nothing to stop a TOC improving the level of service if it could make more money by carrying more passengers; but that model was much more suited to lines that made a profit than to those that didn't. The rail service in Wales is not one of those that makes a profit (it receives about £150m of public money a year) so the franchise holder would certainly have no incentive to do anything more than maintain the service at the minimum agreed level.

The problem is that we in Wales want to improve our rail service rather than just keeping the same sort of service as we had in 2003. In order to do that, the Welsh Government has had to negotiate with Arriva to provide new services or levels of service, which we have had to pay for in the form of increased subsidies. As with any contract, the initial bid may well have been very competitive, but the price for additional services once the contract is in place is never going to be competitive.

For this reason we have been paying over the odds for the service improvements since 2003, and will continue to do so for any further improvements we want.

Others have mentioned that Arriva Trains makes £10m net profit after tax each year. The full figures for the last two years are here. They are very healthy figures, particularly in a time of economic crisis.

But a comparison with the figures for the Arriva Rail group as a whole is very illuminating, as this article from the Western Mail shows:

Arriva Trains Wales sees profits affected by recession

Arriva has said its Wales business was "significantly affected" by recession last year.

The company, which operates the Arriva Trains Wales service, said UK rail profits slumped 64% as expectations for passenger revenues growth on its CrossCountry franchise proved too optimistic.

The rail division made an operating profit of £12.1m, down from £33.7m a year earlier.

WalesOnline, 3 March 2010

The first thing to notice is that Arriva's business in Wales was not negatively affected by the recession at all. Instead of falling, their operating profit in Wales increased by 15.4% ... or just under £2m. But in addition to the Welsh rail franchise, Arriva Trains holds the CrossCountry franchise, which made a loss. The Welsh operating profit of £13.8m more than accounts for their total operating profit of £12.1m.

Now why should this be? It seems clear to me that being able to name their own price for the service improvements in Wales must be a major factor in enabling Arriva to not only avoid the effects of the recession unscathed, but to actually increase their profits instead. The Welsh franchise has proved to be a nice little earner, because they know that the franchise system is set up so that the only way we can get service improvements is to pay through the nose for them.

And that is why it is so important to make sure that we do not fall into the same trap again. When this franchise was awarded in 2003, responsibility for rail transport was not devolved and we had no say whatsoever in the model that was imposed on us. The 15 year contract is subject to review every 5 years, so there might be an opportunity to do something in 2013. That is why it is an important issue for the Assembly elections next Spring, as it will be something for the next Welsh government we elect to deal with.

What we do then might well be limited, because Arriva are only doing what we would expect any other company to do ... they are providing as little as their contracts oblige them to provide in order to make as much profit as possible. But I believe it would be well worth buying them out of that contract in 2013 if we can, placing the franchise instead with a new not-for-profit company, because it is only when Arriva are out of the way that we can introduce new and better services at a competitive market price rather than at the extortionate price we now have to pay for service improvements.

But even without the service improvements we so badly need, Wales is losing out to the tune of nearly £14m a year. Dividends of £10m a year go straight to the state owned Deutsche Bahn in Germany, and £3.9m in tax goes to the Treasury in London.

Western Rail Corridors in Ireland and Wales

Having just posted about reinstating disused rail routes in Wales, I thought I'd check out what was happening on the west coast of Ireland, where there have been plans to reopen the route between Limerick and Sligo—the Western Rail Corridor—for some years. In 2005 it was included as part of a comprehensive €34bn transport infrastructure programme called Transport 21.

Serendipity was smiling. I found that the first part of the route has just been completed, and that the first direct service from Limerick to Galway ran just before Easter. The article in the Irish Times is here and this is the news item from TV3 on 29 March:

And I also found this 25 minute video of a programme from March last year called EcoEye, which should give some idea of the overall scope of the project, and even how it might be extended:

But for those who'd prefer to read about it, there's a Wiki article about the WRC here and a lot more information on the West on Track website here.

First, I don't think anybody could fail to be struck by the similarities between western Ireland and the western half of Wales. In the not too past Ireland, like Wales, had railways that ran north-south, but these were abandoned several decades ago, so now there is a rail network that radiates from Dublin in the same way as the British network radiates from London, leaving relatively good east-west links by rail, but nothing running in a north-south direction.

