COMMENT
Price also commented on the variation
in
measures taken by the operators to deal with severe weather, saying: “In the south, there were some operators that announced the night before that they were going to run a shorter timetable the next day, even though the snow hadn’t fallen. Fortunately – as it were – snow did then subsequently fall, meaning it had been the right decision to make. What we need to get our heads around is the different plans they put in place: so, for example, one operator may cancel 20% of trains as their back-up timetable, and another may cancel 40%. What’s the best balance? There’s not a lot of consistency at the moment.”
Long-term trends and resilience
The quarterly Monitor also dealt with some concerning long-term trends in performance, which have proved stubbornly diffi cult for Network Rail to deal with.
Price said: “Clearly we need to understand where we’re going to get to at the end of this control period on long distance. It is behind, so we have a team looking at that. They’ve sent us their latest update, referenced in the Monitor: that’s key, because that determines where they output this control period, which is the input to the next one.
“From a resilience point of view, we need to get into the next control period and defi ne what their plans are buying. Obviously there’s a balance: take the Cowley Bridge fl ooding over Christmas [near Exeter], we all saw the pictures of that. If you let the engineers go mad, they’ll lift it all up in the air and spend £200m. The other extreme is, when it fl oods, you put all the ballast back several times and spend tens of millions of pounds. There must be something halfway in between. What we’re challenging Network Rail to do is to fi nd the best whole-life solution to that – and can we see that in your plans for CP5.”
Above: A fl ooded level crossing.
Network Rail’s current plan for Cowley Bridge itself involves spending £30m on resilience measures to allow quicker recovery from fl oods – rather than spending far more to try to prevent fl ooding or immunise the bridge somehow.
However, he doesn’t blame Network Rail for this state of affairs: “Network Rail were funded in CP4 to develop the CP5 projects.
“The issue is that certain people have moved the goalposts in terms of the projects they want to buy. So it’s not fair on Network Rail to say ‘your project is immature, why haven’t you done that’: things like the Electric Spine was a new concept only last year, so aren’t mature enough to go into CP5 with a defi ned scope yet.”
Route devolution a ‘huge step forwards’
Price had nothing but praise for Network Rail’s decision to devolve powers and budgets to the routes.
He said: “It’s been a huge step forwards. While reviewing the Strategic Business Plan, we’ve had what we call the route-based reviews, so we’ve gone out to where each of the routes are based.
“To me it’s quite important that the ORR builds relationships at the route level, because they’re the guys who do the delivery.
“I’m deliberately taking my teams out to meet them, looking them in the whites of their eyes and asking if they can deliver the plan.”
Cont overleaf >
i
More stories like this at:
www.railtechnologymagazine.com/ network-rail-regulation-and-performance
rail technology magazine Apr/May 13 | 21
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