At the beginning of August 2018, seven Crossrail core stations were due to be handed over to TfL. Instead, all remain in some state of construction. For Crossrail, this is a problem. For the Elizabeth line it is an even bigger one.
The problems currently affecting Crossrail are not limited to one thing. Broadly, sources suggest they fall into two categories: issues with the signalling and issues with the stations themselves.
The first is a subject we have touched on before here on LR. The Elizabeth line will require its trains to interact with a number of different signalling systems, all of which have their own quirks. For some time now, there have been issues with the signalling on the Heathrow section of the line, but sources suggest that it is not these that are the primary cause of the current delay. Instead, it is issues in the core and at the interface points, at least in part to do with the CBTC signalling.
As with the issues at Heathrow, this is a solvable problem, with sufficient application of time and testing. Yet it seems that the second problem – that with the stations themselves – has limited opportunities to solve the first.
This is because a number of stations remain unfit for handover. Indeed sources suggest that TfL’s internal assessment was that only three major stations in (or around) the central tunnel section (Paddington to Abbey Wood, which had been due to open this December) were likely to be ready for full use in service by December 2018: Bond Street, Canary Wharf and Abbey Wood. All of the major stations outside of this grouping are progressing, but are not yet finished, with Whitechapel being the furthest behind. Here, the problem isn’t just fit-out but construction – sources suggest that the station is still not structurally complete.
We will dig into the full details of what has gone wrong in a future article, not least because more information is only just beginning to emerge. But the above is enough to paint a clear picture as to why a decision was made to postpone. From a technical perspective, you might plausibly open a line lacking several stations, but operating only three out of ten on the Elizabeth line core would have been an extreme failure. From a service delivery level it would have made no sense, and the concentration of passengers at Bond Street would have been a major risk.
The thermocline of truth
One of the questions that will need to be asked of TfL is the timeline that led up to the decision to delay. We will tackle the validity of that decision shortly, but its timing – and suddenness – suggests that they may have been some element of the ‘thermocline of truth’ in play. This is something to which large rail projects – most notably GTR’s new timetable rollout – have repeatedly shown they are susceptible to. It is the principle that bad news tends to accrue at a lower management level, because no one wants to be the person who moves a project risk marker from ‘yellow’ to ‘red’ on a RAG chart. As a result, pessimism and a belief that the project will overrun ‘bubbles up’ to a certain decision-making level but never beyond, as if hitting the thermal layer that exists in the ocean. Eventually, the issues reach critical mass and force their way through, leaving senior management wonder why everything ‘suddenly’ went wrong, when in fact the signs that the project was troubled existed at a lower level for some time.
Given the various senior staff changes that have happened at TfL in recent years, along with their own restructure which will inevitably have robbed the organisation of some experience and talent, it is valid to question how quickly TfL spotted that these issues were occurring. On the other hand, this decision does suggest that they did at least catch the problems in time to make a valid decision to delay.
Ultimately, what has begun to emerge is a picture of a line that is progressing, but has simply run out of time. Beyond the details then, what is critical to ask now is what the impact of this decision will be on TfL, on London and on the railways at large.
The financial elephant in the room
Much has been made of the role that the Elizabeth line is expected to play in TfL’s future finances. It has become axiomatic that the Elizabeth line’s revenues are critical to balancing TfL’s budget line. On a broad level, this is true. Indeed one of the reasons this has become such an accepted truth is because it is something TfL have repeatedly acknowledged themselves. The reality though is far more complex and nuanced.
A delay is bad news for TfL’s finances, but not quite yet.
Letting Lizzie grow
Contrary to reports, TfL never expected to make quick money from the Elizabeth line this December. Indeed weirdly, today’s announcement actually means that on one level (net operating costs) their 2018/19 financial outlook has now actually improved.
This is because metro systems don’t burst into being fully utilised (although we suspect Crossrail will fill up faster than most). Despite this, the operator has no real choice other than to run a heavy service pattern from day one. New metro systems are loss-leaders, at least to begin with.
The Elizabeth line is no different. As LR’s own Nicole Badstuber pointed out on Twitter, TfL’s own forecasts don’t show the Elizabeth line turning a profit until 2020. So, contrary to a lot of the initial reporting, 2019 TfL is currently not out of pocket, but 2020 TfL most definitely is.
Still with us? Good.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The nuance behind the profitability impact highlights the real problem with this delay announcement – Crossrail being delivered ‘on time and on budget’ in December 2018 has become such an anticipated milestone within TfL’s – and indeed National Rail’s – calendar that many other future plans (and budgets) have been built upon the assumption that it will be in place. The removal of this milestone means that a significant number of TfL’s, Network Rail’s and even the DfT’s plans for the next five years will need to be redrawn.
This makes it genuinely difficult to assess just how big, or wide, the impact of this announcement is likely to be. Right now, on a practical level, London and the South East’s rail and transport strategies are perhaps best represented by a giant shrug emoji ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).
Some things, however, are clearer than others. Particularly as the Crossrail press release provided a timescale for the anticipated delay – ‘Autumn 2019’. Here, it is always worth following the ‘Roger Ford rule’ for transport press releases: if something is announced for a season, that means it risks being delivered on the last possible date to which that seasonal definition can be applied. In this case, that’s the last day of November, or even later than that should it be felt useful to tie it in to the December 2019 timetable change. This isn’t necessary, as the first operational phase of the Elizabeth line only interacts with the mainline between Portobello and Old Oak Common, but it may be felt to be a convenient marker to hit.
Our prediction is thus that the Elizabeth line will likely open exactly one year late, though a more limited preview service may arise sooner, for operational setting-in as much as anything else.
Spreading the load
On a basic level, this means that we can at least predict the operational financial impact on TfL of this delay (excluding other potential costs, to which we will return later).
Regardless of when it opens, the adoption curve for the Elizabeth line isn’t likely to be much different from what it would have been had it opened on time. This means that if TfL expected the Elizabeth line to be profitable in 2020 at the earliest, then they can now expect it to be profitable in 2021 instead. That’s a £300m hole in their future, based on their own budgeting estimates, that they will need to address.
What is less obvious is the indirect effects. These occur because Elizabeth line passengers are not going to spring from the earth fully formed. In most cases, they are expected to come from services elsewhere.
From TfL’s perspective, two of the most important sources for those passengers are their own services – the Tube (Central and Sub-Surface lines) and London bus services.
It may seem counterintuitive for TfL to be looking forward to drawing passengers away from their own services, but there are good reasons for them to be pushing for (and reliant on) this shift.
As any regular Central line passenger will tell you, the service there, in rush hour, is heavily oversubscribed. This means that there is an awful lot of suppressed demand (i.e. potential extra passengers) on London’s red corridor. The Elizabeth line will also relieve the north side of the Circle line.
Drawing passengers away from the Tube onto Crossrail will be a major win for TfL. Not only will it increase the comfort and reliability of those corridors, but it will also release capacity there for passengers who would be using the Central and Circle line if they thought they could actually get on a train. Essentially, there is much suppressed demand, particularly on the Central line, to compensate for any major shift of passengers now better served by the Elizabeth line to those services instead. So for TfL, opening the Elizabeth line offers an opportunity to syphon off a percentage of Central line passengers onto a new service (where they will still be paying TfL) and make extra money from those new passengers who emerge and fill the created gap. Some Circle and Hammersmith passengers may also prefer a more frequent ‘express Tube’, in the style of Paris’ Reasau Express Regional (RER).
The bus benefit
When it comes to buses, the benefits of the Elizabeth line to TfL are slightly more abstract, but no less important. TfL’s bus services are under enormous financial pressure, due to the massive cuts in government subsidy introduced by the previous Chancellor, George Osborne. To put things in context, just a few short years ago TfL’s government subsidy was £700m. Now it is nothing, which makes the former Chancellor’s selective amnesia about the causes of TfL’s current financial woes as the current Editor of the Evening Standard somewhat difficult to understand.
Even without this, TfL’s bus services have been long overdue for an extensive service pattern review. The financial pressures though make that even more critical and leave TfL in a position where it has little choice but to make some kind of service cuts.
Plans are already underway for a full bus consultation (it is a topic we will be covering at length in future), and the assumption within TfL was that the Elizabeth line’s opening would open up major opportunities to refactor (or, more bluntly, consolidate) services along various parts of the new line’s route. Handily for TfL, the Elizabeth line route covers one of the few areas of London where they both genuinely believe changes are required and (usefully) know the Mayor would be unlikely to intervene – Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street.
The decision to delay the Elizabeth line’s opening throws a huge spanner in the works for TfL’s bus review. No Elizabeth line means no indirect relief in the areas where they were keenest to cut services, and that means TfL’s options are now far more limited – go forward with their review and make fewer cuts now, or delay it until opening and cut more in future.
Similarly, TfL’s ability to redirect some bus mileage to become feeder services to Crossrail (such as from new suburban housing areas at the Elizabeth line railheads) is made more difficult, although even that could benefit TfL in two ways: by improving the Elizabeth line’s accessibility from growing catchments, and simultaneously improving bus operational efficiency by removing some slow-moving and costly-per-hour bus operation from central London.
With the bus network continuing to haemorrhage money, it’s entirely possible that, for TfL, this might actually be the largest short-term, negative financial impact caused by the delay. Certainly, it will be interesting to see how their plans for a bus consultation change.
Counting the pennies
Reading between the lines in the TfL Draft Budget, the anticipated benefit in the directly affected Tube and bus operations and incomes is relatively small (tens of millions at most) but every penny helps right now. These numbers worse with the postponement of some ex-main line revenues and the hiatus on growth. The government subsidy cut isn’t the only pressure on TfL’s finances. Estimated passenger growth figures for the Underground have, in recent years, habitually been over-optimistic but last year saw growth drop to fractional levels. Statistically, it may not have represented (in most cases) an actual drop – despite the way most of the mainstream media reported it – but this doesn’t change the fact that TfL’s own profitability forecasts were based on seeing a continuing increase. In truth, nobody knows the reason for the collapse in these growth figures yet – or indeed whether it may turn out simply to be a temporary blip – but the financial consequence is obviously unpleasant.
This unpleasantness is compounded by three other factors. Firstly, that TfL have, for some time, been skirting their borrowing limits. They are certainly not over them, but they have very little room left on the corporate credit card. This was one of the drivers for the decision to leaseback the Elizabeth line’s train fleet in order to free up capital to purchase the next generation of rolling stock for the Deep Tube lines. That was a perfectly reasonable and sensible thing to do, but there is no doubt that TfL would not have done it had they been able to raise the necessary up-front cash required any other way.
The other two factors TfL face come from decisions outside their control. Firstly, a DfT ‘rethink’ on the way A road maintenance is funded has placed a large, unexpected financial burden on TfL. Again, it is a subject worthy of an article in itself, but London contains a disproportionately high percentage of the country’s A road network, most of which fall under the governance of TfL as transport authority rather than the local boroughs. The new rules leave TfL footing the bill for all of these, a grossly unfair situation but one that the government seem to show little motivation to resolve.
The second factor is one with which most followers of London transport news (or general London politics) will be familiar: the Mayor’s manifesto promise of a fare freeze. Contrary to the somewhat hyperbolic press on the subject, this is not in imminent danger of bankrupting TfL. Indeed its impact is thoroughly dwarfed by the subsidy cut. Nonetheless, it was a reckless promise by the Mayor as a candidate – the London transport equivalent of starting a land war in Asia – and its impact has the potential to increase exponentially the longer it remains in force.
The path to profitability
All of the above pressures highlight why it is important that the Elizabeth line open as quickly as possible for TfL. Again, not because it will immediately create a substantial new revenue stream via its farebox, but because the sooner it is open, the sooner it can begin to move closer to that goal. As we’ve looked at above, TfL’s broad figures suggest this will leave them £300m out of pocket with a year’s delay, but we suspect the reality is probably a bit more nuanced.
For while the residents of LR Towers have long suspected that TfL has a habit of being a bit too optimistic with regards to passenger growth figures in general, we think that they may actually be too pessimistic with regards to the Elizabeth line. Nor are we alone in that view – it’s something that Sir Peter Hendy, Chairman of Network Rail, has commented on too. The betting money here has long been that the Elizabeth line will actually mature in closer to nine months, if not as little as six months. If that’s the case, then the long-term impact of this delay may turn out to be less than anticipated too.
This makes it relatively important to think of the losses this delay is causing TfL less in terms of full years, and more in terms of month-by-month cost. Handily, TfL provide sufficient depth of information with regards to their budgeting and passenger numbers for us to do that.
Broadly, taking TfL’s forecast budget figures for existing TfL Rail services and the Elizabeth line and adding some conservative estimates for Heathrow passengers, it’s possible to put a rough value to TfL of a single Elizabeth line journey, and set that against the cost of delivering the service. If the maths here in LR Towers is correct, then once it starts running, and until the line fructifies, every Elizabeth line journey taken will cost TfL roughly £1, or a total of £15m a month.
Multiply that figure by the passenger number estimates for the first few months of service and this is why not opening in December actually has a positive impact on TfL’s finances to the potential tune of £60m (ignoring any contractual penalties that they may be triggering elsewhere). TfL’s 2018/19 financial situation arguably just got better, not worse.
The hidden (and not-so-hidden) costs
All the above means we can place an operational cost of this delay for TfL to somewhere between £200 – £300m per year, depending on how quickly the line matures. There are no doubt further costs though, the value of which is yet to be revealed, which may accrue to TfL too.
The first of those is that of the overrun works themselves. Here, the decision to go for such an extreme delay makes a certain amount of sense. Even if the stations are nearer to point of delivery than sources suggest, one of the major issues (and indeed causes of the existing cost issues) has been the clear attempt to try and do more work in less time. That’s meant overtime, additional kit hire and the cost of needing to both fit-out and test the line at the same time. The current delay means these costs will inevitably continue, although how much will fall on TfL rather than penalties to the various contractors remains to be seen. A long delay, however, mitigates those costs somewhat, as it allows fit-out and testing to proceed at a slower pace.
The second cost is far less predictable, and something that TfL have so far been unable to provide us information on, but which we strongly suspect exists – penalty clauses payable to Canary Wharf.
That these exist is a reasonable piece of conjecture, simply because Canary Wharf have form for it. When the Jubilee was extended at the end of the last millenium, Canary Wharf ensured that their contribution to the project was closely linked to the planned opening date, and thus the point at which they had projected they would see an increase in revenue themselves. In the end, this ended up saving them an awful lot of money, lowering their final contribution by well over 50% to roughly £90m.
Luckily for TfL, the Jubilee line and the Elizabeth line are not directly comparable. Completion of Crossrail is not subject to the Millenium Year drop-dead date imposed (with costly budget consequences) on the Jubilee Line Extension project. Indeed the Jubilee line extension may actually have limited the liability with Canary Wharf this time around. Critically, Wood Wharf, the area’s big expansion (bringing an estimated 15,000 jobs) is not contingent on the Elizabeth line opening, as the planning decision deemed that there were sufficient transport links in the area already (Jubilee and DLR) to support the new development. This is something over which TfL are likely breathing a sigh of relief, but that doesn’t mean that Canary Wharf won’t have put in place any kind of penalty clause at all. And if they have, then one suspects it will scale over time.
May day?
Given all the above, it might seem surprising that TfL have decided to announce such a long delay in the delivery schedule. As we’ve already mentioned, the opportunity to spread out fit-out and testing again (that is, not trying to ‘cram’ the build in) likely yields some small financial benefit, but seemingly not enough to outweigh the various financial risks of a longer delay.
There are, however, other factors that come into play too.
One of those factors is likely human – The Elizabeth line’s Director of Operations, Howard Smith. Throughout his career Smith has demonstrated a firm belief in (and commitment to) implementing service patterns correctly and reliably. As the experience with Heathrow signalling has shown, he is a person who will happily make – and implement – a backup plan, but sources suggest that he was simply unable to find an acceptable path to one here. As a result, running nothing was deemed better than running a fragmented or unreliable service on day one.
There is also a more practical reason. Once rumours began to surface within the industry that Crossrail might be delayed, thoughts began to turn in LR towers as to how long it would be possible to do so for. Broadly, the general consensus was ‘not long’. Not, as you might think, for financial reasons but for logistical ones.
This is because although the timetable changes required to make the first phase of the Elizabeth line’s service pattern (i.e. the core service) work are limited in impact, these scale up rather quickly once the wider reaches begin to open. Indeed a glance at the calendar showed that it was the May and December 2019 timetables, not the December 2018 one, that would see the largest set of changes to other services that were reliant on the Elizabeth line being open. Most particularly, because of the changes to Anglia services in May 2019 with through running to Shenfield, and throughout Great Western in December 2019 with the Elizabeth line to Heathrow and Reading.
May 2019 thus presented a rather glaring first opportunity for TfL to ‘Thameslink’ themselves. If the Elizabeth line’s opening was delayed much beyond the end of January, then there would be insufficient time to train additional drivers on the various required routes, and that might mean implementing a service pattern in May which they would be unable to meet. Alternatively, it might have meant delaying that first phase until May and trying to do that, and the second phase, at the same time.
This would have been a huge ask, but politically, such a move might still have been attractive. One wonders how much pressure TfL found themselves under to do exactly that.
Ultimately, it seems our ‘not long’ prediction may have been based on the right reasoning, but underestimated how brave TfL might be prepared to be – because delaying the opening by an entire year removes that timetable risk almost entirely from the table. Indeed one wonders whether quietly whispering the word ‘Thameslink’ in the ear of the Secretary of State for Transport may have been enough on its own to ‘sell’ him on the current delay.
Eddies in the transport continuum
Such a long delay does, however, bring consequences elsewhere. It throws an awful lot of other rail plans into question, because just as the Elizabeth line will no longer be extracting passengers from other TfL services (in the short term), it will no longer be doing so elsewhere either.
That’s potentially good news for the DfT, in some small measure at least. This is because it means another rethink of the floundering bid process for South Eastern. Sources suggest that bids here have been far from positive when it comes to suggested profit or passenger increases. With a year’s less Elizabeth line interference on the cards, the DfT may finally be able to coax some face-saving figures from the successful bidder.
Overall, the arrival of Crossrail will add to passenger volumes and revenues on main line services, because of the extra rail distribution capacity in central London and at its three strategic Satellite Activity Zones (SAZs) at Canary Wharf, Stratford and in future at Old Oak Common. Rail as a whole around London and the Home Counties will become a more attractive mode to use.
Due to this, several train operating companies and the DfT will have been relying on Crossrail opening on time if not to budget, in order to see some positive growth in passenger numbers and income. Now this could be shifted to the right by a year. The Crossrail investment directly benefits the Great Eastern and Great Western corridors, with through Elizabeth line services, but this too will be deferred.
In the particular cases of the South Eastern North Kent lines (NKL) and Thameslink, the impacts are more moot. Crossrail represents a TfL opportunity to attract passengers and revenues from the South Eastern network, and provide a basis for refocusing the services operated there – both a loss in the inner section of SE NKL and a gain on the outer section, and also an opportunity for refilling of seats on SE trains inwards from Woolwich.
For Thameslink, TfL has been refusing to market Thameslink on the tube map even though it provides a new strategic north-south rail corridor and a more comprehensive combined rail and Tube network in the London urban area. This is because TfL doesn’t want to risk losing revenue at the margin from the parallel Tube lines (even though those are under huge capacity pressure with the delays to NtFL). It is tempting to wonder whether this delay might lead London politicians to pressure TfL to put more of Thameslink on the tube map.
The delay represents more neutral news for Network Rail. It means an inevitable postponement of the much-needed improvement works at Liverpool Street that were scheduled to start in 2019. That this is neutral, rather than bad, news is mostly for blunt, pragmatic reasons: there is significant reason to doubt whether Network Rail were really in a position to complete this work anyway. The organisation faces its own management and financial pressures, so in that regard the ability to quietly triage away the Liverpool Street work and blame it on circumstances outside of their control may actually prove to be a spot of luck for Network Rail.