The second thing to note is that re-instating this railway will bring significant benefits to the area – both in terms of expanding the economy and in terms of environmental benefits to a predominantly rural area. That same argument must surely hold true for the western half of Wales as it does for western Ireland.

The third thing I would note is that the cost of reinstating the rail link has been extraordinarily low. The sections of rail from Limerick to Ennis and Galway to Athenry already exist, so this first stage involved reinstating 58km (36 miles) of track at a cost of €106.5m (£93m) including four new stations and associated works:

•  renewal of 36 miles of track, including all necessary fencing and drainage and installation of points and crossings at Gort and Ennis

•  a 90m platform with furniture, signage, shelter, Automatic Ticket Vending Machine, lighting, car park, PA, Customer Information Systems, help point and CCTV provision at Sixmilebridge, Gort, Ardrahan and Craughwell. These stations will also be accessible to the mobility impaired

•  At Ennis and Athenry stations, PA, Customer Information Systems, help point and CCTV has been provided

•  Repair and improvement work has been undertaken on bridges on the route to allow rail services to operate:
- modernised signalling systems
- improvement to level crossings, and elimination where practicable

Source

That works out at £1.6m per km or £2.6m per mile. To put that into perspective, the same sum of money wouldn't build more than three or four miles of motorway ... probably even less. The thankfully aborted M4 relief motorway would have cost £1bn, which worked out at £45m per km or £70m per mile.

Yet there are some things about what has been done in Ireland that cause me concern. First is the low speeds. It takes two hours to make the journey between Limerick and Galway but, on a clear road, the car journey would take 90 minutes. Although the track was already there, most of it had to be taken up and relaid, I would have thought that would be an opportunity to iron out some of the slower sections. But Irish railways are not particularly fast anyway, the train from Dublin to Galway takes about 2hr40m to cover 208km. That's only about 80km/h or 50mph. When we reinstate our railways, we should spend more to get a higher standard of track capable of supporting faster speeds.

There are some very wide variations in predicted passenger numbers. The video reports pointed to about 300,000 a year, but this report in the Irish Independent put the figure at only a third of that, meaning that the service would run at a €2.4m a year loss. As the service has only been running for a week, it's much too early to tell. However one encouraging sign is that Iarnród Éireann have upgraded the train from a two car to a four car unit, as reported here. As I mentioned in this post, other rail reinstatements have attracted many more passengers than were originally predicted.

My main reason for reporting this is to give us in Wales an idea of not only what can, but what is being achieved in a country that is very similar to our own. To look forward to the day when our own Minister of Transport can ride on the first train in fifty years to link Porthmadog to Blaenau Ffestiniog or Bangor, or Carmarthen to Aberystwyth.

In total, the WRC in Ireland is or 185km (115 miles) in length. The length of track it would be necessary to reinstate for us to get a west coast main line is 89km (56 miles) between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth, plus either 40km (25 miles) between the Cambrian Coast line and Pont Britannia or 18km (11 miles) between it and Blaenau Ffestiniog, although part of the second would be new rather than reinstated. So it's a smaller project, but just as important for just the same reasons.

Even though it is election time, I don't want to be overly political about this since the project in Ireland had support from across the political spectrum, although the more right wing Fine Gael seem to be lukewarm about future phases now. I would like to think that all parties in Wales could unite around a reinstated west coast main line for Wales ... but at the moment it seems that it isn't even on the radar of the other parties.

So much of this election seems to be about two parties making a big deal over what are really just minor variations on the same overall policies. On transport, for example, both the Tories and Labour are going to spend £16bn on a high speed line to Birmingham and more on extending it to Manchester and Leeds. The only difference between them is the exact route. If that sort of money can be spent by a UK government entirely in England, who else but Plaid is going to fight for our share of transport investment in Wales? Who else but Plaid has the vision to plan for it? We pay our taxes too, and our fair share of £16bn is 5% or £800m. A west coast main line for Wales would cost much, much less than that.

Wales must plan its future rail network now

In the Daily Post yesterday was a story that gave me major cause for concern. It is about proposals to reinstate the rail link between Bangor and Caernarfon.

Moves to build new rail link between Bangor and Caernarfon

A new multi-million pound rail line re-connecting Caernarfon with the national rail network could be built if campaigners can prove it’s financially worthwhile.

