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rail technology magazine Editorial


Managing Editor Michael Thame


michaelt@cognitivepublishing.com Commissioning / Deputy Editor Adam Hewitt


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It has been a busy and exciting start to 2011 for the rail industry.


There are almost too many ma- jor projects to keep track of, and when you chat to people about the ‘good news’, they tend to run out of breath before getting to the end of their mental list.


Some of this, to be sure, is more the absence of bad news – major projects having survived the axe. Others have been scaled back, but will still be delivered; the Intercity Express Programme springs to mind. Many people have concerns with the deal, including those who wish it could be a UK rather than Japanese-led scheme, and those in the East Midlands who hoped to secure the jobs, but it is still a £4.5bn rail investment in the face of Treasury discontent with all new spending.


Crossrail was perhaps safer than it once appeared, as cancelling it would have been massively waste- ful and costly, and potentially seen Mayor of London Boris Johnson go to war against his colleagues in government. But there were few such political incentives forcing the Government’s hand over HS2, and it is to ministers’ credit that they have stuck with the project, despite the short-term cost impact.


Other projects already part paid for in the current control period until the end of 2014 always seemed safer thanks to the structure of rail funding, but governments have the power to rip up seemingly set- in-stone agreements when it suits them; think about the cancelled projects in the defence industry, for example, or all those mothballed school rebuilds.


It is welcome, therefore, that we can report progress rather than storm clouds over projects like electrification, the New Street re- build, the Reading rail upgrade, the Northern Hub, Thameslink, London Overground, and so on.


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Most of these schemes seem po- litically safe, although the ‘consen- sus’ on high-speed rail is looking shaky. The Labour Party is wob- bling, refusing to commit to safe- guarding HS2 in its own spending


review. Meanwhile, the roads lobby has reared its head, noting the pub- lic’s vastly larger levels of discon- tent with pot holes than the lack of high-speed rail.


But the biggest change has been the increasing sophistication of ‘ordinary people’ opposing HS2. It is no coincidence that most op- position comes from those who live near the proposed route – but even if their initial misgivings stemmed from nimbyism, they have since ed- ucated themselves on the scheme, and now make reasonable points about the economic and environ- mental rationales employed to sup- port it.


Transport Secretary Philip Hammond does himself no fa- vours by insulting those campaign- ing against HS2 by saying they are nimbys with no principles. His comments, made to a national newspaper, will win the scheme no new backers, and will serve only to further infuriate and energise his opponents. Those of us who back HS2 would rather Hammond challenge those arguments on their merits – not just insult the people making them.


There are four more months of con- sultation to convince the waverers. A recent opinion poll showed sup- port vastly outweighing opposi- tion among the general public, but around half of people had no opin- ion at all – that will surely change.


We must not forget that among all this frantic activity on infrastruc- ture lurk the seeds for the whole- sale redesign of the way the in- dustry looks. The Department for Transport is reinventing franchising, Network Rail is ‘devolving’ power to regional business units, ATOC wants it to be broken up entirely, and we await the final McNulty value-for-money report. His interim review has already recommended closer Network Rail working with the operators on infrastructure and the general emphasis on aligning objectives across the industry is a welcome one. Now we must see whether his final conclusions are worth the wait.


Adam Hewitt Commissioning / Deputy Editor


rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 11 | 3


EDITOR’S COMMENT


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