Boldly going where no transport authority has gone before
All of the above highlights just how wide-ranging the impact of this delay is. That, in itself, brings us back to the main question: why do it?
Overall, the picture seems to be one in which TfL have had the sense to realise that it was better to ‘go big or go home’. If a delay was needed, then make it a proper one which genuinely allows enough time for the mistakes to be corrected. This still leaves plenty of questions to be answered – not least why it took so long to spot that all these issues still remained – but it’s a bold move and one that deserves a certain amount of praise.
One of the biggest criticisms to emerge from the GTR and Northern debacles has been the unwillingness of both the rail industry and its political masters to make hard, painful decisions. It is impossible to deny that in announcing this delay TfL, the Mayor and even the Secretary of State, Chris Grayling, have just done exactly that.
If this delay means that the Elizabeth line eventually opens in December 2019 as a finished, reliable railway then it will have been a brave – but correct – decision to make. Indeed even delayed, and with the current projected increase in costs, the Elizabeth line will still represent both an astonishing engineering success and very good value for money. As megaprojects go, Crossrail remains on course to be a major success.
By delaying the launch as much as they have though, TfL have effectively drawn a line in the sand. December 2019 may offer the best, most realistic chance of delivery but it also arguably represents the longest TfL could have delayed the project whilst keeping the financial impact of such a decision just about manageable. ‘YOLO’ as, they say.
In effect, TfL now have three ‘big ticket’ financial priorities – the delivery of Crossrail, the completion of the Sub-Surface Signalling upgrades (4LM) and the purchase of new rolling stock for the Deep Tube lines. Anything not on that list – or anything not yet underway – will have to bear the financial weight of any further cost issues with those three things. Those hoping for a Bakerloo line upgrade in the near future may need to manage their expectations, as even the cost of the preliminary work is something that TfL may not be able to bear right now.
There remains, however, one elephant-shaped Oyster card left in the room. For although it is not the primary cause of TfL’s current financial woes, there is one thing that would now make TfL’s immediate book-balancing considerably easier:
TfL Farebox * (RPI + 1%) = £250m (approx.)
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Great summary of the issues.
As inflation creeps up, the Mayor’s fares freeze policy will be even more painful for TfL.
Trouble is that he is unlikely to ditch it.
Sorry, picky editorial point.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ isn’t an emoji,it’s ascii-art. The Emjoi is 🤷.
Emojis are multi-byte but **single character** image/icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication.
The formula has been amended to RPI+ 0% for the last few years and DfT is looking to amend to CPI+0% (if all the pay deals change to CPI too).
London construction inflation is significantly higher than RPI or CPI…
Is “fructate” a word?
While I think I can imply your meaning from the context, google draws a blank on this one. The only definition I can find seems to be about enjoying sweets, whereas I think you’re after something closer to “passing the break-even point” (per journey, not including the initial outlay)?
Thanks for the article. Any thoughts on impact on extension to Reading. I saw a quote saying as soon as possible after central section. Is December 2019 as planned completely unrealistic? Or might they still aim for that as financially getting that revenue would really help TFL more than anything else??
As any civil servant will tell you autumn doesn’t end till 20th December
Re DJL
Fructate = bear fruit
Most of the “informed rumours” I have heard aren’t repeatable.
One point worth considering is that if the Liverpool Street services were diverted into the tunnels early (not stopping as Whitechapel as now), that would allow the upper-level platform reconstruction to happen at Liverpool Street without the need for major service disruption, which might save the extra costs of having to do it in a “blockade”.
But I’ve also heard that there some “ongoing political issue” that is making it hard to employ the skilled fitters to finish the central area stations (and Woolwich). Basically I have been told that Crossrail Ltd doesn’t have the funds to compete with private businesses backed by the legal sporting monopolies or the world’s most valued corporations.
I’ve searched Oxford, Cambridge, Collins, Miriam-Webster and dictionary.com. None of them have “fructate”. It’s not a word.
The only place that does have it is “Verbotomy” a site where people submit made-up words (!) Here it’s listed as “pleasure derived from the consumption of sweets”.
Mod note
It’s a perfectly cromulent word (and one used for this type of process within the transport industry). But because I, and I suspect the majority of readers, have precisely zero interest in a 30 comment debate over the exact meaning of words I have changed it.
Let’s end this discussion there please.
It’s interesting to track the progress of 2 high profile construction projects, Crossrail and the new Spurs stadium
Both at a relatively late stage have had to announce “embarrassing” delays, neither being much of a surprise to anyone who’s been following their construction. Indeed it’s been suggested that the two projects might be competing for skilled workmen!
Spurs have gone for the incremental delay approach, pushing back the opening by a few months to October, with rumours this might now be December or later, whereas TfL have bitten the bullet and gone for a conservative date. Your explanations do seem to suggest this was the right approach for them to take, it would be horrendous for Crossrail to open 6 months late, and still effectively be unfinished
“Indeed a glance at the calendar showed that it was the May 2019 timetable, not the December 2018 one, that would see the largest set of changes to other services that were reliant on the Elizabeth line being open. Indeed a glance at the calendar showed that it was the May and December 2019 timetables, not the December 2018 one, that woudl see the largest set of changes to other services that were reliant on the Elizabeth line being open.”
Looks like a bad piece of editing, there.
@NGH – good point about ‘London construction inflation’
Re Michael Jennings,
Most of the big GW timetable changes are actually being made in May ’19 not Dec ’19 well in advance of planned through running of Crossrail services. JB was well aware of what he wrote in highlighting May.
RER is Réseau Express Régional not Reasau …
Excellent article, many thanks. May I just advise a spelling correction? In ‘Spreading the load’, last para, last line Reasau should read Reseau. Alternatively, if your style guide allows accents, the whole thing could read Réseau Express Régional.
Excellent article, summarising the issues so well. After nearly 40 years in the onshore and offshore energy industries I can testify that the ‘thermocline of truth’ is alive and well on most major projects!
NGH: As originally posted, he repeated a sentence with a slightly different version of the same sentence. It’s now been fixed in the article. There’s still a typo, alas – woudl instead of would [now fixed].
Great read, your articles are turning me into a rail enthusiast!
Miffed that Hanwell continues to be a great place for trainspotting but a terrible place to actually catch a train for another year, but here’s to hoping.
I’m surprised TCR isn’t on the list of stations that would have been likely ready for a December 2018 opening. Work seemed to pretty advanced at the open day earlier in the year.
On the matter of excess dates I recall in the early 80s when I worked for a major computer manufacturer we sold £12m of kit to a UK bank on the 43rd March. They were obliged to purchase in a particular financial year and, because that meant a substantial vat payment too, the relevant departments were happy to accommodate.
Does this mean the services currently operating on the core section will now cease once they’ve got the requisite mileage on them?
Re Alison,
TfL still need to pay MTR virtually everything and Bombardier are being paid to maintain the stock.
Lots of drivers need to be trained and those already trained still need to retain the route knowledge.
And there is still plenty of systems testing to be done, (more than originally planned).
When oh when will programmes such as this install a “red is good” culture in project management? “Red” means that we can help you solve the issue, and reduce the risk of a delay.
Mark: Agreed that is the sort of thing which is needed. However, the person who is always reporting bad news is not the one who is considered for promotion.
Thanks for the informative article. I may be the first one to comment that “millenium” is misspelled and should have two ‘n’s
Re Mark and Malcolm,
And having to many things especially large items bundled in one status which makes it harder to change “but it is Amber on average”
Will TfL not incur most of the year 1 cost anyway, even if opening is delayed (eg drivers have been recruited and trained so will have to be paid, trains have been bought/leased)? So the year 1 impact equals the loss of revenue (net of abstraction) offset by a small saving on station staff (is 3 months notice of the delay sufficient to avoid all of this), rather than the avoidance of the year 1 projected loss?
The assumption seems to be that senior management didn’t know because middle management didn’t want to tell them. I find it easier to believe that everyone knew but the top level people didn’t want to be the face of the failure to anyone outside the project.
Why is it grossly unfair for TfL to manage London’s roads?
@Alison W
So you used to work for a company which colluded with a UK company to falsify the date of certain transactions?
I hope not, because that would appear to constitute a criminal conspiracy to evade taxation. Also falsification of a company’s statutory accounting records.
Thanks for a great article.
In the section under “Counting the Pennies”:
line 3 should ‘worse’ be ‘are worse’ or ‘worsen’?
line 6 ‘fractional’ – does that mean less than 1%? Any reduction expressed as a percentage could be ‘fractional’.
Under “The hidden cost”: line 2 ‘matures’
@ Gio
I would also observe that the article refers to the “Millennium Year drop-dead date” of 31 December, 1999. This was of course the then government’s Millennium Dome opening deadline. The 2nd millennium, controversially, did not end until 31 December, 2000 CE.
Apologies if this has been asked before, but why does the Lizzy line have no connection to either the Picc or Vic Lines?
@Mathias Broucek: I’m sure it’s been asked before, but the simple answer is that the most logical place to do that is Oxford Circus for the Victoria Line. While the Crossrail station at Bond Street does actually extend towards Oxford Circus and an underground connection could in theory have been built, the latter station is already at capacity and would need an expansive (and expensive) rebuild to be able to cope with all the new passengers who would enter, exit, and interchange there. There was not enough money for this, and so Crossrail has no Victoria line interchange.
As for Piccadilly, again I think it’s a similar story – Crossrail passes near Holborn station, but Holborn is definitely at capacity (indeed, there are currently plans to rebuild it, but I don’t believe even they would provide enough capacity for Crossrail passengers too). Further complicating this is that there is no station near Holborn on Crossrail, so an extra station would have had to have been built with all the expense and the increase in journey times (and so decrease in attractiveness) that this would have entailed.
Re Mathias,
It has many many times
Vic – no connection because Oxford Circus couldn’t handle the volume of interchanging passengers safely [the eastern end of Bond Street CR Station is virtually the other side of a wall from Oxford circus.]
Picc – ditto Holborn on passenger volumes and also the ideal station spacing without limiting line capacity is about 1800m so would’t work well with adjacent stations being too close.
Holborn is too near to TCR to be feasible station location, the choice was TCR or Holborn, and TCR was easier to rebuild.
Besides any people on the Picc or Vic wanting to use Crossrail, can use the Central line instead, which won’t be as busy once Crossrail opens.
Interesting article. I am somewhat astonished to see Bond St referred to as one of the near complete stations. I would have thought TCR was much closer to completion given one ticket hall is operational and the other was accessible to the public for the last “open day”. The platform areas at TCR, from photos I’ve seen, also looked very close to completion. I thought they were still building surface structures at Bond St (Hanover Square).
I have not seen the complete webcast of this morning’s Assembly Plenary meeting but I was genuinely suprised that the “bad news” factor took so long to emerge at Crossrail Board level. Equally that the Mayor seemed unaware, in terms of a confirmed delay, until the last minute. I suspect this is going to be picked over by politicians for months to come.
Can anybody shed any light on what changes to the North Kent Line service pattern could actually be sensibly implemented?
I think the claimed unfairness, regarding funding London’s roads, results from putting the cost of all roads with an “A” in their road number onto TfL. Although the same rule applies to other conurbations with an authority roughly equivalent to TfL, it works out unfairly because the “A” road network is denser in London than elsewhere, since the numbering system was devised as a London-centred spiderweb.
Toby: I think the conceptual framework of “thermocline of truth” does not pay much attention to any boundary between “inside” and “outside” a project. The phenomenon is that the truth does not get through far enough to people who are in a position to fix things – whether those people are “senior management (inside)”, or “sponsoring auhorities (outside)” is a secondary detail. The problems is still a very real one.
Appreciate this article. Interested observers have been asking questions for a year about construction. The tone suggests 9 to 12 months is a generous window yet with much to do additional issues may arise. I would ask for more transparency now in progress reporting.
@WW – The Bond Street surface construction of over-site development is a positive sign that the station work is sufficiently complete.
The Holborn area could have been served by a joint Tottenham Court Road station but platform interchanges would have been longer. Despite the Mid-Town marketing the catchment is lower than the built orientation to eastern Oxford Street serving Soho and additional relief for Oxford Circus.
In a Geofftech video Crossrail is quoted as stating that Oxford Circus had additional issues with availability of surface sites.
@WW: Parts of TfL only heard about 10 minutes before the pres release went out. And I’m not referring to the staff on the Woolwich ferry….
@ Malcolm – I don’t think it is anything to do with the density of A roads in London. It is rather more to do with the fact that London receives no funding from the DfT in respect of maintaining those roads. London has been hit twice – once by the removal of the revenue grant and secondly by the Government’s decision to exclude London from the process by which Vehicle Excess Duty is allocated to local authorities via the Transport Investment Strategy. £500m of VED is raised in London but will not be spent here. In effect the tube revenue surplus is being part used to fund road repairs which is a ridiculous situation.
It is also worth noting that from this year TfL does not receive any Investment Grant either. Instead it receives a share of Business Rates revenue with a demand from the DfT that this money is allocated to transport investment spend. The scale of increase in this grant year or year is extremely small and, naturally, will be affected if the total revenue take from business rates declines. We must hope the economy does not decline with more business failures as a result.
Below is a quote from the DfT website about the new measure.
The document includes a commitment to consult on a new ‘Major Road Network’. This would see a share of the annual National Road Fund, funded by Vehicle Excise Duty (VED), given to local authorities to improve or replace the most important A-roads under their management.
The unfairness re: roads is because TfL don’t receive a share of VED (road tax) or general taxation, so TfL’s roads are paid for by London residents only. Given most Londoners don’t own a car and many vehicles in London are coming from outside, this is somewhat perverse.
TfL themselves have framed it as tube fares being used to subsidise car commuters – although given the tube doesn’t make a net profit once you account for capital renewals, this argument doesn’t quite work.
(this compares with the national Strategic Road Network, which is funded by ring-fenced VED and national taxation)
Which is an interesting twist on the complaints from outside London about Londoners getting all the money at the expense of the rest of the country!
Presumably TfL will also suffer loss of advertising / sponsorship income. Is this significant? Wasn’t DG going to be a sponsor?
Re WW,
Agreed on the A road density comment.
The reality is even more interesting in that HMT didn’t realise the extent that VED bands and the emissions testing would be gamed by the car manufacturers (gaming issues don’t apply to medium or heavy vehicles or motorbikes as things are done differently) as they had relied on DfT numbers and analysis as an input…
This has lead to a circa £400m annual shortfall for the last 4-5 years in VED which needed to be plugged somehow!
[Similarly fuel duty and VAT effects caused by lower fuel consumption, the re-emergence of the fuel duty escalator is rumoured to be on the table]
PS…
HMT have very good idea what real fuel consumption is as they have mileage data and fuel sales data so know how unrealistic the manufacturer data is
Surely serious questions need to be asked about why TfL was allowed to bury the bad news about Crossrail in the Part 2 board papers for so long?
I was obviously wrong about the A-road density.
Of course there are complaints everywhere about London/the rest getting all the money at the expense of the rest/London. The divide (between London and the rest) is clearly deep and serious.
What is more interesting (to me at least) are objective facts which have a bearing on the issue; including those just presented.
What’s 15bn fot TfL? one month payroll for managements! if BIG Boss give 800k, smaller managers little less.. and here it’s 15bn per month… simple 🙂
Toby 6 September 2018 at 13:58
“Why is it grossly unfair for TfL to manage London’s roads?”
Maybe for a similar reason that its unfair for Highways England to manage so much more road in Kent than in South Yorkshire?
Re. Alan Grifiths: don’t mention the North / South divide, (but compare the main road to Scarborough with that to Margate).
@NGH. A bit tangential but… I agree that HMT know fuel duty collected (so the amount of fuel sold) but how do they know mileage data?
@ James – you could ask that question but you won’t get an answer you like. Much as I would love there to be vastly more transparency there are genuine reasons why you don’t discuss a whole pile of commercially sensitive stuff in public. Legislation allows TfL (and other bodies) to not disclose such information in recognition that it’s the right thing to do in the broadest public interest.
Having now managed to watch the full webcast from this morning’s Assembly meeting there were two things that struck me. One was a statement from the Mayor that the long established governance arrangements for Crossrail allowed Crossrail Limited a great deal of freedom to act without repeated recourse to its sponsors. Although he didn’t specifically criticise this there was a sense in his tone of voice and expression that “he wouldn’t have designed it like that”. That said there does appear to be a lot of regular meetings involving relevant people from Crossrail so it comes back to what exactly people were or were not told and what level of challenge was made to dig out the truth.
The second thing was that it has taken a number of months for the penny to finally drop that December wasn’t achieveable. There was more than a hint of “it’ll be alright on the night” syndrome affecting the project team – the CEO repeatedly said “you always try to get back on schedule and meet the deadline”. Well yes that’s fine – up to a point. I think once they lost 4 months of testing time due to the Pudding Mill Lane explosion that they were doomed. Thank goodness, though, that sanity did eventually prevail.
The bit I really struggle with is how they were not as aware as one might hope about the pace of station construction. Quite how it wasn’t clear that multiple sites were not ready when you can see this from the street in several places is beyond me. I don’t expect the Chairman or CEO to walk round the streets at weekends to take their own look but surely someone is responsible for ensuring the delays are known “up top”? Given other work packages related to fit out would also be delayed I’d expect all of that to be being flagged via project programmes too. All a bit odd – to me anyway.
Good article. By the way, when I want to see how projects can be properly cocked-up, I find a catch up on the latest happenings at Berlin Brandenburg airport quite informative. The ever efficient Germans have managed a world-leading Cluster-Fick there.
And to continue the diversion into the north south divide – look at Sussex vs Lancashire – similar population and area, but in Sussex there’s been virtually no improvements to the rail network since electrification in the 1930s (and it had its fair share of Beeching cuts), and many of the major trunk roads are still single carriageway.
Is there any information on the status of the installation of the Platform Edge Doors ?
Have they been able to achieve the required stopping accuracy to align with the PEDs using the planned approach speeds or has the testing not got that far yet ?
Repeatable stopping accuracy is quite a challenge as you need to do lots of tests to ensure the ‘failure’ rate is low enough for a high frequency railway.
@RogerB
The A299 to Thanet is (and always has been) a Kent CC funded road. Central Goverment may have chipped in for the initial Thanet Way as a poor-relief scheme in the 1930s, and EU money was used to upgrade it in the early 90s (TERN money due to the Port at Ramsgate and as Thanet had Regional Development money). The A64 to Scarborough remains a trunk road.
Also, Kent CC likes/liked to spend money on roads. North Yorkshire less so. And Highways England and its predecessors aren’t overly keen on having stuff like the A21 to Hastings (the a better southern/Kentish route to compare with) and A64 to Scarborough, preferring to focus on a bare-bones core network (and trying to dump the rest off to local government, perhaps with a bypass as a sweetener before handing over).
The MRN is a way of undoing the over-focus on the Strategic Road Network (and mostly just a core of that) – providing an additional way of funding the masses of ex-trunk roads, and other important roads, in the hands of county councils that have no hope of adequately funding them beyond the grants given to local government by Westminster for that purpose. TfL/GLA has much stronger powers to raise money than anything else in England, though I still agree that it is highly unfair that their roads (which are just the Red Routes – the rest are borough-maintained, backed by the same grants as elsewhere) that fit the description are excluded from the MRN.
Re Islanddweller,
MOT odometer data from DVSA for everything over 3 years and lots more interesting data for the commercial operators from the DVSA. Once you strip out the commercial data the rests get very interesting with out too much work. The real vs test cycle difference has been increasing over time.
‘Nameless’ – You missed my point; the, um, extended date was fully authorised by the Inland Revenue, Customs & Excise, and the banking authorities. (The purchasers, btw, were Abbey National.)
From reading many comments, I get the view that the question is actually “What level of sponsor micromanaging is the correct level of micromanaging?”