The old line closed in 1970 and part is now a cycle track, with other stretches up for sale to householders. But re-opening the 10-mile long line – possibly along another route – is now an aim of the North Wales transport plan, drawn up by the region’s six county councils.

Gwynedd council – which looks after the track – agrees it would help ease road problems, but is now negotiating the sale of part of the old route to householders in Felinheli because nobody has presented a viable scheme for reopening the railway. Green campaigners have accused Gwynedd of harming Caernarfon’s chances of rejoining the UK rail network ...

Daily Post, 6 April 2010

The part of the story I particularly want to highlight is the proposed sale of part of the land on which the old route ran. It is short-sighted lunacy to sell land in this way, and Gwynedd Council should be severely criticized for wanting to do it. I say that in full knowledge that my own party runs Gwynedd ... but this is far more than a party political issue.

As the Daily Post report goes on to say, councils all over Wales have done exactly the same sort of thing, using the routes of old railways for roads or other forms of development. But policy has changed in recent years, and experience has shown that when old rail routes are reopened, the passenger numbers using them have been much greater than anticipated. For two concrete examples of that, we have the Ebbw Vale line in Wales and the Alloa line in Scotland. The figures for both are here. To me, this suggests that the models that we use to calculate passenger numbers, and therefore the economic viability of reinstating the routes, are still outdated, and that it should therefore be possible to reinstate rail services and rebuild old lines on a larger scale than we have done so far.

But we need to think clearly about what we want to achieve. As I see it, there are two separate goals. One goal is to put more places back on the rail network: a local goal bringing local benefits. But in my opinion the more important goal is join together the various fragments of railways we have to create a network that will make it possible to make longer journeys from one part of Wales to another by rail: a strategic goal rather than a local goal.

The map above (click it to open a larger version) shows the rail network in north west Wales. The lines in black are in operation. The two lines in red have existing track, but no rail service. The reinstatement of the branch from Llangefni to Amlwch has already been identified for reinstatement of services, which is very welcome.

The line shown in green is the existing track bed of the dismantled railway between Pont Britannia and Caernarfon, which is now used as a cycletrack. Building it will certainly provide a local benefit, especially to Caernarfon and Y Felinheli. It is a question of whether the cost/benefit ratio stacks up. However the line could also be part of a strategic link between the north coast line and the Cambrian Coast line. The old railway ran along the route shown in pink on the map.

The ideal, of course, is to meet both local and strategic goals. I'm not suggesting that we have to do both at the same time, only that we make decisions now based on the possibility of doing more in the future. It is relatively easy to reinstate the old line from Pont Britannia to Caernarfon, and in my opinion it should go through Y Felinheli so that the people who live there can benefit from a station within walking distance. It is possible to take another route, roughly along the line of the new main road, but that will mean that any station will be some distance from where people live.

But what is much more critical is that if the line is to be extended south beyond Caernarfon, there is only one route it can take. At present this is used as a road which runs under Castle Square, but I think the road can be sacrificed as Caernarfon now has a better through road. The only place where it is impossible to use the old rail alignment is where the new Morrisons store has been built. But it should be possible to divert the line slightly to run between Morrisons and the Victoria Dock development, though that will mean reconfiguring some roads.

The other thing that must be done is to ensure that we reinstate the railway between Pont Britannia and Caernarfon to normal rail rather than light rail standards. It might well be cheaper to build it to light rail standards, but that will make it impossible to use it as part of a strategic north-south rail link in the future.

However, even though I think the through route is a good idea, I believe that we can achieve a link between the north coast line and the Cambrian Coast line more effectively via Blaenau Ffestiniog. On the map above, the 8km red section south from Blaenau Ffestiniog is existing track in good condition, and it would require only 10km of brand new track to complete the link. More details are here. In contrast, the green section to Caernarfon is about 11km, and the pink section 29km, making 40km in total. Although it might well be better not to follow the old route but to shorten it as shown by the dotted blue line.

This is just an illustration of the issues as they apply to one area of Wales. There are exactly the same issues in other parts of Wales too. So in short what we need is a comprehensive review of what we would like the rail network in Wales to look like ... irrespective of cost or the ability to build it in the medium term. We simply need to identify the routes we want and then, after evaluating the routes in detail, take the necessary steps to safeguard those routes from development. We can then implement that plan in stages as and when we can afford it.

