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and technology, starting with a de- cision on HS2.
2012
The decision had not been made as RTM went to press, but it seemed a safe bet that Transport Secretary Justine Greening would not, as one of her first major decisions in the role, choose to scrap the new line after so much time and effort has already been invested, and so many strong arguments wheeled out in its favour.
Clearly some compromises are pos- sible – though each has the poten- tial of damaging the all important cost-benefit calculation (which many claim is full of spurious cal- culations anyway) by making the line more expensive, or slightly in- creasing journey times. This might be more of an argument against the current obsession with trying to manufacture business case docu- ments based on unknowable facts from the future, rather than against the line itself, however.
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Some of the problems stem from the overly-cautious way the line has been approached, in two phases: while high-speed rail to the north of England and to Scotland has many backers, a London-Birmingham line alone would have few cheer- leaders. For the same reason, it’s harder to make the case just for phase one than it is to make the case for the whole line, even if it would be an even bigger and more expen- sive project. But many persuasive arguments have been made for lay- ing the groundwork in Manchester
will be another busy year for rail policy
and Leeds, and starting at both ends at once and meeting in the middle. Again, work is probably too far ad- vanced now for this to be a possibil- ity, but the DfT has presented few convincing reasons not to.
Before the year is out, we will also know more about the shape of Crossrail’s rolling stock procure- ment process – and maybe just how important private finance will be in the process (around 70%, re- ports suggest). The four firms at the invitation to tender stage will all have seen exactly what happened with Thameslink and the fall-out, and no doubt be working out ways themselves to make the financing arrangements work to their advan- tage – either by neutralising it as a factor, as much as possible, or by emphasising their own credit wor- thiness.
It is an accepted fact of public life these days that PFI does not offer good value for money to the tax- payer,
after countless investiga-
tions and official reports. It helps get things built and ordered, for sure, and historically has kept large debts off the ‘official’ books, but it
tends to end up costing the taxpay- er more than simple public borrow- ing, which is how TfL wanted to do it. The Government, however, had other ideas, and private finance will also play a big role in the HS2 infra- structure.
I discuss this not-so-brave new world of private finance with Pro- fessor Karel Williams in detail in this edition, and he argues persua- sively that as a country we need to do more than simply say we want a thriving high-tech manufactur- ing base: we have to take bold ac- tion to get from here to there. In the case of rolling stock procurement, that could involve enticing Hitachi to expand its operations into more design-led work, or finding ways of backing Bombardier without break- ing European law, for example.
The confirmation of the Southern order is probably a necessary but not sufficient factor in terms of the Derby works’ future. The Voy- ager units will be the next test, and Crossrail will be the dealbreaker.
Adam Hewitt Editor
8 £35m ballast contract Network Rail has awarded Lafarge the framework contract
18 Train building RTM talks to Prof Karel Williams about rolling stock procurement
24 An electric proposal The case for real investment in the Midland Main Line
70 Finished on the Forth One of the world’s biggest painting projects - finally done.
rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 12 | 1
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