AlisonW: An astute point. But the word “micromanaging” is a loaded term, normally suggesting excessive interest in small details. One year’s delay in opening is perhaps difficult to construe as a “small detail”.
@Si
In fact the position for London is worse than that. Immediately prior to the creation of TfL, all highway authorities in England, including the London boroughs, received a special grant (Transport Supplementary Grant, or TSG) for capital works on their roads. The boroughs lost this on the creation of TfL on the basis that it was all going to be rolled up into the grant given to TfL and that TfL would, in turn grant fund capital projects on borough roads. This became LIP (Local Improvement Plan) funding. The ending of the DfT grant to TfL mean that there would be no DfT money given for roads in London, apart from the very small stubs of Highways England roads (M1, M4, M40), even though there was still DfT funding for roads in every other highways authority in England. Thus the only funding for all capital road schemes in London (including cycleways) consists of:
– council tax income
– fare payer income
– congestion charge income
– parking account surpluses
– s.106 income
Plus the hope from DfT that some of the retained business rates will add to this.
VED, nominally to cover the costs of all roads in UK, has now become restricted to trunk roads and the yet to be defined major road network – not the same as ‘A’ roads and likely to be much smaller.
Thanks for the article; been waiting for something to elucidate the details of why the Lizzy line was delayed, though I couldn’t say I was surprised when the news was made public.
I am absolutely intrigued by the mention of penalty clauses via the Canary Wharf element coming into play – I was not aware of the earlier situation with the JLE but a lot of things make sense to me now that’s been highlighted. I can easily get on board with that argument (having been a denizen of the area for a few years), knowing how draconian the area can be about planning and control of ‘public’ space.
It sounds like the nearly-year delay will give them a bit of breathing space which is well deserved – let’s just hope no more electrical substations blow up in the meantime.
@AlisonW. Rather than describing things as micromanaging by the sponsor, I think we need to describe it as having an informed sponsor.
In any form of “outsourcing” (tfl and dft have outsourced the building of a rail system) the sponsor(s) need to retain / obtain sufficient technical expertise (and an element of grey hair* and cynicism) to enable them to ask the right questions. Such as “are you really confident you’re on time and on budget when every specialist forum is awash with rumours that stations X, Y and Z” are no where near ready.
*Grey hair? I was hired for one for role because the programme manager told me he needed to add some grey hair to the team. His HR colleague (sitting in on the interview) drained of all colour at the remark – I quickly reassured her I wasn’t going to raise an age discrimination issue! A bit ironic though as I don’t have much hair left, grey or otherwise.
@NGH. Thanks for explanation on mileage data. But doesn’t it mean the Treasury view is always skewed because it has no visibility on new vehicles – those not yet into the MOT process.
Newer vehicles are getting cleaner and more efficient (though I completely agree, not to the extent manufacturers claim – because of the way they game the official tests)
Re IslandDweller,
Precisely. There is hefty time lag on good data hence the need for good guidance from DfT, assuming they talked to the right bit of DfT…
The full effects of VW and diesel gate is only beginning to hit the data in 2018. So there will be more changes to come in future years again.
The financing discussion is informative. With recent CVAs like Homebase and House of Fraser reducing lease rents will Business Rates be reduced.
It’s a bit of a shame TfL aren’t courageous enough to just close the roads they can’t afford to maintain.
It would certainly prompt some urgent discussions.
The Lancs/Sussex comparison is interesting. I assume the comparison is onLancashire’s post-1974 boundaries, otherwise the population s would not be comparable.
Since 1933 the only changes of electrification in Sussex were the addition of short stretches of the Portsmouth direct line and the East Grinstead line, and the closure of the Haywards Heath – Horsted Keynes and Newhaven Marine branches. Lancashire lost the entire Lancaster Heysham line in 1966, leaving it with just the top end of the Ormskirk line until the electrification of the West Coast Main Line in 1974. The recent Electrification of the Manchester – Preston – Blackpool route is the only other addition – everything else is still diesel.
But the stark difference is in the motorway network – Sussex only has the bottom end of the M23, which ends at Pease Pottage, well short of Brighton. Lancashire’s motorway network is probably the most extensive of any non-metroplitan county.
@Bob – that discussion has been around informally within DfT for years – even the most ardent highway engineers being shocked at the cost of maintaining very lightly used country roads. I think the current struggles faced by all highway authorities will make that debate very public. Here in “rich” Surrey, for example, with about 1500 km of county roads, the current budget enables them to renew rather less than 5km/year, and resurface about 10-15km/year. And that includes the sums available to repair potholes. It’s very clear that all highway authorities are running down their asset base at an alarming rate and without major injections of funding, many minor roads will become impassible in ordinary cars, depending on how many harsh winters supervene. Already many A roads here – tho’ Hampshire is worse – have substantial fissures and the minor roads are reduced to single carriageways as the verge potholes merge.
On the other hand, for obvious reasons, the political lesson learnt from the railways is never have a closure programme. Gentle decline is so much easier to manage politically, palliated by small cash gestures…
An interesting article but clearly some time is needed for the facts to emerge. However, I do feel the financial implications are a little underdone. I think only ML above has explored the costs.
Surely there are staff recruited, trained and on the payroll now not needed. Sure they will be “redeployed” but there is still an unnecessary payroll and a retrain cost.
Has the stock been sold and leased back yet? If so then I suspect lease payments will still accrue.
The other point is there is a cost of capital £15bn @ say 5% for one year is some £750m. That continues to run and is perhaps the difference between a Spurs private sector scenario and a TFL public sector one where pushing the income to the right is seen as cost free. It isn’t but the public sector are masters and camouflaging the costs of delay.
If done as a PFI job this would have been obvious. Equally the headline price might have been higher to reflect the risk premium.
@AW
Any such special treatment being cleared by what is now HMRC would be extremely unlikely today, especially for companies that are of medium size and smaller.
Firstly, there is no facility to obtain approval in advance. Secondly if picked up when the appropriate returns have been submitted, any specific underpayments of tax would be penalised heavily. Finally, any professional accountants involved would be required to shop their clients.
The tax overpaid in a particular return period is ignored when calculating the corresponding underpayment penalty in an adjacent period.
Small point made again about Oxford Circus non-interchange. For clarity, the problem is not Oxford Circus station. That could be as big as necessary. Even towards the end of the last century, the people then in charge of Crossrail made it clear that you could not have interchange because it would swamp the Victoria line trains leading to overcrowding on the platforms as people could not board the trains. Basically a 1500 people train trying to partially empty out into a nearly full 600 people train. The problem would have been especially bad on the Victoria line southbound platform.
I personally think the critical bit about the stations is that Paddington station wasn’t ready. If Paddington was ready and the trains were capable of running you could run a service which would save face and provide some usefulness. You could then open other stations when they became ready.
Even exactly three years in advance of its due opening date it seemed to be a significant challenge to finish Paddington on time. See Boxing clever. With more serendipity than genuine foresight, the last paragraph is headed ‘So much to do, so little time to do it in’.
The other thing that makes me feel gobsmacked is quite why TfL ever thought they could get some income by offering companies the ‘opportunity’ to be a launch partner. Despite whatever optimism there was, there must have been the awareness that the planned opening date might not happen even if things were going well then. The transformer explosion should have led to TfL canning the idea straightaway but incredibly they persisted with it. I am presuming no firm was stupid enough to take them up on the offer.
Finally, Terry Morgan’s comment at the London Assembly were absolutely reminiscent of GTR and Thameslink. Basically ‘we have overcome tremendous problems before so we believed that we could overcome this one’. When will they learn that past performance is no guarantee of future results?
@NGH
This is complicated by the NEDC emissions and consumption test having just been replaced with new tests that are much harder to get round (i.e. give realistic results).
If the DfT had looked into the history of vehicle taxation, they would have been aware that vehicle manufacturers have always altered their designs and marketing to get round the test.
This is why British cars used to have engines with long stroke and small cylinder bore.
In later years, when company car taxation depended on certain bands of engine cc, the models were changed so they could be marketed in a given band.
The NEDC test cycle was so specific that a car’s engine management system could be designed so as to perform differently just for the test.
Nameless,
As timbeau pointed out when this was last discussed, it is also why the 2CV (2 chevaux = 2 horsepower -literally two horses) engine was actually 7CV. The figure referred to taxable horsepower which was related to piston length.
Re Nameless,
Actually I’d argue that that WLTP (NEDC’s successor) simplifies not complicates things for both HMT and interestingly TfL.
WLTP is compulsory for on going models from 1st September but HMT effectively mandated it from 6/4/2018 with the new vehicle VED changes (inc the Tesla tax element)
TfL will be very happy because the Uber drivers’ favourite Prius has gone from unter to uber the LEZ/congestion charging threshold @75gCO2e from last April for new vehicles. TfL’s proposal can then easily close lots of other the loop holes and make it lots more expensive for Uber drivers thus using market forces to control Uber.
Older Prius could be quite valuable for a short while.
Re PoP,
Oxford Circus – that was exactly what I meant about not being able to cope with interchanging passenger volumes. The simplest solution is to make people go up to street level…
Will TfL really be able to hit the “pause” button on Elizabeth line operating costs? Would a lot of costs not be from personnel, and would these personnel not already have been largely recruited?
Also, if the impact of the fare freeze is dwarfed by the subsidy cut as stated, by how much? It’s rare for LR to include some figures (Central Gov subsidy removal) but not others (fare freeze).
@STUNT_PANTS
Part of the issue is that the impact of the fares freeze (specifically the share of the PAYG revenue that goes to TfL) is commercially confidential, so it’s not possible to estimate reliably
@PoP
Re Victoria line and not enough capacity for interchange, why doesn’t the same issue apply at TCR (or Moorgate) and changing to the Northern line?
Herned,
Because at Tottenham Court Road passenger are changing from one piddly little train to another piddly little train of roughly the same capacity and running at roughly the same frequency. Furthermore the passenger flows provide a rough sort of equilibrium. The critical factors are the trains are roughly the same size and have roughly the same number boarding and alighting at the station on both lines.
Compare that to a hypothetical Oxford Circus. Crossrail train arrives with 1500 passengers or is even crush-loaded with 2000 passengers. Suppose 100 want to go to Victoria.100 out of a train of 1500 people isn’t that big a deal. But Victoria line trains hold less than 900 people so 100 extra is more of a deal there Those 100 people get to the Victoria line southbound platform and a train comes in. Few people are getting off and lots of people get on at Oxford Circus. Add to that the 100 from Crossrail and there isn’t room. So some remain on the platform and so until the next Crossrail train comes in (possibly from a different direction). So the platform is starting to accumulate people. But now you can’t apply the usual remedy which is to shut the station at street level because more people want to change from Crossrail and get on the Victoria line than there is space available so you will still have a build up at the platforms. So you have to non-stop Crossrail trains at Bond St to avoid overcrowding.
@Quinlet – I hadn’t realised that London Boroughs had their grants for maintaining roads sent via TfL.
VED, however, has never been ringfenced for use on roads (A or otherwise*) but put into the general pot, with an unlinked amount taken out of the same pot for DfT grants for roads. The recent change is to deal with the idea that ‘motorists more than pay their way’ that has made political headway, and the neglect of major roads – especially those handed back to the councils in the detrunking binge (though the MRN extends beyond those and more resembles primary routes) – due to the low-level of the grants (as Graham H has pointed out with the example of Surrey).
*though, for many years (until ’74) A roads got a higher amount of grant than B roads – one of the reasons why London’s A road network is dense (denser than on classification, with the B road network being less dense and mostly on other roads) – ditto elsewhere to (normally) a lesser extent.
PS: The M40 doesn’t enter TfL’s domain (the M11 and M25 join the M1 and M4 as trunk roads left within the borders)
@Pedantic of Purley I think Herned was referring to the Crossrail/Northern interchange at TCR, not the Central/Northern one. I guess if there are expected to be lots of people changing *from* the northern line to Crossrail at TCR that does explain it, but I don’t understand your argument about the trains being the same capacity.
Oxford Circus: I am sure the main aim of avoiding this station on Crossrail is to attract passengers away from it, and reduce the crush at that point. Bond Street and TCR will be much better for a shopping trip, for example: In at TCR – stroll up Oxford Street and visit a few stores – and out again at Bond Street, or maybe Marble Arch if you fancy Selfridges. Naturally this will appeal more to Central Line people than other passengers, but we are a hefty percentage of Oxford Circus traffic, I imagine.
@James
I did some digging and found the estimated cost of the fare freeze in the end. It’s forecast to be a total of £640m over 4 years (various factors could shift this up or down a bit). If we annualise this to £160m per year, compared to £700m per year subsidy cut from central Gov , it is indeed dwarfed.
Source: https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/first-savings-found-to-fund-mayors-fares-freeze
@ PoP
I meant from Crossrail to the Northern line. The Northern line trains are less frequent, and smaller, and not much less full
Herned,
Sorry. My misunderstanding. I can only give the completely unsatisfactory answer that forecasts of future passenger flows suggests that this wouldn’t be a problem in the cases you mention. The West End section of the Northern line isn’t generally actually that crowded (as backed up by TfL figures) though I would be the first to concede that, sometimes when you are on it, it doesn’t seem that way.
I would like to add that they could always buy more trains for the Northern line if that turns out to be an issue but perhaps not.
Re PoP,
Or may be they thought they would be buying more trains for the Northern line so it wouldn’t be a problem 😉 assumptions like that can easily go wrong later.
For passengers coming from the west in terms of journey times walking from TCR might be quicker than taking the Northern line and if heading to Waterloo area the changing to the Jubilee at Bond Street will be quicker, the assumption is that MML Thameslink passengers for Canary Wharf will interchange to Crossrail at Farringdon instead of Jubilee at West Hampstead creating more space on the Jubilee.
Most of the modelled journey changes are probably best explained with diagrams due to the quantity and subtly of data involved.
@PoP, doesn’t Herned mean the Crossrail interchange with Northern line at those stations?
@Quinlet – Hounslow is the exception amongst the London Boroughs when it comes to how maintenance is funded . Hounslow Highways is a Private Finance Initiative and they do get money from the DfT. Hounslow therefore don’t get funding from TfL for maintenance but still get money from TfL for Local Implementation Plan projects.
Oxford Circus as a station is horribly cramped. The entrances are regularly closed during the evening rush hour to avoid overcrowding, the exits are similarly cramped, while down below the passageways are also small and twisty. From memory, neither Tottenham Court Road nor Bond Street stations before Crossrail reconstruction were closed so frequently, especially as Bond Street was rebuilt for the Jubilee Line
To rebuild it to cope with Crossrail would be massively complicated and expensive, especially as Regents Street is far more upmarket and architecturally sensitive than Charing Cross Road so they wouldn’t be able to demolish a massive space like they did at the top of the latter.
Mikey C,
All true, sort of. TfL have long term plans for Oxford Circus tube station but in the current financial climate that could be decades away.
Actually I don’t think it is hard. You take over a failing department store (compulsory purchase if necessary). There will probably be a few to choose from. You knock it down. You build an extension to the tube station and you rebuild the department store. Alternatively, you do what was done in the 1960s and take over Cavendish Square.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t solve the issue of Crossrail being able to discharge more people onto the Victoria southbound platform than the trains can absorb.
@ Stunt Pants – There is no doubt the loss of revenue grant for TfL is a significant issue. Worse it is very likely to remain permanent given the Treasury have been aiming for this to happen for decades. They will oppose any attempt to restore such a subsidy. I am somewhat sceptical about the cost of the fares freeze actually being £640m. TfL is having to absorb the impact of inflation year on year and not all TfL costs inflate by CPI or even RPI. Some specific sectors will face far higher cost inflation. We have had no update from TfL about the actual cost to date of the fares freeze nor of the Hopper fare.
There is also the unstated cost of the fares freeze which is all the projects that have been abandoned, initiatives that have been halted, jobs that have been lost and expertise that left the organisation. There are also the lost benefits that would have accrued from these things. These are not traditional views of costs but it is evident to me that TfL is not the organisation it once was – it is making mistakes, its projects are overrunning, its strategies are unravelling in some areas. It’s never been perfect but a lot of this stuff was avoided because there was better management and far better stakeholder engagement. It’s all rather sad.
Your use of the term ” To boldly go ..” is very apt as when I heard this news I thought of Scottie in Star Trek with his ” aye captain it will take 4 days ” only to tell Captain Kirk he managed to complete the job in two days ….. So Autumn might become Summer?
I irony of this announcement was it came on the eve of the opening of the first stage of the Victoria Line between Walthamstow and Highbury and Islington. But perhaps the Victoria Line which opened in thre stages to Victoria could provide a solution for the central section of Crossrail?
Stage 1 would be Abbey Wood to Canary Wharf Station operating as a self contained Line allowing trains and drivers to gain experience and start bringing in revenue !
Then just like the Victoria Line services would be extended west depending on turning locations and if a station is incomplete it would be missed out initially….
This delay also has other consequences given that step free access from Bakerloo Line at Paddington is dependent on using Crossrail lifts via Eastbourne Terrace so will this be delayed a year or partial opening on Eastbourne Terrace occur ?
It seems Mayor Khan was only told of this two days earlier which suggests a representative of Mayor has to be appointed to Crossrail to ensure no further surprises occur .
The real question is what affect this will have on adding existing services with December 2020 for full service?
One benefit will hopefully be passengers will not need to negotiate Building sites when services begin?
Regarding Crossrail and Oxford Circus, wasn’t it pointed out a few years ago that TfL modelling had found that the streets wouldn’t be able to cope with the extra flows, never mind interchanging with the existing lines.
Isn’t the main purpose of the Dean St and Hanover Square entrances to soak up people wanting to go to/from Crossrail and the wider area.
I meant to say ” eve of the 50 th anniversary of opening of first stage of Victoria Line …”
Melvyn,
That assumes the Woolwich isn’t a big issue as regards opening Abbey Wood – Canary Wharf.
The problem with opening in phases is that it potentially delays completion elsewhere (especially as PEDs are outstanding in terms of sign off) and potentially slows down the training of drivers recruited later.
Not yet open intermediate stations would be needed for evacuation purposes.
The Bakerloo – Paddington works are one of the reason for the delay.
This may be pure Hornbyism, but is there any way the temporary surplus of class 345s with nothing to do could alleviate the impending shortage of trains on the Goblin? (Both lines under TfL control)
Both are the same basic Aventra design. Are they similar enough that drivers trained on one could easily convert to the other? Do the 345s have cameras to allow single manning? (the reason, I understand,, why 315s are out of the question). They are already running as short formed (7 cars instead of nine). Could more cars be taken out? Or some cars closed off?
@WW re actual cost of Hopper
Likely to be neutral at the fare box – I get that some essential commutes are reduced but the attraction of a bus journey that matters a little less are massively increased for discretionary ‘hops’.
The savings are from the flexibility of reorganising and shortening routes without huge public dissent.
IslandDweller
6 September 2018 at 23:08
At a meeting yesterday, someone (not me) quipped that HR meant Human Remains. Not sure what all my Trade Union friends will think of that
Re: Timbeau – “This may be pure Hornbyism…”
Yes. It is. For too many reasons for my tired brain to itemise.
One of the problems of operating only Abbey Wood-Canary Wharf early is that your operating a service remotely from any “serious” rolling stock maintenance facility and also (I presume) train crew bases.
Plus you need to operate a service on this section whilst dynamically testing the rest of the central section…which might not be possible.
Pedantic of Purley
7 September 2018 at 08:34
“When will they learn that past performance is no guarantee of future results?”
After Philosophy lectures from Jose Mourinho? or Eric Cantona?
@Timbeau
“Do the 345s have cameras to allow single manning? (the reason, I understand,, why 315s are out of the question).”
No. The 345s rely on platform mounted cameras instead of body-side mounted ones. This is dictated by the use of PEDs in the core as platform mounted cameras will provide a much clearer view of the PTI*.