What this story shows all to clearly is that local authorities simply will not do this if left to their own devices. Most of them are so strapped for cash that it is quite understandable that they would look to sell whatever land they can for the best price they can get.

This is an evaluation that needs to be done at a national level by the Welsh Government, and done now. If we fail to do it now we may find that it is a lot harder, if not impossible, to get the rail network Wales needs ... and will need even more as the cost of motoring becomes ever more expensive, both environmentally and as the world wide demand for oil outstrips the supply.

TrawsCambria to TrawsCymru

This story in the Western Mail today highlights some of the problems of the TrawsCambria network of long distance bus routes across Wales:

Cross-Wales bus service snubbed by long distance passengers

We can get a sense of the history of the service from this article in Wiki. But the significant recent development came five years ago with the stated aim of transforming it into a "network of high-quality services". Yet, as the story very clearly shows, the previous Welsh Government singularly failed to do that. The network is fair enough, but the services that operate on that network are well below anything that could be described as high-quality.

The previous minister responsible for transport (and economic development) was Andrew Davies, and what he failed to do was to see the distinction between long distance and short distance travel. This was reflected in two major ways:

• First, that the service was operated by ordinary short-distance buses which were simply not suitable for journeys of more than about an hour because the seats weren't comfortable enough and there were no toilet facilities

• Second, that the service made far too many intermediate stops, thus increasing journey times.

In essence, we were left with something that was closer to a local bus service travelling a very long route than an express coach service that could provide a viable alternative to travelling from one part of Wales to another by car.

Roughly 12% of passengers travelling on the existing TrawsCambria network are travelling between principal towns. Around 60% are travelling between administrative centres and their hinterland. The majority are traditional short-distance users, travelling to the nearest town for post offices, libraries or shopping.

It fell between two stools precisely because insufficient thought had been given to what the service was meant to do. But the good news is that this is finally set to change. The starting point is what Plaid set out in the 2007 manifesto:

We will create a fast, convenient national long distance express coach service, well-integrated with feeder rail and local bus services.

In contrast, Labour's manifesto was still thinking in terms of buses. But with Ieuan Wyn Jones now in charge of the portfolio it seems that things are at last moving forward, in particular with the appointment of David Hall. To give some idea of what's in store, this is a PowerPoint presentation he gave last month:

The presentation speaks for itself (well, apart from slide 16) but there is one point that I would particularly want to highlight.

• A coherent and readily identifiable network of longer distance services, linking centres not directly served by the rail network in Wales.

In essence, this network is primarily meant to do what a rail service would do if Wales had a complete rail network. That's why, to take three examples, the route map does not have any service running along the north Wales coast, nor does it link Machynlleth with Newtown, nor extend from Carmarthen into Pembrokeshire. That's because rail already does that job ... although if we developed our rail services that job could be done even better.

For that reason I would seriously question whether extending the service into Ynys Môn is at all necessary because a properly integrated interchange at Bangor would serve the same purpose. I would instead make a far stronger case for extending the X50 service south from Aberteifi (Cardigan on the map) to Haverfordwest and Milford Haven. But those things can be worked out in the business plan. And uniting the X43 and 704 route is a no-brainer.

Yet the one thing I would stress is that any long distance coach service can never be as good as the rail service would be. One of the core elements of the network is to link Carmarthen and Aberystwyth, but the railway that used to run between the two can be fairly easily reinstated. The same is true for the line between Porthmadog and Bangor. Reinstating the rail route between Newtown and Cardiff is part of Tad Deiniol's proposal.

So I think we should regard the new TrawsCymru network as something temporary rather than a permanent solution. We should be looking to establish a new north-south rail route, but even if we started work on it tomorrow I doubt that it could be completed within ten years. Yet in the long term that is what we must do ... and we should start now by working out the route so as to protecting it against future developments, particularly in towns that the railway used to pass through.

This is a video showing the north-south rail route I would like to see developed:

Some more information about it is here and there is more detail on the Ffestiniog/Cambrian Coast link here.

But there is a difference between long-term planning and what we can achieve in the short term. A network of fast, frequent and comfortable coach services between all parts of Wales is something we can achieve in the next year or so.