[*That’s the Platform Train Interface for anyone who doesn’t know]
Re Timbeau,
One of the issues with the new 710 software is the body mounted DOO cameras as they didn’t have to worry about that on the 345s.
The focus with the 345s has been getting the 9car software polished rather than worrying about 7 car or other variants that may be dreamt up.
NGH….I recall there were problems with the DOO camera system on the class 378….eventually fixed. I am wondering if the principle of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” has been forgotten.
V
I suppose that they might have chosen a different CCTV system supplier. I have a,view that there are a number of smallish sub suppliers of electronic systems. They compete hard to get the contract. By the time they have burned their fingers trying to satisfy a demanding train manufacturer they have either gone bust or, next time, tender a realistic but uncompetitive price.
@Timbeau
The biggest issue is surely the length of the platforms, including the bay at Gospel Oak. The trains are far too long for every platform, and they don’t (afaik) have any selective door opening. And that ignores all the staff and contractual issues etc
Re Herned,
345s do have SDO for example they will not open centre doors at (concave) curved Paddington platfoms with large gaps. Also SDO is needed for Hanwell etc if they are extended to 11car.
Re 130,
The 710 camera system is 2 generations on from the 378 one (and the first of new generation). The importance to remove as much room for ASLEF complaint as possible after the Southern dispute and aftermath was recognised.
Newer cameras also allow much more room for using software to reduce direct sunlight effects compare to older systems.
@ Melvyn – there have been TfL and DfT nominees on the Crossrail Board for many years. The number of TfL nominees was increased to 3 in June this year. One of those nominees is Mark Wild, Managing Director of London Underground. Given this longstanding sponsor membership of the Crossrail board one wonders quite what was being reported back to the organisations they represent.
@ Aleks – You may be of the view that the Hopper ticket is somehow “revenue neutral” but TfL certainly are not. They have repeatedly stated the net cost at around £30m per annum for the initial scope of the Hopper ticket. This was increased marginally when the number of free journeys per hour was increased (I think by £5m but I haven’t double checked). So, over 4 years the Hopper ticket was forecast to cost a max £140m net in its full form. That is a lot of money when you’re strapped for cash. Worse TfL’s estimates of the use of the Hopper ticket have been woefully low with vastly more “hops” happening than was forecast. Of course this higher volume is always lauded politically as a success but no one has published an updated cost implication.
The other aspect that remains unclear is how much revenue generation is taking place given bus patronage has kept declining year on year since the Hopper was introduced. Clearly not all generation would be from new users so some may have occurred with existing bus users making more trips *but* a continued fall in patronage is clearly a concern for TfL given recent comments in official reports.
Here is the official text from the Mayoral Direction (MD2018) in September 2016 on the financial implications.
5.1 TfL reports that there are no direct financial implications for the GLA from these proposals and TfL will manage the income from fares. The Mayor’s aggregate level of funding to TfL, principally from business rates, is potentially affected by the level of fares set.
5.2 The financial implication of allowing a free bus and tram pay as you go transfer within an hour will result in a fares revenue loss of around £30m per year. Additional travel resulting from the Hopper should limit the loss in revenue (£43m revenue forecast to be lost through paid journeys becoming free, whilst scheme is anticipated to generate £13m worth of ‘new’ fares revenue, net £30m). TfL will incorporate the impact of these costs in their new business plan, which will be published later this year.
You will note zero reference to facilitating cut backs to the bus network and no financial claims made in respect of such. Now I recognise the above was made at a point in time and things change but we have not seen a Mayoral Direction which formally instructs TfL to utilise the Hopper ticket to secure bus network efficiencies to a given value.
Thanks – WW
Only 13m from induced journeys sounds woeful, but I still hear people say they did not know they could hop. Oyster may be shielding the impact from users and plain inertia preventing travellers exploring new routes.
Yoofs and wrinklies travel free anyway and many workers have paid travelcards. Maybe the market opportunity is not that great, visitors can be intimidated by London bus maps.
Is the description consistent – “£43m revenue forecast to be lost through paid journeys becoming free” – would be using journey logs from recorded accounts.
vastly more “hops” happening than was forecast: is this not additional as I can’t see that as a revenue loss. Situations like a route taking you closest to your destination but then adding another bus for a stop or two that was previously walked.
Otherwise existing travellers trying a detour on the return for a shop / library.
The hop hope was that additional paying users would attempt completely new journeys. Why is that not the attribution for more hops?
Within the overall decline I can see how the initiative’s effect can be lost but TfL is good at analytics. Eventually they should distil separate factors.
Additionally the day cap for bus is only an additional 75p for a second leg on a return journey.
Something does not add up to attributing a large revenue loss to Hopper.
NGH…thanks for the update. I’d be interested in an article about DOO systems with the software method of managing glare. The ambition is great but if the system doesn’t work, then perhaps it would have been sensible not to leap 2 generations?
I know railway companies seek “cutting edge solutions with a 20 year reliability track record” , but the situation with the class 710 is frankly embarrassing and will have knock on effects for the much larger Aventra deliveries to come.
@ 130
Using software to reduce glare in images should be an off-the-shelf solution though, it’s effectively a custom filter similar to those used on even the most basic smartphone. And there is plenty of rugged hardware used elsewhere which should be directly transferable. So shouldn’t be a problem, as long as they aren’t trying to reinvent this stuff of course!
@ Herned – I am guessing here but I suspect that filter technology is not deployed on safety critical systems that govern one of the highest risk areas on a railway system – the platform / train interface. It is a notoriously complex and difficult risk to manage properly. No one will want to put their signature to a new system until they are completely sure it works in all forseeable circumstances. Ironically we are at a time of year where the risk of glare and shadows on platforms and cameras / monitors changes daily given the day length and thus sun position changes rapidly. A slight shame therefore that the 710s can’t even be tested on the mainline or stop at stations with a range of platform orientations. Nothing quite like a real world test.
@WW: Lewisham… Time: Any day now….
@herned
I work for a video analytics and processing company. We supply to railways.
Our software is very inexpensive provided the buyer is willing to assume all the costs of testing and all of the risk.
You can safely assume that this has never happened.
@Bob – funny, that….
On Thameslink being on the tube map, I’ve heard the TfL revenue worry oft repeated.
As a regular user, I’d say there’s a simpler explaination. It’d be madness to funnel Northern Line passengers to Thameslink when there are often gaps of more than 10 mins in the service…. it’s just not tube frequency.
@Mike
The overground has trains every 15 mins and that appears on the map. The central core of Thameslink will eventually have a metro like service pattern too.
But the central core of Thameslink is 3 stops, after that in branches out. Unlike Crossrail and the Overground, which really are metro services, Thameslink doesn’t look like one to me. Including it would be a bit like including Manchester Piccadilly-Deansgate on the Metrolink map
@Christian Schmidt: Strangely back when Thameslink sported a nice Blue and Yellow livery, they did appear on the tube map. From Elephant & Castle and London Bridge all the way up to Kings Cross-St. Pancras… I believe frequencies were lower then….
I don’t see the harm in showing Thameslink from Finsbury Park and West Hampstead down to London Bridge and Elephant, personally. With arrows – as Crossrail will no doubt show, for more ‘inner-focused’ maps. Frequencies match certain tube branches. And the Farringdon interchange will regionally be very important, especially for the various airports.
A phased shuttle would be nice, but agreed that it may impinge on testing, driver training and so forth. Downside of a less ‘manual’ railway!
To somebody’s question about the NKL, I’m not actually aware of any planned timetable changes related to Crossrail and Abbey Wood, specifically. I think the hope is for churn at Abbey Wood, and empty trains leaving there towards Plumstead.
Frequencies are still down along the Greenwich line after all the changes, and the ludicrous Rainham service has not been clubbed yet, although it has been muzzled at 1tph. All of the franchises are in flux (to put it kindly) – as are the railways overall, so I can’t envisage any improvements that we don’t already know about. Indeed, it’s about delivering missed deadlines and broken promises at this stage, rather than any new goodies.
On the topic of Oxford Circus and ped-flo , it’s fair to say that at peak times there are parts of central London’s pavement network that are saturated and simply cannot work efficiently.
We often focus on traffic and the fact our roads have not changed in 100s of years, but what of the humble pavement?
Have you tried walking around Oxford St/Bank/Cannon St/London Bridge in rush hour?
It’s… interesting.
@C 15:07
Thameslink are definitely running 2tph on the North Kent Line.
@peewee. By two trains per hour through Greenwich, I presume you mean one in each direction.
They’re not running the 2 trains each way that they should be. This leaves Greenwich with 5 trains per hour – mostly 10 minute interval but one 20 minutes gap where the other Thameslink service should be – but isn’t.
The coast soars!
http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2018/09/10/crossrail-still-flooding-the-job-with-me-workers/
Crossrail is still desperately trying to draft scores of M&E workers onto the job despite insisting that delays on the project are mainly down to extra time needed for train and signal tests.
The Enquirer understands that an army of workers is still needed to complete the project which is being “flooded” with operatives.
Internet jobs boards are full of vacancies for M&E workers on the project.
A source said: “That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
“Most recruitment is word of mouth and referrals and they are absolutely flooding that job with anyone they can get.
“I can only imagine what the cost will be but they are offering top dollar.
“The final bill is going to be massive and I doubt anyone really knows the numbers.”
@Christian Schmidt – your comment is very much to the point -TLK was never intended to provide a metro service within London, merely overlapping end distribution of outer suburban services.
@IslandDweller
No for the most part we’re getting 6tph through Deptford in both directions during the day (that’s 4tph Southeastern and 2tph Thameslink).
Admittedly there is sometimes an “empty slot” but generally it’s a Thameslink train every half hour.
All the M&E (and other) contracts were let long ago to the various principal contractors, at agreed prices. It is up to them to staff up adequately to maintain the schedule that was also agreed. The work content has not changed and thus the price that Crossrail pays.
I think many find it beggars belief that remaining work reported one day as going to be complete in 4 months was then suddenly revised to 13 months. That’s more than 3 times as long. Crossrail has had some extremely sophisticated project management tools recording each element of the work. For all that we seem to have had an Emperor Has No Clothes situation here, the project management recording of where they were against the project programme must have been showing the Lack Of Clothes for a long time to somebody. This really is Project Management 1.01 stuff.
@Supermacinroe: But in terms of the politicians, there are no pedestrians, only faceless shop dummies. These are being compared to metal boxes (probably about the size and shape of a late ‘70’s Ford Cortina, in orange), driven by voting, faceless shop dummies.
The difference being that the latter group has a lobbying group behind it that only sees the city centre on a Saturday…
There is a psychological disconnect. Pedestrians: an obstruction. Car drivers as pedestrians: Voters!
Re Mr Beckton,
That assumes the “work” has been designed and done correctly, if not you can find out very late on that what the computer says isn’t true!
Re SH(LR) and Supermacinroe,
May be the West end you learn from the City and do a better job of de-cluttering the pavements (e.g. building mounted steet lights on many of the City’s busier streets.)
The later part of the construction enquirer article actually confirms what we’ve been saying on LR for a while:
@Mr Beckton – Project Plans are never that static or precise. At the beginning of the project, you will have lots of known unknowns (how long tunnel excavation will take) for which you make estimates, and lots of unknown unknowns (transformer explosion) for which you put in slack. The early plans probably had a year or so of slack on the end. As the project progresses, you refine the estimates based on ongoing experience, so the actual end date may not be known with any real certainty until nearer the end of the project.
The project will also have scope changes. Some of these will be large (eg. extension to Reading), but there will be thousands of minor changes (eg. use this alternative finish, because the planned one doesn’t work). All these changes have to put into the plan and modeled to see what impact they will have, which will then mean lots of rearranging of the plan to reduce the impact. Full updates of the plan will done on a periodic basis, probably quarterly, so whilst individual sub-project managers may know their bits are late, the overall plan may take a while to reflect that.
So whilst it may have been obvious that the plan was running late, it may have actually taken a while to work out how late.
@Jimbo: Donald Rumsfeld has a lot to answer for!
@NGH: Surely when trains are running downunder, work can continue in areas such as ticket halls?
@Peewee
Real Time Trains disagrees. Most of the off peak TL service to and from Rainham is only once an hour.
Jimbo,
Small point but the extension to Reading was a very minor scope change indeed. All I can think of is updating the website and the station and train passenger information displays. Network Rail continued to be responsible for the upgrade west of Maidenhead and Twyford station will still be managed by GWR. If there was a scope change then it was removing the need for a terminating platform from the west at Slough as Reading – Slough shuttles were no longer needed.
They had to order an extra train (initially, then four more when T5 and extra services were to be taken over) but that was entirely down to TfL.
@ SHLR
What I found puzzling about the whole stuff and infamy of that comment is that it is perfectly sensible and rational, especially in the context of 9/11 just happening. It’s existed as a philosophical concept for a long time. Perhaps too complicated for the journalists reporting it though!
Re: Herned – agreed: it was and remains an eminently sensible statement. But for many, it seems, it must be stupid by political association.
Personally I am not a fan of Rumsfeld and co, but I don’t consider that therefore anything they say must be illogical.
@PoP – Okay fair enough, but I bet there was a fair bit of project management work to see what the impact was, even if it was minimal.
My point is that project plans are very dynamic, particularly on a project of this size. It was obvious months ago that things were slipping, but you spend several months trying to rework the plan to see if it can be contained and also seeing if the production teams can catch up. Eventually, it becomes obvious that the slippage cannot be contained and you then have to work out a new date, trying to guess how much more slippage there will be.
ALEKS (9th Sept):”… visitors can be intimidated by London bus maps.”
Maybe, assuming they can find any.
@SHLR: in terms of the politicians, there are no pedestrians, only faceless shop dummies
If only there was a London politician who had come up with a plan to create more space for pedestrians on Oxford Street in time for Crossrail to open…
@ngh:
The interesting thing about the quote from Construction Enquirer about the impact of train testing on stations works is that the train testing started four months late. If the testing had been to schedule, then the station works would have been hampered for longer – it sounds like the transformer explosion was a blessing in disguise for the station contractors who seem to be running very late.
It seem the “rumours I have heard” have made it to News Corporation.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/7235199/crossrail-abandon-delayed-project-tottenham/.
The construction team [“an army of 3,800 workers”] is now thought to be costing more in wages than the entire Tottenham squad…
@Briantist: Not sure how you quite managed to mangle that URL, but it don’t work!
@Ian J: If only….
@SHLR
I think it might be WordPress’s comment system, rather than me, but here’s the URL again.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/7235199/
I’d be interested to read a future article explaining the issues of the 3 different types of signalling. (n.b. I had to lookup CBTC!) 🙂
IG…this might start you off: https://www.railengineer.uk/2016/01/08/signalling-crossrail/
Briantist,
For the record, the Chief Executive of Crossrail, Simon Wright, denied this was the case at a meeting of the Assembly Transport Committee and stated that the contracts were due to come to an end anyway.
Video of meeting is at https://www.london.gov.uk/london-assembly-transport-committee-2018-09-12. Broadcast (narrowcast?) of the beginning starts around 18 minutes in with the comment made later.
Regarding the North Kent Line: here is a link to the Train Service Requirement provided to bidders as part of the South Eastern franchise bid. See Table SB for North Kent Line:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/662871/sef-itt-attachment-a-train-service-specification.pdf
I wonder what knock-on effect this will have on (a) getting the Class 345s to run to Heathrow and (b) replacing the 332s with 387s on the Heathrow Express? I believe there was some considerable dependency between the two?
@Straphan
Why would the North Kent line have any effect on the Crossrail services operated by class 345s? The two are completely isolated from each other at the only point they meet (Abbey Wood) and even use different electrification systems.
According to the TfL “Track closures six month look ahead”, sections of TfL will be closed most weekends.
However, between 29 December 2018 and 1 January 2019, and on Sunday 17 February 2019, these are shown as Elizabeth line closures.
@ Straphan
Not sure what the connection is? The 387s already exist and are in service with GWR
Is that the right link? It goes to the timetable requirement for 2022 and doesn’t mention type of trains
Excellent piece well done. Still got a couple of questions.
Given Shenfield branch is already tested and running, wouldn’t it be quicker to use the new tunnel section with this line rather than the Woolwich branch?
Does the extra year allow time for the obvious missing link between Crossrail and HS1 into Stratford Underground Station to be built (stand on platform 10 at stratford and HS1 station at stratford international is clearly visible just across Monfitchet Road, a few yards only). Given MSG are building what locals are calling the snowglobe on the linked site, TfL could get this for free if they ask nicely.
Sorry, should have clarified:
I posted the link to the future NKL timetable requirements for whoever wanted to see them.
A COMPLETELY SEPARATE issue is that – with the delay to Crossrail – whether GWR will have enough 387s spare to take over Heathrow Express duties in Dec 19 as planned?
@Adrian Millward: Until you know that the stuff in the tunnel works properly, you don’t want to link it to the Shenfield line. Best to test stand-alone before upsetting all the stockbrokers in the morning rush hour.
Adrian Millward: The “obvious” connection between the north-east end of Stratford station and the east end of Stratford-in-the-hole may only be a few (hundred) metres, but it would probably require new barriers and gatelines for both stations and new lifts/escalators in the hole, and thus quite a large heap of money. A shame, because it would indeed be a big improvement to some journeys.
And were there any funding arrangements under which a certain shopping centre guaranteed itself footfall from those passing between the two stations?
I can’t imagine anything like that happening at Stratford – the actual station platforms are much further round the corner than just the visible cutting, plus the obvious thing – the DLR already makes the connection very easy indeed – a very frequent service coming up right next-door to the entrance for the HS2 station.
It seems unlikely there’d be much point in getting people to navigate the subway maze at Stratford, walk all the way along a platform and then (somehow) make it round the corner, without huge expense, for what can’t be a massive number of interchanging passengers.
It would be interesting to find out how many people ARE making transfers between the two stations of the Stratford complex now the arrangements have been in place for a few years, either by taking the DLR or walking through the shopping centre, which remember is a fully covered connection open 24 hours a day. The distance is little more than some interchange passageways on the Underground and equivalent to many airport walks to gates or between terminals, and for many people a determined walk is probably quicker than waiting for the next DLR plus journey time, although the DLR is definitely useful for those who would struggle with that distance due to age, health or luggage.
@Mark Townend
Bear in mind that the platforms at International are so far below the surface, that access and egress time to the concourse adds quite a bit to any interchange. Further, the walk through the shopping centre is often slow because of the volume of people inside it. And then the Regional station (terminology sometimes used to distinguish it from where the SE trains stop) is so spread out in itself, that walking times are considerably extended.
As a fast walker, I don’t think I’ve managed any less than 8 minutes platform to platform. As you say, the 10min interval of the DLR alternative isn’t overly attractive, added to which it is still a long way from the DLR platform to the GE main line and Overground end of the station.
From unscientific observation, off peak use of International is not sparkling, and the percentage of those interchanging is likely to be small. To be honest, I’m not sure the majority of train travellers from Kent have worked out that there are connections available at Stratford, whilst in almost all cases, fares are routed via London Terminals.
@MAN OF KENT
It would be feasible to build a link to the Stratford International station entrance that is 150 meters along Hitchcock Lane, east from Montfichet Road.
An new, raised Stratford Station entrance on the east of Montfichet Road, opposite Hitchcock Lane would be able to take passengers behind the power station, along the side of the International Station box eastwards, and then due south to join with the northern edge of Platform 12.
It actually only 90 meters in total of new walkway, and wouldn’t require any over-line bridge and is just “scrub”…
https://ukfree.tv/styles/images/2018/New_STA_P12_link.JPG
This would link straight to platforms 1 and 2 as they are accessible directly from Platform 12.
Also, it would be very useful for me as it would cut about 300 meters from my access to the station.
@ALEKS
One example of TfL losing revenue through the Hopper ticket, is people making return journeys within an hour, which is actually quite a long time if your first bus journey was relatively short.
I had this last week, as I needed to make a quick visit to the local hospital, and was able to catch the return bus easily within the hour.
@MIKEY C – Fair point, but equally that’s balanced in terms of cost by the extraordinarily long journeys that could always be made for a single fare if you’re lucky enough to have a single seat journey. Costs are related to vehicles and staff over time so its perfectly ‘fair’ to be able to make a short hop return journey within the hour if that’s possible, and that is very common practice for transit systems across world. How many totally new short journeys has the Hopper encouraged among the poor that the old system penalised just because a through journey wasn’t possible and may not have been undertaken at all or made with one leg replaced by a long walk. I always strongly supported the Hopper but not the straight jacket of the general fares freeze.
@Mickey C/MT Did not wish to veer too far from Revenue Impact topic if no interest.
The short journey factor is included in TfL’s original cost figure. It is in fact 70 mins (not 60) to allow for late running.
Presumably 60 was selected instead of 90 as a significantly larger number of journeys would be impacted.
What was not factored in the simple existing picture was people making leisurely journeys that could be foreshortened – a faster supermarket sweep or coffee at destination instead of the shop, swifter library exchange, 15mins off an 80 minute excursion is entirely workable.
The £45m ‘cost’ would increase by altering existing travel patterns. As MT explains and the ‘popularity’ of Hopper suggests new opportunities are available below the daily cap.
I was unable to find any financial update from TfL’s 2016 launch by Shashi Verma, TfL’s Director of Technology and Customer Experience – LR link https://www.londonreconnections.com/2016/dont-fear-beeper-bus-hopper-tickets-future-oyster/
There is the egalitarian view of the GLA that all Londoners should have accessibility to opportunity regardless of the vagaries of route provisioning by TfL. A similar view is promulgated by MTA in NYC for example where the same fare is paid by riders. Many cities operate the same way.
One interesting study was about the appeal of buses. The psychological aspect concerned the hated perception of waiting. A hopper allows passengers to take a bus in their direction during which they rest their feet, warm up/cool down, and feel they make progress before alighting at their branch. There was no impact on revenue or total journey time but the passenger has had a ‘better’ experience.
Otherwise the original £15m estimate of ‘new’ revenue may have been for additional traffic. With fewer overall riders on the system that will be hard to argue.
Bus ridership has fallen on many networks so it is not a London issue. Maybe buses have not kept pace with modern riders expectations. The NewBus for London may have fared better promoting climate control, WiFi, USB outlets, display screens.
@Aleks: I think you will find that within London there is a pretty strong correlation between the speeds of buses falling over the last few years, the increase in number of cyclists in Central London, and the reduction of bus revenue.
The hopper ticket does indeed mean there will be some revenue loss; but I reckon people will now feel less constrained – particularly parents with pushchairs. It only takes two pushchairs or a wheelchair to make the bus ‘full’ – at least now the parent can take whatever comes next and change part-way, instead of waiting for the next bus on that particular route (which itself may be full). As my partner (who uses PAYG) puts it – she can now ‘feel like she has a season ticket’ when out and about with my son.
How did people of my parents’ age manage on the buses without dragging huge pushchairs on board? They seemed to. Horrific things on a crowded bus…
Alex asks (perhaps rhetorically) how parents managed before the advent of pushchair accessible buses. Some made the children walk, some carried them, and some didn’t make the bus journey at all. Foldable pushchairs were once common too (remember Mclaren, or earlier Cumfifolda?).
But of course the spaces (+ low floors) were put their for a quite different reason – to liberate wheelchair users. Having provided them, it would be difficult to prevent their use by pushchairs (or indeed sholleys) when not needed for wheelchairs. And an unintended consequence is parents+(the parentcare industry) becoming dependent on these spaces.
Alex McKenna: were you born and grew up in London at all? If no, then your parents probably just had a car.
If you want to restrict my mobility on public transport yet further, I might just do that. You can then breathe my exhaust fumes through the open window of the bus stuck behind me in traffic.
I lived on Shooter’s Hill for the first year of my life. My mother would push me up the hill in the pram as they didn’t fit on buses.
A good way of getting back into shape after giving birth 🙂
@Mikey C: yes, indeed. What a wonderful way to get to the doctor’s (1 hour’s walk) in the rain; or to go shopping (30 minutes’ walk to nearest supermarket).
I take it in your world the value of time for people – especially mothers – somehow falls off a cliff after the birth of a child?
Rebranding spotted today that made me smile. In a sea of TfL Rail blue new platform benches have been installed with Purple line armrests!
Straphan : For your information, I was born in Ilford, part of London then as it is now; and was occasionally taken on a nice trolley bus, where I had to move under my own power without a pushchair of any kind. This was the norm. We did not have a car, like most people in the early 50s. We did a lot of walking and bus travel of course. Obesity was not a problem then, as a result.
PS: There would be lots more room for buggies on the Chinese-style Trackless Trams.. A very interesting item from an Australian observer: Would this work in London, and where?
http://theconversation.com/why-trackless-trams-are-ready-to-replace-light-rail-103690
Alex McKenna,
I am extremely dubious about the merits of these after hearing about what happened in Clermont-Ferrand. That is before you ignore issues about microscopic particulates from the tyres.
In Clermont-Ferrand they decided to have/replace/extend a tram system. It was thought to be a good idea but in France local companies contribute to transport costs via a levy and in return they get a voice in the procedure. Now Clermont-Ferrand is the headquarters and factory of Michelin who decided that the ‘trams’ really ought to be rubber-tyred and they would make the tyres. This, of course, is typical French protectionism which is never overtly done – Graham H has provided examples of this in the past.
The footnote to this is that, although Michelin made the original batch of tyres for the new ‘trams’ they quickly realised that setting up the plant to produce a few non-standard tyres when they needed replacing was very expensive and not worth doing. So today they have a reserved-way guided-trolleybus system they insist on calling a tram for no good reason that is located near Michelin’s headquarters and the tyres for the vehicles are imported.
You might like to note that Clermont-Ferrand goes to great lengths with the design of its trolleybus so that it is almost impossible to see the wheels.
Michelin’s strategy might have worked if the Cler-Fer scheme was seen as a demonstrator of the trackless technology. Unfortunately for them, it seems no-one else took it up.
Meanwhile, it looks like someone hasn’t been accounting for depreciation
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/sheffield-supertram-network-could-be-closed-forever-unless-bosses-raise-230million-from-government-1-9364608
https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/sheffield-s-supertram-could-be-axed-and-replaced-by-bus-network-says-survey-1-9365969
(In the second link the picture caption “Supertram launches” seems slightly off the mark, unless the launch involved a badly-aimed champagne bottle)
@PoP/Alex McKenna – it’s not clear how optically guided vehicles cope with complex “track” eg at junctions, or how safe they are in constrained /exposed locations such as viaducts. The article also has implications about the use of proprietary versus open technologies. The French have unhappy form in such respects – TVR anyone? UK experience with ftr not much better either. I was interested in the prices quoted for Oz light rail schemes – way above the averages for European comparators, which typically turn out to be around £20-40m a mile depending on how many utilities have to be shifted. [Edinburgh a dishonourable exception, of course].
@Alex McKenna – but those were the ex-SA trolleybuses – 8 ft wide and complete with tinted windows. Luxury indeed.
@timbeau – interesting. Much would depend on the way in which the original system was financed. With traditional local government finance, there “should” have been a renewals fund although the sad history of most UK tramway systems was that that fund was consistently raided to keep the rates down.
@Graham H
not strictly “ex”-South Africa: the SA classes were ordered for the Durban and Johannesburg networks, but by the time they were built they could no longer be exported because of a lack of available merchant shipping (because of the poles – Hitler had invaded their country). They were the first London trolleybuses built to the wider 8-foot limit, and also, I believe, the only ones without batteries for manouvering.
@Graham H. If I recall correctly, only the SA1s/SA2s (i.e. the Durban vehicles) had the tinted glass and the SA3s for Johannesburg had clear glass. With a total of 43 SAs and a maximum turnout of 39 the SAs should have had a monopoly at ID (= llford Depot) but there always seemed to be one or two standard types and if you were unlucky anything could turn up.
@Timbeau. A quick delve into Ken Blacker’s ‘The London Trolleybus’ Vol 1 (Capital Transport) confirms that the SA1/SA2 (the Leylands) lacked traction batteries. Blacker is not specific on the SA3s but implies that they had them. He also confirms the clear glass in the SA3s.
@STRAPHAN
I wasn’t suggesting that my mother’s experiences were better than what we have now, but that was how people coped if they didn’t drive and couldn’t push their prams/push chairs onto public transport.
@ALEX MCKENNA
Agreed on the positive health effects of having to walk more, both for the parents and children.
I see that diamond geezer has spotted…
An urgent TfL Finance committee meeting is being held tomorrow because “ongoing discussions with Government need to be concluded in order to release additional funds for Crossrail Limited.”
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/fc-20180927-agenda-crl.pdf
Looks ominous.
By the way, has the TfL General Counsel who issued the Agenda peered into the tunnels and seen “Wonderful things”, like his namesake did?
I was amused reading the first Sheffield link that Timbeau linked to above that it needed highlighting how closure of the network would prevent future expansion!
@timbeau – yes, shouldn’t have included the ex- bit. These were the first 8 footers, which I was, I understood, why they were confined to a single suburban depot.. (After which there were only the Q1s to the same width). The tinted glass was still there when they reached the scrap yard at Colindale. The seats seemed more comfortable than the London standard, too.
On the question of what happened to prams and pushchairs in olden days, I recall that with prams, we were all walked to our destination. Very small children were carried. Pushchairs sometimes went on the bus, folded up and put under stairs on double-deckers; on single deckers (I’m thinking here of the TDs on the 213), I think pushchairs were placed in the luggage space.
Sheffield Supertram….
Nearly a quarter of a century after it opened, and it’s still only got to Halfway……………….
https://www.google.com/maps/@53.3277927,-1.344448,3a,37.5y,16.98h,93.78t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sTCC5JyFhen93hIng9dmVVg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
But if the money comes from a different pot, it might be possible to extend the network at the same time as closing the existing network!
Back in New Zealand, some buses had hooks on the back. The driver would get out, hang the pram off the back and then sell you a ticket…
@SHLR – and in Switzerland, you can hang your sledge on the back of the postbus, too. (And in Germany, in the days of the Wismarer railbuses, both bicycles and prams could be hung on the rear bonnet…)
Re Graham H,
I’ve used the cross country ski racks on rural Norwegian buses…
@PoP: Ironically, if Clermont-Ferrand had gone for a metro instead then, it being France, Michelin would probably have ended up providing tyres for the trains anyway.
@Graham H: I was interested in the prices quoted for Oz light rail schemes – way above the averages for European comparators, which typically turn out to be around £20-40m a mile
As is usually the case with articles seeking to promote one mode over another, the author deliberately chooses the most expensive examples of his less-favoured mode – ignoring eg. Gold Coast Stage 2 ($57m/km), or Melbourne extensions at about $10-$20m/km in 2006 prices. Meanwhile he is able to safely come up with finger-in-the-air estimates for his own gadgetbahn because there are no real-world examples to contradict him.
Note also that quoting construction costs conveniently ignores the whole-life costs of buses – the vehicles and road pavement don’t last as long as light rail vehicles and track. The latter is a particular issue with guided buses running on existing roads because the guidance means that, unlike normal buses, they consistently run over exactly the same bit of tarmac.
The article presents a fairly full list of the cliches of apparently revolutionary new transport modes (see also driverless cars, that tram man in Preston, hyperloop, etc):
– unprovable claims to be much cheaper than existing methods
– the claim that “cities across the world are lining up to try” them (ie. someone in the city council has asked for a brochure)
– citing technology demonstrators and trials as though they are actual transport systems
– pushed by academics and companies pushing a proprietary system, rather than transport planners
Much the same applied to PRT which was apparently going to revolutionize urban transport a few years ago, and has now gone very quiet indeed (I assume that as soon as the Heathrow car park system runs out of spare parts it will be quietly shut down).
@NGH
Sounds uncomfortable.
@Ian J – Many thanks for the further and *better* about Oz costs. Much more the sort of thing.
You are right about the cliches – when I was in charge of the client side of DTp research, my office was filled with a never ending queue of people with similar ideas*. There was flydacraft, for example, which seemed to be a cross between a monorail and PRT avant la letter which was designed to run on stilts along garden fences – I sat next to one the Railway Inspectors during the public launch of this – his comments on the pointwork were. err. *entertaining*. Luckily, I had been inoculated against this sort of nonsense when as a callow trainee I had spent time in New Towns Directorate and been exposed to MK’s ideas for monorails combined with district heating pipework (AIRC),
* Not to mention the man who had invented the “continuous electric rope” and who had been shown the door by the Danish government and borne a grudge against them ever since. We never did discover what it was – my staff had a theory that it was a modern version of of the hangman’s noose.
Re. Shefield.
Supertram threatened with closure – just as, after at least 5 years of faffing about, re-inventing solutions that have been working in Germany & Austria for (?) 20 (?) years, DfT are going to allow Tram-Train running from Sheffield to Rotherham (etc)
You really could not make something this utterly bonkers up if you tried & no-one wuld beliueve you if you did.
Couple that with the video of the tram/bahn of the Stubaital ….
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Graham H
Arrrgh – not *monorails*
Even worse than Waterloo-&-City extendadors …..
@Graham H
In these dark times, an article about crackpot transport technologies might unite us all towards a new mobility Eden.
@Ben – amongst those actually constructed, I guess I’d nominate the Brennan monorail, where gyroscopically balanced vehicles teetered along a single rail, the Lartigue Listowel and Ballybunnion not-monorail where allegedly the harassed staff had to negotiate between pigs and passengers to balance the train, and the dangerous Sued_Ost Bahn’s predecessor in Switzerland where the train climbed up using an Archimedian screw in place of rack – that failed when the train jumped the screw and ran back, “slaying many” as the Chicago Times would have put it. I would have not contemplated giving a grant to any of them. I often think that Simpson’s episode about the monorail should be compulsory viewing for the promoters of such systems
I was always under the impression that the MK scheme was designed to fail, that it was a sop to public transport campaigners and was always going to be too expensive, as well as useless.
It remains a real challenge to design a viable public transport system for a decentralised grid-pattern city, even with current technology.
As my satnav tells me when I drive there, “At the eleventh roundabout, turn left”.
Apropos crackpot schemes, the Ultra personal rapid transport at T5 at Heathrow is a contender – albeit a working one! Real crackpot is the driverless pods (with drivers) that seem to wander around Milton Keynes pavements with no sign that they will enter service.
(But none of these are so crackpot as Hyperloop!)
Apropos the roundabouts, the original plan was for phased traffic lights at the grid intersections (and this in the days before computers were freely and cheaply available), but roundabouts were substituted to save money. Traffic lights have been added at many of them since. I think the huge number of roundabouts has done wonders for the fortunes of tyre fitters!
@Answer=42 – at this distance in time, I agree: that’s what a rational person would think. The economics of providing any sort of service whether transport, utilities or logistics to such a place is a nightmare. However, when I visited the place on official business in 1974, it was very clear that having everything modern – whether useful or not – was an article of faith amongst the New Town Development Corporation*, and the monorail was definitely one such novelty. As was replacing all the locality names by post codes, and the street names by “Vertical” and “Horizontal”; thus I was travelling along the H27 looking for the V42 turnoff to MK33. That didn’t last long either. I reread the Betjeman poem on Slough at that point.
* The purpose of my visit was a serious one – winding up the NTDC – but so anxious was the CEO to demonstrate how uptodate he was, that he broke off the negotiations at lunch time to lead his team jogging (at a time when jogging as a thing had only just been invented ) round the grounds of the offices. The Whitehall team wasn’t impressed.
My apologies to the moderators for their tolerance. Won’t happen again (until the next time).
@Graham H
Archimedes screw instead of a rack – WTF? Do you have any sources on that?
Graham H……..”Won’t happen again (until the next time).”
Now, about that book??????
Ben
Well, I’ll bite & lead off on “Crackpot Technologies” with the Dangleway – a wholly inappropriate “solution” to a problem that doesn’t exist.
Then there was the Paget 2-6-2 with EIght single-acting cylinders & rotary sleeve valves, which siezed up upon almost every possible opportunity …..
And, yes, the Lartigue “monorail” was wonderfully bonkers ……
@ Phil E
I had a WTF moment at that too… German wikipedia page here has the details and photos.
Lartigue … someone has been mad enough to build a full-size replica ( diesel-powered, but mocked-up to look like a steam loco ) …
Here for complete insanity
@Herned _ I am most grateful for you unearthing the German Wiki example. Hitherto, I have to rely on histories of the SOB published in Switzerland. This is the first time I have seen an actual picture of the track (as opposed to a verbal description). Looking at the picture, I think the NeverStop railway at the Wembley Exhibition was perhaps closer to a simple screw drive, with the speed being varied by the pitch of the screw. My father, who travelled on that reported that it seemed reliable, but the site was level, of course.
There is an inverse relationship betwee.n how daft an idea is, and how daft a tourist imitation is.
The dangleway is fine as a tourist attraction (though it could have been better sited). Just bonkers as a means of transport.
@Graham H
surely the H and V numbering was just for grid roads? That was implemented and they all have names to (streets for V roads, ways for H roads) – not that they particularly need names as they don’t have buildings on them and the numbers function as a form of classification that is useful to keep people on the purpose-built main roads. As were postcodes (still seen on older signs), but with districts still signed.
Given how MK signs have tons of destinations on then collapsing several district names into a postcode would have been useful, as would not needing the street name, and signing H and V numbers like M, A or B numbers rather than in their own way.
As for monorails – thankfully The Simpsons have given a stock response to such ideas.
@Si – at the time of my visit, MK was simply a (small) collection of remote estates about 5 miles apart and the road grid was still being developed. I have avoided going back in recent decades and I’m sure the land surface is more thoroughly covered these days. BTW, MK was an interesting case study – foreseeing that they might be wound up before they got going, the NTDC had deliberately planned to start in half a dozen widely separated sites with no facilities and no general town centre. Later in my career, I came to recognise this approach to bigger programmes such as the Regional railways fleet renewal.
@GregT – where on earth did they get the funding? I’m sad to see they don’t seem to have built a replica of my alltime favourite rolling stock – a set of mobile steps marshalled in the train to enable people to cross the trestle at intermediate stations.
Graham H: You may be right about the reason for Milton Keynes starting out in a dispersed manner. But whatever the reason, thousands of MK inhabitants ever since have benefited from the resulting polycentricity. Milton Keynes does have a rush hour these days, but it is nothing like as bad as any other place of comparable size, simply because the flows are far less tidal, since workplaces are somewhat scattered. Not perfectly evenly, granted, but enough to give some relief.
A similar polycentricity (on a larger scale) applies to Germany in contrast to many other countries.
I suspect Ballybunion got the funding from the same place as Mail Rail or Seaton trams or Steam Dreams. Tourism these days is very centred on the USP – and what’s not to like about experiencing a slightly watered-down version of some unique aspect of the past?
@Herned – Thanks for the link
@Malcolm – I’m sure you are right about the benefits now although I don’t recall them being mentioned back in the day. Indeed, the aim was to make the new towns as selfcontained as possible, and that was about the limit of transport planning (as opposed to engineering design) back in the late ’60s. Planning meant master planning – and in the case of MK – the transport thinking was heavily influenced by Corbusier’s Autogerechtstadt. In practice, over time, because jobs move, people move, and the economy changes, people find themselves commuting from town to town increasingly. Most of the new towns now show identical commuting patterns to long established towns – Hemel and St Albans, for example. The costs of moving house, educational issues and the difficulty of finding alternative employment, in recent years, has further forced ever longer and diverse commuting patterns. It’s not a nice phenomenon and has long term profound implications for transport and landuse.
Yes, many believe that Germany (and Switzerland) has the more-or-less optimum distribution of cities and the optimum city size (big n enough to support the required services but not so big that the cost of dealing with ever remoter suburbs becomes uneconomic).
It’s a long way from Ballybunnion and perhaps Crossrail, too.
I forgot to mention a useful source-book for seriously insane transport ideas, with the last example being one that worked, is still with us & is always quoted as an advocacy for M-rails, whilst carefully ignoring the reason it worked was that it was & is a “special case”
The book is called: “Monorails of the 19th Century” link here …
And the special case is, of course, in Wuppertal.
Monorail was Conan’s finest career moment, revisited at the anniversary concert
https://youtu.be/-ymOWS-z7kg
Ballybunnion maybe better referenced to the original newsreels, the trestle steps were part of the consist
https://youtu.be/ZjBKQlr9fSs
https://youtu.be/eNnKiMPmApg
https://youtu.be/f5NPkmPA524
And that’s a good place to stop with the monorail stories now. Any further stories or links will be removed without warning.
Instead, read this week’s Friday Reads for bizarre bus innovations. LBM
@Aleks
Love those films – and you certainly wouldn’t get anyone trying to jump the barriers at the level crossing!
@ Graham H
You’re welcome, although I have now lost half an hour trying to find out about the neverstop railway, which I had heard of but not seen photos or videos of it. Very intriguing and raises a whole number of questions which I won’t risk the wrath of the moderators asking
@ Malcolm
I disagree about the dangleway as a means of transport – there’s quite a few in South America in urban areas, they are relatively much cheaper and quicker to build than railed transport and have big advantages in hilly cities. It’s the location which is daft – perhaps if it had been built west of Canary Wharf towards Rotherhithe where the bridge is proposed then it may have been a but more successful. And of course you could just move it!
@Herned – try googling Wembley Exhibition 1924 and follow footnote 48 to the Wiki entry – there are links there to some British Pathe footage. (Sorry I can’t provide the link direct…)
Slightly relevant to Crossrail; as a one-time town/transport planner it astonished me how long it took for people to realise that employment had long since ceased to be all about smoke and pollution, and it was no longer necessary to ‘zone’ employment to areas away from, and downwind of, residential areas. So now we have the situation where, because of house price rises, we tax moving house so that it becomes unaffordable but barely tax driving. So we spend a fortune on transport infrastructure so that people can live in Ilford and work at Heathrow, and vice versa. . . . . .
@ Graham H
Yes, I saw those, from the films it seems to have worked very smoothly. I couldn’t figure out how the drive system was powered. It must have been quite energy-intensive having all the screws spinning all the time. And probably very noisy
I did see reference to someone having built a working model version, but no photos to be found
@Herned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En8cpzBUXKg
@ Timbeau
thanks!
Pathe newsreel Never-Stop Railway
And after those two links, it’s time to repeat and amplify LBM’s ruling. No more here about monorails or other exotic or extraordinary transport. This is an article about crossrail.
Ealing Broadway footbridge has been closed (again?) And us poor souls are having to trudge down to the new emergency footbridge.
Not surprised by the announcement.
But the effects of it haven’t been readily felt yet…feels like an anticlimax.
I have observed a few test trains operating on the Western side with amusing destinations such as Heathrow or Liverpool St
I don’t think this has come up before but when Sir Terry Morgan appeared in front of the Assembly Transport Cttee recently he made a slightly obtuse reference to a “well known transport blog”. He said that references to Bond Street being ready for use were not correct and that Bond Street has been a difficult construction site for a long period. He also said Crossrail had given serious consideration to possibly opening without Bond Street or in a restricted form with only one ticket hall.
I can only assume he was referring to this article which cites Bond Street as being “ready” whereas it is nowhere near. A recently construction industry article has said it won’t be complete until well into 2019. I assume that Tottenham Court Road should really be the station in the article that is “ready” and would have been for a December 2018 opening.
Malcolm: Are you trying to imply that Crossrail will _not_ be “exotic”? Perish the thought…
WW
An update on your comment here – from the Beeb It would seem that some Assembly members are not impressed.
There’s more on Bond Street in Architects Journal – you may have to use icognito window to bypass the pay-to-read …
Re GT,
And construction news (again incognito windows after the first articles) is even better on all the current CR issues.
Anyone with access to the FT (6/7 October edition) may be interested in the article on page 3. Ostensibly about the delays to Spurs new stadium, but it inevitably makes reference to the competition between the Spurs project and Crossrail for skilled workers.
Other points
– the constant cut throat tender process means small sub contractors are on wafer thin margin, hence unwilling to invest in training. So quality of work is lower than it should be.
– major problem at Spurs with fire detection system. Isn’t fire detection problems what has held up Bank Bloomberg entrance? And Berlin new airport….
– speculation that the skills shortage will hit HS2 and the super sewer
– 27% of construction workers in London are from the EU, compared to 9% rest of UK. (Article comments that these figures are believed to be underestimate, as many immigrants avoid official statistics for various reasons)
Berlin’s new airport problems were more a belief they could overcome the fundamentals of thermodynamics, rather than a more straightforward electrical system issue
Re Herned,
Indeed who knew hot air rises! [for the less aware the architect didn’t want smoke vents spoiling the look of his roof.]
…but it later turned out there were thousands (and still are plenty) of straight forward (and worse) electrical and sprinkler system issues.
About a third of the sprinkler system had to be binned because they used the wrong pipe that was too small.
@ Greg – you will have to excuse me being less than impressed by most of the Crossrail related comments from politicians. I’ve watched the sessions, read Ms Pidgeon’s letter in full and think we are in the land of creating mountains out of molehills. We are now in the long run up to the 2020 Mayoral Election so people are out to “make a pitch” for their roles, parties and to make the Mayor look useless. Wilfully ignoring what professional project people tell you and also pretending not to understand how project governance works and what formal notices are for is not a good look IMO.
There are certainly lessons to learn for future (and some current) projects around disclosure and governance. However you need cool heads, rational thought and a complete lack of politically driven cant to secure improvement. I am not expecting any great improvement in these areas for many months. Meanwhile other project problems will no doubt go unreported and be misunderstood thus creating more opportunities for political game playing and wild accusations. The warning signs are already there – I can think of 4-5 project candidates with little effort. What fun!
Some subtle hints about causes of delays at Paddington Crossrail in the latest Programmes and Investment Committee papers – the Crossrail bit is not particularly informative but the Bakerloo Line link tunnel update, technically a separate project being delivered by London Underground, refers to problems with the performance of the cladding contractor (unclear if the same contractor is doing the rest of the station but wouldn’t be unlikely), and to delays in getting permanent power – which dovetails with reports earlier in the year about problems with the electrical work at Paddington.
Re Ian J,
“problems with the cladding contractor”
This is likely to be the manifestation of a multitude of issues before the cladding especially if there are big differences between “as built” and “as designed” once the other trades have done their work.
The Bakerloo link has been a part of the Paddington problems since the M&E problems became public ~2 years ago well before cladding work started.
(This isn’t to say that the cladding contract isn’t having problems of their own making)
Re WW,
“Meanwhile other project problems will no doubt go unreported and be misunderstood thus creating more opportunities for political game playing and wild accusations. The warning signs are already there – I can think of 4-5 project candidates with little effort. What fun!”
Looking at it from the other point of view – which projects are likely to produce some good news (not of the open after a big delay variety)? The TfL publicity machine seems very quiet under the current Mayor. (are we likely to see a big PR push when Goblin gets the 710s or will it be rather muted?)
With parties just having selected or soon to be selecting their candidates there is likely to be less infighting within parties and more focus on the incumbent from now on. This combines with a stream of bad news we can both see coming and AM needing to prove their worth before 2020 too.
I assume a lot of the fitting out work such as cladding wouldn’t have prevented Crossrail opening if everything else was ready?
After all, London Bridge station still has lots of work going on 5 months after Prince William “opened” it!
@ Ngh – the current City Hall set up exercises huge control over all public messaging. This cuts across everything – City Hall / GLA, the Met Police, TfL, London Fire Brigade. The Met Commissioner has such a low public profile that I sometimes wonder if she exists. She’s certainly rarely permitted to say anything in public which is in sharp contrast to her predecessors over many, many years.
I don’t expect very much to be said about anything transport wise. As you suggest the effort will all be about keeping the lid on bad news and delays. I doubt we’ll see anything about the 710s until they’re ready to hit West Anglia because there’s more news in replacing 40 year old trains than 2 car modern DMUs on the GOBLIN. I suspect GOBLIN electrification is a project no one at TfL or City Hall wants to talk / hear about.
Walthamstow Writer,
We are getting off topic but the current police commissioner, Cressida Dick, has a totally different style from Bernard Hogan-Howe who she replaced. Everyone expected that. I understand she regularly appears on a ‘Call the Commissioner’ slot on LBC radio so she is not entirely silent. I really don’t think it is a case of not being permitted to say anything in public.
You could equally point out that Mike Brown is relatively silent compared to his predecessor but that happened before the change in Mayor and he too has a different style from his predecessor.
Theresa May was almost silent in her first two months as prime minister yet, presumably, that was also her choice as there was no-one above her to shut her up.
I was interested to see at the weekend that the hoardings at Farringdon still proclaim opening in December 2018, in REALLY LARGE Letters. It will be a massive job to update everything.
@Mikey C: I assume a lot of the fitting out work such as cladding wouldn’t have prevented Crossrail opening if everything else was ready?
Certainly this article in Construction News implied that the stations weren’t the main cause of the delay – it states an ‘understanding’ that the delays at Bond Street were ‘not one of the major reasons for Crossrail delaying the opening by nine months’. Crossrail mentioned to the Select Committee that they considered opening in December without stopping at Bond Street, or with only one of the ends of Bond Street open. And Simon Wright, Crossrail Chief Executive, told Construction News that “The original programme for testing has been compressed by a delayed start and more time being needed by contractors to complete fit-out activity in the central tunnels and the development of railway systems software”. Having said that, since other issues have delayed the opening anyway, it must be a lot easier to do other work without the railway open to the public.
Interestingly on this topic TfL seem prepared to go on record more with the trade press than the mainstream media, including the fairly categorical statement from a spokesman that “All stations will complete by the end of the year with the exception of Bond Street.” As you suggest there is ‘complete’ and then there is ‘complete’ – I assume the non-negotiable bits are safety systems, ventilation, power etc.
@ngh: the 4 Lines Modernisation haven’t committed publicly to any dates before 2021, I think, so if they are able to make significant progress before then, that would count as a good news story (and I know that Phase 1 has been delayed and that the whole thing is years later than expected – but could be spun as ‘my predecessor messed this one up and under me it has been sorted out’).
The Northern Line extension seems to be quietly progressing on track.
It all strikes me a bit London Bridge-ee. That project is “complete”, so the contractors still wondering around must be a figment of my imagnination…. 😉
Re SH(LR),
London Bridge – The rail infrastructure side is “complete” the passenger retail and facilities were always to finish later in 2018, the definition of “later” comes with Roger’s usual caveats on seasons.
Re Ian J,
4LM I think significant service improvements of some kind would need to be happening for big news but it is hard to describe. But I would be difficult in the early stage to highlight service improvements.
As regards stations the Construction Enquirer and other Construction News article point out that late station completion was impacting testing so the impact might not have been direct but very much indirect.
Re WW, PoP & Ian,
With this little news everyone may forget what the Mayor and GLA actually do!
These are not retail facilities, this is cladding being replaced, gate lines being finished, the Cottons link being rebuilt (i.e. the old platform 1-6 “concourse”).
And anyway, I believe that was all meant to finish by the end of May!
Re SH(LR),
I meant to put “passenger AND retail” but didn’t…
The upper concourse extension, Cottons link and Stainer Street were always meant to complete very late
Lots of snagging going on.
Another emergency short notice TfL Board Meeting has been arranged for this coming Wednesday (24/10) to discuss Crossrail. As ever there is scant detail in the papers but I assume it’s to do with funding and progress issues.
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/board-20181024-agenda.pdf
@WW: The urgent timing (and following from an urgent Finance Committee meeting) would suggest that some kind of agreement with the government needs to be signed off before Monday’s Budget. Perhaps more will become clear then.
Rumours abound that the station building and replacement stairs at Forest Gate might be open soon, but not the new lifts.
A local blog was even able to publish a photo, taken inside the building, earlier this week.
All follows a recent meeting attended by Lyn Brown MP and by Councillors Masihullah Patel and Rachel Tripp.
Meanwhile, on the surface.
The inside of the station building at Forest Gate, with new gateline, is visible to the public.
A sign says that the stairs (bot not the lifts) will be open in the afternoon of Monday 29th October 2018.
I was struck recently by the fact that the layout of the gates (3 normal + 1 wide) is the same for both Wanstead Park on the GOBlin and Seven Kings, soon-to-be on the Elizabeth line. Surely, with trains coming from further afield and twice as long, wouldn’t Seven Kings be expecting a much heavier footfall?
Looks like things are starting to get messy on funding the cost overruns.
The original late July announcement was that Crossrail side over runs would be covered by TfL and DfT with NR surface side overruns covered by DfT and NR.
However at yesterdays Public Accounts Comittee hearing the DfT PUS told the Public Accounts Select Committee that London, which is “ultimately the beneficiary” of Crossrail, would “have to find a way of bearing the cost of this delay”.
She said: “We’ve already made a very significant contribution, and we are now in discussions with TfL about how any further costs should be born.
“But there is an acceptance in TfL that there is an onus on London to ensure that it is bearing a very fair share of these additional costs.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-45970956
Does the Permanent Under Secretary, who doubtless lives outside London in leafy Tonbridge but commutes daily on the DfT subsidised train to Charing Cross and then enjoys the benefit of a London salary and career, not understand that “London”, per head, is already making way more than any “very fair share” of taxation contribution to central government coffers. If she is going to make snitty remarks about London bearing a “very fair share”, that works both ways.
@Mr beckton
Indeed, it is not just in taxation that the SE is subsiding the rest of the country.
I was struck by the diagram in the current issue of RAIL showing DfT subsidy per passenger km. (last year’s figures). National average is about 6p/km, with SE commuterdom generally less heavily subsidised than out in the sticks – SWT/SWR having the second lowest subsidy (zero) – East Coast (as was) paid a negative subsidy (aka “tax”). Northern and ATW (also as was) were the outliers on the other end, both at about 27p.
Thus, if the DfT subsidy were distributed equally at 6p/passenger km, fares in the south would be up to 6p /km less and Northern and Wales 20p /km more. Or, to put it another way, each Northern and Welsh passenger is being subsidised by three passengers in the south east.
Of course, there are good reasons why railways in less populated areas need more subsidy, and is it perfectly sensible for the wealthier regions to subsidise the rest, (didn’t someone once say “we’re all in this together”?) but there is no reason why we should pretend it isn’t happening.
but ar
Re Mr Beckton,
Far simpler – DfT don’t have the budget given lots of other disasters (VTEC etc.) so need a plausible excuse to pass the bill back to TfL.
This is a dreadful situation if true. TfL must surely now be at its absolute limit in terms of money. No doubt Chris Grayling is spending all his waking hours gleefully brainstorming one last unexpected huge cost to force upon TfL and critically damage the Mayorship.
Where the permanent undersecretary lives is, or at least should be, quite irrelevant. She was expressing the department’s view, not her own. That view is (or should be) guided by facts collected by civil servants, but ultimately set by the minister.
The fundamental worry with the cost escalation issue is that if costs exceed a defined limit (I don’t know what it is) then the DfT have the ability to exercise the “put option” in the Crossrail legislation / funding agreements. In essence they would take over the newly built core infrastructure and be the recipient of the access charges for the core section (presently assumed to be going to TfL). As the access charges are expected to generate a surplus this would pass to DfT. I am unclear whether TfL would remain liable to pay back a share of Crossrail related loans or if that moves to DfT if the “put option” is exercised. A recent TfL paper on the arrangements for access charging and revenue flows said DfT had opted to keep the “put option” in place until the project fully completes. Something tells me they were well aware then that cost escalation was an issue as was a delay to completion.
I believe a Sunday newspaper recently ran a spectacularly inaccurate article about the potential use of the “put option” although they never referenced it by name. They said the DfT would seize all of TfL’s CR revenues which is not factually correct. They don’t have the ability to effectively wrench the entire CR concession contract out of TfL’s hands unless some spectacularly bad circumstances occur. There is, I believe, always a “back stop” position that the SoS can take over a rail contract but it would be exceptional in the case of devolved contracts given the contracting authority has to exercise its powers first if there is a problem with the service being operated.
I am, though, very concerned about the Under-secretary’s statement. That looks to me like a very political move to paint this Mayor’s management of TfL as a disaster in the run up to the 2020 mayoral election. TfL simply will not have the ability to shoulder many hundreds of millions of pounds of extra cost on top of delayed revenues from fares / third parties. TfL would be forced to make severe investment cuts or, more likely, ask the Mayor to abandon his fares freeze. This is what I suspect the government is trying to engineer by depriving TfL of extra revenues or lumbering it with extra costs. Forcing the Mayor to raise fares would no doubt be viewed by the SoS as a great political victory for him and defeat for the Mayor.
WW
Your belief that the Government/Grayling are using the delay to Crossrail as a political scoring-point seems to be supported by current press reports. as these …
in the Standard & from the BBC – indicate from both tone & content.
We should also all remember something the Standard article mentions again, that between Mr Khan’s fares freeze & DfT’s grant removal, TfL are short of at least £1.3 billion a year, a not inconsiderable sum ….
Ministerial statement from the DfT today. DfT are giving the Mayor £350m of *short term repayable* finance to maintain momentum on Crossrail. So that’s another load of money TfL have to repay on top of the cash they’re already having to find.
A final settlement is not yet in place re Crossrail funding.
DfT Statement
@Greg: You need to apply a certain filter to ES articles about the Mayor/TfL and CrossRail given the current editor is not impartial….
“TfL now have three ‘big ticket’ financial priorities – the delivery of Crossrail, the completion of the Sub-Surface Signalling upgrades (4LM) and the purchase of new rolling stock for the Deep Tube lines”
So 6 months from opening, Crossrail is suddenly promised up to 12 months late! 4LM first stage 0.5 is now expected in early 2019, 6 months late to the 90% probability date reported in 2016 TfL meeting, and DTUP order for Picc trains placed June 2018 still awaits decision on legal challenge.
Crossrail – Mayor’s response most unsatisfactory
Or, so says the London Assembly at any rate. This could become interesting.
The DFT statement to which WW refers is splendidly contradictory.
On the one hand it refers to “London – as the primary beneficiary of Crossrail”.
It then states that “This project is already delivering benefits for the whole of the UK” and that “Crossrail will be transformative and carry up to 200 million passengers a year, delivering £42 billion of investment into the UK economy.
As a non-Londoner I doubt that the benefits accruing to London will be anywhere near £42 billion. Perhaps someone on here can tell us the value of the primary benefits London will enjoy so that we can compare them with the £42 billion.
@ Greg – I am getting a tiny bit narked with Mrs Pidgeon’s attempt to create a political mountain out of a molehill over Crossrail. I can’t imagine for one second that if she were Mayor that she’d have been releasing commercially confidential paperwork willy nilly and making wholly inappropriate statements to the media if she was tied into a formal process. She is just wilfully ignoring the process that is in place. You can’t “know” something is true until it is formally stated as such in accordance with the agreed process. I’m referring here to Crossrail being late and the Crossrail board meeting / subsequent delay notice.
Of greater concern are remarks elsewhere suggesting it may be 2020 before Crossrail “opens” (note – no definition as to what open means has been provided). I also saw the Mayoral Direction about Crossrail funding yesterday (on the London.gov.uk website). While the commercially sensitive bits are withheld it is clear that Crossrail is eating through money at a pretty terrifying rate. The extra £350m, on top of the extra £300m, only take Crossrail to 31 March 2019! A further funding deal has to be in place by then or else things could stop. It looks like Crossrail is currently spending circa £90m a month so that could mean at least £550m extra to get to Sept 2019 or over £1bn if nothing opens until 2020. Obviously that is a very rough and ready calculation based on almost no facts so people should not run away with it as “fact”. All sorts of things could bring the spend rate down as contractors complete work etc. However we are still potentially talking big money.
” Those hoping for a Bakerloo line upgrade in the near future may need to manage their expectations, as even the cost of the preliminary work is something that TfL may not be able to bear right now.” The Programmes and Investment Committee meet on 16 May 2018 had an item: Deep Tube Upgrade Programme – Piccadilly line Upgrade Stage 1: Rolling stock replacement. Appendix 1 ends “This authority submission includes the DTUP programme management and engineering resource inputs required for the further development of the Bakerloo, Central and Waterloo & City line upgrades. This includes the necessary surveys, requirements development and specification preparation which must be commenced during the Piccadilly line upgrade to ensure continuity of supply for the follow-on orders for new rolling stock and signalling systems”. This was passed by the Board at the time.
RayJayK 9 November 2018 at 10:57
“benefits London will enjoy so that we can compare them with the £42 billion.”
Stratford to Holborn, on the Central Line, is the longest overcrowded stretch on London Underground. All passengers from east of Stratford to Zone 1 will benefit. There are other benefits, as well, so they tell me.
@ RayJayK – I imagine the Crossrail benefits will cover these areas. These are my guesses – I have not checked them so they may be wrong.
– overcrowding relief on tube lines
– overcrowding relief at some tube and National Rail services
– modal transfer to rail because of new links and faster journey times
– journey time savings for existing public transport users
– increased employment to run and maintain Crossrail
– new businesses / jobs created as a result of better transport infrastructure
– land value increases
– regeneration benefits including new housing supported by better transport infrastructure
– economic benefits to suppliers to Crossrail as a result of underpinning employment away from London
It actually doesn’t take particularly huge base increments to achieve large benefits given the massive scale of public transport usage in Greater London and beyond.
This is the fundamental issue the rest of the country has. It is not that railways in the Midlands, North West, Yorkshire etc don’t need modernisation and expansion. It’s that as things stand today the number of users to whom benefits would accrue is vastly smaller than in London and the South East. And, yes, I know it is chicken and egg given services in urban areas away from London are packed and that constrains the ability to grow the number of users and make a better business case. The other problem is that NR’s costs don’t seem to be any lower away from London and the South East so you have the same cost issues but far less upside around which to create a sensible business case. The real key is to get NR’s costs down or to increase the capital budget overall for rail enhancement projects (some hope!).
Outside London, most station platforms are longer than the trains that call at them, so a quick fix could be made by lengthening trains with few infrastructure upgrades. That ceased to be an option in the south east a log time ago, any lengthening of trains requiring major civil engineering work (see the various Thameslink core stations, Waterloo in Summer 2017, Crossrail on the GW Main Line) And this is nothing new – the South Eastern were lengthening platforms for ten-car rains in the 1950s
@ Timbeau
I don’t think that’s true everywhere… whilst it is for bigger stations on main lines, for smaller stations on secondary and urban routes where the demand is highest it’s not. Lots of the new stations built since the 1980s were and still are built with very short platforms as well
@timbeau: a quick fix could be made by lengthening trains with few infrastructure upgrades. That ceased to be an option in the south east a log time ago
The major exception being non-radial routes like the North London Line where train lengths fell over time until improved frequencies and Overgroundisation stimulated demand again. The limitation now being the minority of stations with shorter platforms that can’t easily be extended.
Wasn’t it only with the coming of Crossrail and Thameslink that the last 4-car services were eliminated from London terminuses (Paddington to Greenford, and Victoria to London Bridge, respectively)?
@Ian J re:4-car services at London Terminuses
Marylebone has them – on some routes you’ll see 3-car (especially off-peak). And I’m not certain if they use their 2-car units into London uncoupled (ie making a 4-car unit with 2 of them), but I’m fairly sure they do.
Rolling stock, as much as platform length, is a limiting factor.
The London Bridge – Uckfield diesel services are usually four car, aren’t they?
And I’ve seen a 4 car class 455 at Waterloo fairly recently, due presumably to a failure in its partner unit.
…. and in the shoulder peaks, the Portsmouth line is often offered nothing but a 4 car set… (the 16.15 almost invariably so)
If you’re including off-peak, LO Chingford/Enfield/Cheshunt trains are still four car for most of the day.
Re Timbeau,
“The London Bridge – Uckfield diesel services are usually four car, aren’t they?”
you might have missed the Uckfield branch 10car platform lengthening programme, mostly 8 or 10car with the extra 170s they got from Scotrail and re-engineered into 171s. (needed to help prevent disturbance at East Croydon during the London Bridge rebuild.
(the 171 are virtually 24m cars so 10 car is about the same length as 12 car EMU).
Re Graham H,
Soon to be “solved” by the arrival of 442s
@ Si
Two-car trains were standard off-peak on the Marylebone-Aylesbury route via Harrow, at least when I last used them. Which is 5-6 years ago now but Chiltern haven’t had any new rolling stock in the meantime so I can’t imagine it’s changed.
@NGH – possibly, although those of us who use the outer all-stations Portsmouth service are not holding our breath. The assumption is that the 442s displace the 444s, leaving the 450s to work the all stations diagrams as now. That said, SWR are quite capable of mixing up the two Siemens fleets, with 9 car formations not uncommon, so quite how the re-introduction* of two incompatible fleets will play out is unclear.
*There is of course, a “delicious” irony in all this as when the 442s first appeared, a few escaped onto the Portsmouths and were used as a justification to raise the fares on the route even though, for most passengers, they simply whistled past the minor stations, Now we re about see them again doing just that, but this time displacing newer stock…. [Not that I have anything against the 442s – one of my favourite units of their period – the originals of the Edward Pond murals decorated my office for several years].
@Graham H
” the re-introduction* of two incompatible fleets ”
It already has four incompatible fleets (not counting the diesels) so a fifth will equal the historic record for the former LSWR lines, when , in the post privatisation era, there was a period when EP-type stock, 455s, 442s, Junipers and Desiros could all be seen side by side.
That record will be broken when the 701s arrive, assuming some overlap with the fleets they are to replace.
442
444/450
455/456
458
701
707
(Until the arrival of the first EP stock in 1951, everything could couple to everything else, and in the Nationalised era there were never more than three types (including the 508s) as the 4SUBs were confined to the Central division by the time the first 455s arrived).
@Herned, Si
Yup, the Marylebone to Aylesbury via Amersham off-peak services are still usually 2-car. I’ve also been on a 2-car service to High Wycombe in the peak, although I suspect that was caused by perturbations elsewhere and it’s normally 4 cars.
On the flip side, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the longest DMU working in London at Marylebone, too. It was 15 or 16 cars ECS from the carriage siding next to P1 to the sidings beyond P4-6 (which was subsequently broken up to fill P5 and 6 for multiple outbound services each).
@Moosealot
I’m pretty sure many off-peak Marylebone-Am-Aylesbury trains are 3-car, as they typically are when I use it. If they were all 2-car, I’d have been certain that there was 2-car service.
There is also the 3-car Bedwyn – Paddington service, that runs non-stop Reading- Paddington on the fast lines. Presumably it will go to 5-car Bi-modes when electrification to Newbury goes live (January 2019?).
@Graham H
That would be artwork for the first class areas presumably?
Didn’t he just sign himself as “Eddie Pond” on the second class designs?
timbeau – I was referring only to the stock used on the Portsmouth Direct services. At the moment, we have just the 444s and 450s, which can and do couple to each other. [There is a rumour of a 455 having penetrated as far as Haslemere but it may be only a rumour].
@Man of Kent -possibly; TBH I can’t now remember. It would be nice to know the originals had survived but it’s possible that they weren’t spotted in all the rearrangements of accommodation in the Board’s closing years and have been lost. The drawings had been framed in plain aluminium which may – alas – have given the impression that they were simply reproductions.
Re Herned,
Chiltern have actually had a reasonable amount of new Stock in recent years, the most recent being some 170s ex Trans-Pennine that got refurbed to Chiltern spec as the 168/3
@NGH
Extra 168s are pretty much all swallowed up by the Oxford services, I believe they’re still loco-hauling some of the am peak Oxfords. The Aylesbury routes (both via-Amersham and via-High Wycombe) tend to be 165s and there haven’t been any more of those
@SI
I would guess they put on whatever unit they need to move between Marylebone and the depot at Aylesbury. I use the HW line, so quite happy to be corrected as only going on the what I see in the platforms at MYB.
Timbeau @ 10:41:
Even before EP stock, there was a division between express stock (control circuits at 70v) and suburban (control circuits at line voltage).
And now the National Audit Office is investigating…
“Our investigation will examine the causes of the cost increases and schedule delays, the terms of the additional funding, and the governance and oversight of the programme. We will also examine the steps being taken by Crossrail Ltd, TfL, and the department to minimise the impact of the cost increases and delays.”
https://www.nao.org.uk/work-in-progress/investigation-into-crossrail/
No detail status has been issued (or perhaps yet known)
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/crossrail-step-free-promise-looks-set-to-be-broken/ NOVEMBER 30, 2018
“contracts for some of the projects to install lifts still to be awarded” by TfL who are maxed out on their borrowing limits and are only funding Crossrail to March 2019 so far.
Network Rail is seeking funding from the government’s Access to All scheme to install a lift at Brentwood, due to ‘technical challenges’. As an alternate resource or ‘not in London’?
Ilford and Romford rebuilds do not coincide with Crossrail and are not yet scheduled in detail. Colin Prime of Crossrail Anglia Programme said the multi-million-pound project is a huge investment about a year later than originally planned
Step-free work in the West has been delayed, with Network Rail unable to provide any completion dates for the work, although it says it is “underway”.
Network Rail added: “We do not yet know if there is a change to the target dates for Stage 4 (Shenfield into the central section) and Stage 5 (Reading into central section) so at this stage it is not possible to say what will be complete by the time the Elizabeth line actually opens.”
TfL said: “There were some issues with the design of lifts at stations in the east.”
@ Aleks – I see Network Rail are playing it strictly by the letter of public statements. “We do not know if there are changes to target dates for stages 4 and 5”. I think the fact that the core isn’t opening for at least another 9 months gives a tiny clue that through services from Shenfield into the core won’t be starting in May next year. I can’t see through services to Reading and Heathrow opening a year from now either.
Clearly there is a lot to play for and an awful lot of work needed to sort out how and when later stages of the project come into service but they could at least acknowledge that. Playing such a “straight bat” in public comms doesn’t work – it just makes them look a little daft when the public know the first bit of new Crossrail is delayed by around 9 months.
For those who don’t subscribe to the FT.
Lead story in the weekend edition (1/2 Dec) is “Crossrail-HS2 chairman to be axed”.
In response to that Sir Terry has just been quoted on BBC radio news = confirming he expects to be sacked but perhaps he is getting his revenge in early? He stated “tfl has questions to answer on the Crossrail delays” (or words close to that) and suggested documents will be released to back up his assertion.
@ Island Dweller – I had not seen the detail of the BBC article. I am not surprised, given what was floating around yesterday about both Downing St and City Hall having soured their view of Sir Terry, that he appears to have moved first to get his position clear and to suggest he knows where “the bodies are buried” with respect to Crossrail. He seems to have concluded that he’s not going to get any public sector senior posts so there’s not much to lose in burning some bridges. Could get rather nasty for the Mayor and the DfT though. Not sure I understand how the class 345s are 18 months late. They were a little late in entering service on the Shenfield route and have had their reliability issues but 18 months late?
Knowing Sir Terry a little I am not surprised that he may not go quietly. Not in his nature!
On step free access, Gidea Park and Harold Wood are still waiting for lifts. According to the National Rail website, both have a red cross against ‘step free access coverage’.
Indirectly relevant to Crossrail, the A127 bridge that crosses the route between those stations is in, I think, its 4th year of works.
https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-projects/a127-ardleigh-green-bridge
Someone somewhere needs to get a grip.
Crossrail proposal consultation contained reassurance that station improvement disruption would take approximately 4 months.
https://learninglegacy.crossrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/3D-021-02_Round2-Consultation-Panels-EastV2.pdf
Re WW,
“Not sure I understand how the class 345s are 18 months late.”
Neither do I but I think the lack of detail is the key, I suspect signalling interfaces are the actual answer and the probable lack of 345s to Heathrow till ETCS is the only signalling system and GW-ATP is turned off (aligning with GWR operating HEX with modified 387s) would give an exactly 18 month delay. The problems on the trains are due to equipment supplied by the signalling equipment manufacturer (not the rolling stock manufacturer) having interference issues with the legacy GW-ATP. Similar situations with other equipment e.g. CBTC and swap overs in the core will have been discovered later than they might have due to the transformerS and other issues.
I think Terry’s point is that the Heathrow GW-ATP issues make some of the core area problems /delays a bit academic hence the real delays from the core delays is substantially less in reality than the “around 9 months” being apportioned to them alone.
Hence Terry’s view is TfL probably shouldn’t be throwing the first stone in the biblical proverb sense as they aren’t responsibility free as regards delays.
@ Ngh – Thanks. I had got as far as signalling interfaces being the likely problem he was obliquely referring to. I had not put the Heathrow branch in the frame as the “18 months culprit”. I don’t think anyone is “responsibility free” on this project – clients can’t walk away but neither can project teams, suppliers or related third parties / infrastructure owners. I know it’s stating the obvious but something like Crossrail is always complex and involved.
The problem now is that the Mayor, rather than TfL, is being pushed into a corner and I think we will soon see what happens when that is done. The Transport Cttee is already sounding pretty aggrieved. I don’t think it is going to be pretty. It will certainly be unedifying after what has generally been a pretty well run project with a good PR record.
Re WW,
The NAO report should be have some sharp teeth to show too and will be harder for the Mayor to avoid.
The fun will start with is the client being intelligent and informed (in the wider sense) e.g. how well do they (Mayor /Deputy Mayors (transport) / TfL boards and TfL ) understand GW-ATP and the risks involved. Is /Was the risk register the worth the paper it was printed on if they weren’t as well informed or broad minded as they should have been ?
I find the Crossrail submissions to ORR on the subject a bit lacking in detail in some areas e.g. anything on signalling and EMC.
Politically it probably won’t matter too much as regards the Mayor re-election in reality.
Audit will include mud-slinging. The delays overlap. The replacement of 315s with 345s will be more than 18 months ‘late’.
For re-election this would register – ‘In Crossrail’s sponsor agreement, signed in 2008, there is a clause that entitles the Department for Transport (DfT) to take over the project if costs exceed certain “intervention points”.’
The bulk of spend has been hidden so Crossrail controlled their own PR downplaying prosecutions for deaths on site and miscalculations. Their PR focus was on scale, archaeology, art, and promised future. Those using western or eastern branches will not have had that well run interaction with the project.
Ignoring TfL’s accessibility, rolling stock, and Network Rail overspends Sir Terry may consider the Crossrail construction to be relatively successful and not responsible for the project being unfinished. From his weekend statements he is understanding a joint culpability with other partners. He may also be relieved not to carry the HS2 hat going from £56bn to £82bn.
TfL received some criticism for refurbishing 35 year old trainsets that were to be retired in 2 years. Looking like a prudent economy today.
Mods note:
Aleks points are getting close to ‘having a gripe’ but are relevant and of value. The boundaries have not be crossed but, if thinking of emulating him, be careful what you write.
Re Aleks,
But as the majority of 315s WEREN’T and AREN’T meant to be replaced by 345s till after the Liverpool Street High Level platform alterations* (June & July 2019) and running through the Core from May ’19 there is currently no delay so it will be hard to accumulate 18 months. Sufficient 315s are leased to run the peak Gidea Park – LST peak extra into 2020 and have been since 2015 when TfL rail took over. A limited number of the least reliable 315 have already gone to a midlands scrap yard.
*and enough the 7 car 345s units have been lengthened and tested so circa September 19 on the pre-core construction delays plan.
Due to issues on the Western end 3x 7 car units have been in use there meaning three less 345s in service at the eastern end. This should improve from the December TT change when 9 car units start running the H&H -Paddington services releasing 3 extra 7 car units, and another 3x 7car units that have been used extensively for testing (2 ultra high mileage accumulation (running up and down the WCML from Crewe everyday), 1 practising 7->9 car conversion) should also materialise in the next months or 2. Thus allowing at least another 10x 315 to be withdrawn.
The GEML users “won” the 345 testing prize it wasn’t about replacement.
Complete 315 withdrawal is only likely to be a few months late with the current delayed timelines.
Delays only overlap is you aren’t one of the groups trying to shift the blame elsewhere!!! (And Terry certainly is…)
NR wasn’t of course fully funded to do all the work e.g. TfL/GLA adding surface station accessibility to the scope but no funding for it and Carillion the only firm willing to do the Western stations for anything near the budget.
Re ngh – I’ve just been working this out on the services thread. 25/45 off-lease and 20 extended to 2020. If that was planned in 2015 then hopefully it’s not a budget issue.
Or are the 10 still running for another month or two from the September expired lease?
Not sure if this is the best article to mention this on, but I was in Oxford Street this evening, at about 6 o’clock. I’m not there very often… Crossing the street outside Bond Street station, there were a total of 3 buses in sight, in either direction… and only a couple of taxis.
I have never seen it that quiet, I thought bus changes due to Crossrail had been postponed?
On a much smaller point:
If your train change at Shenfield is also an Oystercard / paper ticket change, the lack of Oystercard readers is a bit of a pain.
Herned,
Bus changes planned for Oxford Street have gone ahead. The 10 & 23 buses stopped running along Oxford Street since 24th November. 10 is scrapped, 23 is a now a strange U-shaped route from Westbourne Park – Marble Arch, then back on itself along the old 10 route along Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner – Hammersmith.
@Herned
This thread might have been better
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2017/transforming-oxford-street-part-1-bustterfly-effect/
Plans to change routes 94, 113 and 159 don’t seem to have materialised yet. But the 25 has been cut back from Oxford Circus to Holborn Circus, as reported by Diamond Geezer
http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2018/11/oh-what-circus.html
See also
http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-best-bus-route-for-seeing-londons.html
@ Herned – the bus changes were never really about Crossrail. It was about saving large amounts of money and pandering to the pedestrianisation advocates. We now have a ludicrous situation with many links broken or reduced to a single service. How any of this has been allowed to happen is a disgrace. And I don’t need correcting about “facts” before anyone leaps in – the changes should have been stopped given the delay to Crossrail and the abandonment of pedestrianisation. That they were not supports my view that this is primarily about money. The plans for changes to a further 33 Zone 1 routes are also all about money despite what is being said to justify the unjustifiable.
@ timbeau – since you provided that link to Diamond Geezer re the 25, it’s been updated to state that folk are being turfed off at the City Thameslink bus stop, meaning that the route doesn’t even serve as far as Holborn Circus! What happened to the days when passengers used to pour off the trains arriving at Holborn Viaduct (City Thameslink) and board the frequent buses like the 25 to take them along to Holborn, Chancery Lane, High Holborn and beyond? There’s only effectively the 8 left to serve most of those bus stops (the 521 is meant to be a limited stop service (Ha!)).
So far as I can work out, the Congestion Charge zone is where one pays to enjoy travel very slowly in the most congested areas of all. It was never thus, even when the 25 wended its way off Oxford Street via Mayfair to Piccadilly and thence to Victoria. When I first commenced work, RTW buses on the 25 were the norm… but the point is that they were well patronised on the sections of route now withdrawn and didn’t get held up to any significant extent.
@Graham H
It’s possible that TfL had to go ahead with the bus changes because contracts had already been placed with the bus operators before the non-pedestrianisation and non-Crossrail opening were announced.
Where all the hordes from Holborn Viaduct station (of which I used to be one, when the Herne Hill service was run by 2SAP units) have gone I can’t tell, but the Ludgate Hill entrance (which wasn’t there before) always seems to be the busier one.
Thanks for the replies re buses, it seems a massive reversal of what the situation was previously… almost pedestrianisation by stealth, as when I was there there were lots of people walking in the road. But they wouldn’t do a thing like that would they!
Would be nice if TfL could update their bus spider maps as well, or do they think everyone uses their phone to get around?
@Timbeau
Re Holborn Viaduct, I wonder if more people walked to their destinations in the past, and now stay on to Farringdon and use the Circle line a couple of stops instead?
@herned
A couple of stops west of Farringdon on the Circle Line gets you to Euston Square, which would be an awfully long walk from Holborn Viaduct, and nowhere near where the No 8, 22, 22B, 25 and 501 buses went. Anyone going that far from the area served by trains to Holborn Viaduct would have been able to have got a train to Victoria or Charing Cross instead, and then Tube it.
@ Herned I suspect the failure to update spider maps is part of a covert policy to dump all bus mapping facilities. The justification will be required savings in these straitened times but I believe it is motivated by the view that all the information a person might need is provided by journey planner. You may recall that when they updated their site they removed all bus maps (spider and conventional bus maps) on the basis that the cool new search facility provided all that might be needed. After a storm of protest the maps were reinstated on the website. This predated the decision to abandon updating of the traditional maps hence my suspicion. It’s similar to the view that railway timetables need not be published.
@timbeau – I think you mean the other Graham!
One of the interesting things about the Fleet Street corridor from Aldwych to Ludgate Circus is the heavy bus useage, even though the density of office building is only 4-6 stories, interspersed with quite a lot of retail and low density users. Then compare this with the loadings on buses in areas of very high density offices – apparently quite a lot lower, Why?
@ Timbeau
Sorry, I should have been clear, I meant east towards Moorgate
@Graham H (I think I have got the right one this time!)
The Fleet Street corridor itself may be relatively low-rise (we can thank the St Pauls Cathedral sightlines rules for that) but some of the buses on that corridor (4, 26, 76, 172, 341) provide the only direct (as in no-change, rather than straight line) public transport link between the busiest railway station in the country and the western half of the City. (Two of those routes, 4 and 172, will no longer serve Fleet Street if current proposals are implemented)
@ Graham H
As someone who previously worked in an enormous, but relatively hidden, office block on Fleet Street, I would have thought that the comparative lack of tube access was the reason. Either to most of the city or the west end a bus is most convenient, and relatively quick, compared to the foibles of the District Line, especially in the past
@ RichardB
Good point, I had forgotten about that episode. It’s a lot easier to change the service you provide if it’s harder to see the overall picture.
@Herned
Graham F was referring to people walking towards Chancery Lane etc (west). People going east will still have the 25 bus (and, from many parts of south and south east London, have always had the option of London Bridge/Cannon Street anyway if their place of work is in the Moorgate area)
@grahamh. Some buildings on fleet Street are a bit higher than you think. I worked on the conversion of a famous newspaper building on Fleet St into the HQ for well known financial institution. Ten usable office floors plus two basement levels for comms and services. Lovely views from the tenth floor client entertainment suites (not that I got in there very often!) Ours wasn’t the only one with that many floors.
As has been mentioned on other threads here, the below street construction was a nightmare. Non of the services were in the places / depths marked on charts – where charts existed….
Agree with the general theme – office workers in that area relied on various buses to rail heads.
@Islanddweller wrote “office workers in that area relied on various buses to rail heads”.
Indeed, I still do, along with many of my colleagues in one of the last publishing companies in the Fleet Street area, in Bouverie Street. I can go west to Charing Cross, south-west to Waterloo or east to Cannon Street.
Westbound buses tend to get jammed in the Strand, just after the Aldwych. Cannon Street buses, at least in the summer, get reliably blocked by the open-top sightseeing buses in Ludgate Hill — sometimes more of them than TfL buses — leaving only the Waterloo-bound buses travelling reasonably reliably.
@ Islanddweller
That was the very building I was referring to… it’s completely invisible from Fleet Street and has ~6,000 staff
@ Timbeau 0655 – TfL have been managing bus contracts for 30 years or so. They are extremely adept at varying, cancelling, novating and placing contracts for a myriad of reasons with a wide range of activity rates from very slow to hyper speed (if circumstances require). They have had to vary and postpone a load of contracts in East and SE London that were due to commence this coming weekend when CR was due to open. They did this partly to avoid spending on “unnecessary” services but also to keep capacity in place given Crossrail won’t be providing new and faster rail links. They could have halted or changed the proposals for Oxford St routes if they wished. They didn’t do so for reasons already outlined.
Also worth noting in passing that the shortening of route 53 is apparently happening next April despite the consultation results not having emerged and a huge campaign of protest against the change. That info is from an informed source on another forum. Draw your own conclusions about the value of public consultation.
@IslandDweller and others – what the eye does not see… Where is the Fleet Line when you wanted it, alas?
(I’m slightly surprised that buses remain so popular over that stretch, given the horrid congestion – all day – round the Aldwych and the RCJ, not to mention the problems of Ludgate Circus. You would think, wouldn’t you that there was a case for a Waterloo, BFRS Bridge, [Smithfield/KX] bus service?)
@ Graham H – Well, at the moment there is a bus – the 45 – that serves BFRS Bridge, Smithfield and King’s Cross but it runs via Southwark station and Elephant & Castle (and not Waterloo) BUT it does also serve Holborn Circus, Chancery Lane station & Gray’s Inn Road… Needless to say, that stretch of the 45 is also on the proposed withdrawal list…. One used to complain that it was nigh impossible to catch a cab going south of the River from the Holborn area; now it’s the turn of the bus users.
@Graham F
The 63 will continue to serve Blackfriars Bridge, Smithfield and Kings Cross, but it runs direct via Mount Pleasant rather than via Grays Inn Road. It doesn’t serve Waterloo either, of course.
When I suggested, some years ago, that one of the routes between Waterloo and Ludgate Circus could be routed via Blackfriars Bridge instead of the dogleg over Waterloo Bridge I got the rather patronising response that passengers would find it “confusing”. There are, of course, innumerable other examples of services which take two different routes between A and B, (the 45/63 mentioned above being such an example) but I have yet to see many people get confused by this.
@ALEKS (2 December 2018 at 21:27) The timescales and route given in that document are pretty far off – what date was that consultation published? The scaffold stairs at Forest Gate were up for nearly 3 years, not the 5 months suggested (same with manor Park, with no end in sight)
@Graham F – indeed, if one is feeling energetic, the quickest way to KX from Waterloo is sometimes to walk via Theed Street and Hatfields to the stop in the Blackfriars Road and catch a 63. The main risk is the unreliability of the service
@Graham H
Or walk through Waterloo East and Southwark stations if its raining! Although by then you are actually quite close to the South Bank entrance to Blackfriars. Thameslink may be slow, but it would probably beat a 63 most days.
@Pincinator – The Crossrail consultation is the proposal that was laid out to the travelling public.
Stage 0 May 2015 was the takeover by TfL rail, 315 deep clean, new moquette, decals, and stations painted blue.
Stage 1 was the introduction of new trains in May 2017
The first 345 was delivered to Ilford in January 2017 and testing in service began in June.
17 units were proposed but 15 ordered. As of December 2018 there are 9 in service on Crossrail-Anglia.
The 315s have carried the bulk of the service being used harder for longer than planned. 19 from Eversholt should have retired before lease expiry on 19th Sep 2018.
The increase in capacity would come in Stage 4 the operation of full length 9 car trains scheduled for May 2019 which now might be May 2020.
A further stage ‘Six?’ is the replacement of 7 car trains in peak hours at Liverpool St also planned for 2020. The last 20 class 315s are leased until 14th Dec 2020 but will have accumulated much more mileage from additional off-peak working.
The use of 315s after lease agreements although scrap will surely be at a further cost to TfL.
Crossrail and Network Rail have renewed the permanent way and lengthened platforms. That work was completed and they have cleared away their sites, although a designed freight loop in old sidings has not been built. The scaffolding and hoardings are around TfL projects – toilet block drainage, lift shaft rebar foundations, footbridge enhancements, canopy repairs. The obstructions have reduced throughput capacity and still apply to most stations.
No rebranding (painting)is likely before station completion which presumably has been halted for funding. ORR patronage has held up despite closures, disruption, and capacity reduction.
@timbeau – you could indeed, although crossing the Blackfriars Rd is not a very welcoming prospect*…and the walk at KX is further. The ground level walking route has other risks, of course, such as passing Cook& Konditor.
* There is more work to be done (which is presently unfunded, of course) on improving the access at the S end of BFRS
@timbeau – on reflexion, the relative journey times door-to-door are surprisingly close. In-train is only 9 minutes, compared with in-bus times of 24 minutes, but there are additional walk times for train at either end – perhaps 5 minutes to walk on from the Blackfriars Rd bus stop to the S end of the station, and then probably around 10 minutes at the KX end. 24 minutes total plays 24 minutes total, more or less.
You don’t have to cross Blackfriars Road on the flat though – there’s an underpass at the south end of Balckfriars Bridge.
Does your 24 minutes for the bus include waiting time?
Neither trip includes waiting – o/p about 3 3/4 m for the 63 on average (8 bph), and somewhat less for the train. For the east end of Fleet Street, which is where this all started, the figures are probably even closer together – an 11 m bus trip plays 3m on the train, but with a tiresome walk from City TLK across Ludgate Circus; indeed, it would probably quicker to walk the whole way, which brings me back to the lack of a direct bus route…
My new wet weather route from Waterloo to the Ludgate Circus / St Pauls area (also when no Boris Bikes are available) , is to change at London Bridge – but if I am going to Kings Cross I change at Vauxhall
[Mod’s note: The link which follows will only work if you already have a subscription to the Financial Times, or are prepared to take out a “trial subscription”. The title of the article (the only part, it seems, which can be read free of charge), is “Crossrail set for further £1bn rescue as problems mount“. Other news sources may be available. Malcolm]
Not much Christmas cheer to be found amongst the latest news from Crossrail
https://www.ft.com/content/a4e79458-fbbe-11e8-ac00-57a2a826423e
Wasn’t today Elizabeth day, Adidas still had some ladies Elizabeth trainers this morning.
Not news although people have been keeping quiet for the past year.
Canary Wharf have a clause to recover their ‘contribution’ which seemed ‘improbable’.
http://www.cityam.com/270266/tfl-and-crossrail-pay-15m-canary-wharf-group-if-elizabeth
email from Crossrail chief executive Simon Wright reveals that TfL and Crossrail will have to pay the sum of £15m each year if the station at Canary Wharf is not completed by 31 December 2021.
On top of that obligation, there is also a “service commitment obligation”, which, if not met, leads to a liability which is capped at £15m per annum.
Each of the obligations are capped in the aggregate at £150m.
ftreport problems with signals, trains and stations. leading to “growing panic” among executives at TfL may not be ready until late 2020.
Berkeley Homes doing the build and fit-out Woolwich station does not have an agreement with TfL that contains any penalties for delays.
The completion of trains and signalling may be delayed until well into 2020 because they need to be tested together once the infrastructure is complete.
Former Labour MP Nick Raynsford is expected to be appointed as Crossrail’s deputy chairman. Tony Meggs, a former BP executive who runs the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, is a possible Crossrail chair.
KPMG said earlier this autumn that £1.3bn was needed to plug the capital hole.
Later this week Sadiq Khan is expected to set out various cuts to projects in the city to help.
For those unable to access the FT, this sentence may be of interest.
” A number of people close to the project now saying it may not be ready until late 2020.”
The FT does not name the sources they’ve talked to, but the FT tends to be thorough and cautious about publishing market sensitive information such as this.
Just to add to the two previous posts.
The Financial Times are leading with an article suggesting that Crossrail will need another £1bn bail out. The opening of the line is now rumoured to be back to possibly late 2020. Apparently the Mayor is to announce a series of cuts to TfL’s budget to try to finance the overspend. Nick Raynsford is in line to be Crossrail Deputy Chairman. KMPG are rumoured to be suggesting £1.3bn in total might be needed.
A formal announcement may emerge as soon as tomorrow (Monday 10/12). This explains why the TfL Business Plan has not been published in the papers for the next Finance Cttee – it’s probably being rewritten from start to finish. This is not good news at all and may end up being seriously damaging to the Mayor’s re-election prospects.
Does “opening late 2020” refer to central tunnel, or Shenfield through to Reading?
@ Taz – it’s not 100% clear what’s being referred to in the article *but* you could take it to mean just the core as the context is the problems with train / signalling software development and integration / testing. Clearly there are also the transition points at Stratford / Westbourne Park and also the Heathrow branch so whatever software is on the trains should, in theory, work with all systems and I assume that is what Crossrail are working to achieve. The core does, though, seem (I use that term with care) to be the biggest issue. I would hope that Crossrail are aiming to achieve an “all systems” signalling solution rather than just trying to get trains to work in the core first and then with other systems later on. I say this as a complete “non expert” – it just seems to me hugely risky to spread out the signalling software development and give yourself multiple phases to achieve with all the attendant risk.
As ever, happy to be corrected as detail is scant.
The relevant paragraph in the FT article has now been changed—it now says:
Not sure those two paragraphs make sense together any more, though…
I am incredibly depressed by all of this. Not “just” Crossrail, but almost every rail project in England & Wales seems to be running late & over-budget, sometimes horribly so.
This was the scenario in the early 1960’s which led to the Marples-Beeching “plan” & the determination of the Treasury never ever ( if at all possible) to spend any money at all on railways.
The fact that many road schemes are also late & over-budget seems not to impinge, unfortunately.
To quote another poster, some way back: “Someone needs to get a grip”
Greg Tingey,
I don’t know whether this is reassurance or not but it is symptomatic of a more complex modern world which is pushing technology all the time. It is harder to get things to work but when they ultimately do the benefits are much greater. It is also harder for the average person to understand what is actually happening.
The railways don’t actually stand out as especially bad. Numerous projects worldwide from a Finnish nuclear power station to the Tesla production line (until recently) have been ‘problematic’. And of course there is the example of Berlin Airport. In the UK we have rollout of Universal Credit and the bungling of installation of smart meters as examples.
Its not just infrastructure. Graham Feakins mentioned railways strikes causing havoc and other railway issues ending with ‘… but enough about Germany’.
At least we are still approaching most things on a rational basis in this country – unlike one other large world power.
Note: This is not an invitation to discuss universal credit, nuclear power stations or any other off-topic issue. I merely wanted to illustrate to Greg it is not just railways and not just the UK.
A very similar article is available to read without paywall concerns at
https://myzikk.com/2018/12/09/crossrail-set-for-further-1bn-rescue-as-problems-mount/
@ Lawyerboy – Clearly those paragraphs are partly speculative. The reference to Bond St aligns with a public comment about its expected completion date being Spring next year. That’s no great surprise – Sir Terry Morgan has said in public session that Bond St has been a difficult site for a long time. A recent Crossrail document explaining remaining works at Whitechapel sets out clearly what is left to do between now and next Spring. Again Whitechapel being behind the times is not news. The latest Crossrail Update in TfL papers also referenced that test train running was unlikely to start until the New Year. That was a rare piece of new info in Crossrail Update papers given they’ve basically said nothing for months.
Given there have been several postponements to enhanced test running in the core tunnels I can understand why there is a great deal of concern about further slippage and its impact. There are also continued references in TfL updates to work in the tunnels being incomplete but no detail as to what isn’t finished. I am surprised about this as a lot of past Crossrail publicity has focussed on the track, cabling and lighting works in the tunnels progressing well. The other unknown is if station systems are complete, work properly and are able to communicate with and be controlled by whatever overall management system Crossrail has bought. So I wouldn’t necessarily say the article is “wrong”, more that people are being understandably cautious and a little vague.
@ Greg – I’m disappointed things are late with Crossrail but not exactly surprised. I don’t view it as negatively as you do – partly because of what PoP has said. The other factor is that use of public transport in London is in a different place to where it was in the 60s. There are growing national concerns about air pollution which is gaining political importance with voters. Furthermore there is a lot more pressure to defend and improve railways across the country and there is more political support for them. While I can see Crossrail 2 being imperiled for a whole load of reasons I don’t see the railways having a second Beeching being done to them. It’s not politically viable.
@Stewart – thanks for the site, useful now OldGoogleNews is gone, it offered up another link
“a cultural disinclination to communicate bad news” to their bosses.
Organisations must identify their cynics, curmudgeons and naysayers and give them more of a voice. Hiring “can do” team members is all very well. But if nobody says “can’t do” when it becomes obvious the job really cannot be done, even the smartest sounding strategy risks derailment.
https://myzikk.com/2018/12/10/organisations-must-give-more-of-a-voice-to-their-naysayers/
WW
I do hope you & PoP are correct, but – I forgot to mention, that there was an attempt to halt the WCML electrification in the mid-60’s at either Crewe or Rugby – to save money – which looks like the ignorant & uniformed anti-rail speculation around HS2.
As for not politically viable – well I’m afraid that, at present, 29th March 2019 is a “Singularity” beyond which we cannot see. [ Especially since on the roads, diesels are bad, but on the railways they are good, since further electrification, in England at any rate, seems to have been banned. ]
It’s looking like a very good day to bury bad news…
Greg. I suspect everyone visiting this site is disappointed about the delay. But for context, I prefer the emphasis putting safety first when performing incredibly complex integration tasks. Contrast the UK rail safety mindset with the rush for self driving vehicles, which appear to be being tested on public roads in the USA. I was just reading about a crash where the Tesla “autopilot” software drove a car at 70mph into a barrier (sadly killing the driver – I use that word cautiously as this chap was clearly trusting the autopilot software totally and not paying attention to the road). This seemingly came about because the software was only reacting to moving objects (other cars) in the lanes ahead and was not programmed to react to a stationary object (concrete barrier).
That said, given what we are now hearing about Crossrail I’m baffled how anyone could – hand on heart – have announced back in July that everything was on target for December this year.
I do sense the hand of a new chief executive giving himself maximum wriggle room. A new CEO has roundly 100 days to endorse or distance himself from past decisions. This is the benefit of a new person. That person is not associated/tarred with past and, with hindsight, poor decisions.
I hope this is now a case up under-promise and over-deliver?
For me the big issue this raises is what the Treasury makes of it all.
It’s clearly an opportunity to ratchet up the amount allowed for “optimism bias”, in order to make projects (and thus capital spending) less attractive.
Taking account of the Crossrail 1 outturn and the points made above about “safety first” and “things are complex these days” what contingency should one apply to Crossrail2 projections to achieve a good level of certainty around delivery; 50% ? 75% ? more?
And how much credence should the Treasury now put on HS2 budget predictions?
One fears the railways may be in for tough times ahead….
@ Island Dweller – I’ve been having a dip into a few of the weekly Mayoral Updates on Crossrail as they’re now online. I know hindsight is a great thing but I am a little staggered by what I’ve read in some of them. I won’t go into detail as Mr Bull has said he’s pulling an article together for publication later this week and I don’t want to cut across that. I’m not an engineer nor an operator but do have 25+ plus years of railway experience. I’m amazed that alarm bells were not going off at City Hall – assuming they understood what they were reading or were getting proper feedback from the TfL reps on the Crossrail board. It was looking decidedly ropey on some activities in Feb and May this year and positively awful in July. It’s also interesting that the usual agony of getting proper operating and maintenance documentation from suppliers has manifested itself on Crossrail as has the related assurance activities. I’d have hoped this lesson had been learnt a *long* time ago and appropriately mitigated on Crossrail.
PeterW. If projects on average come in at x% over budget then the sensible thing for the funder to do is budget for the announced cost +x%. If the project team can convincingly demonstrate they have learnt from previous projects and either raised the quote appropriately or have a proven way to reduce overrun then the funder could reduce the x% if they think it credible.
OF course not so simple but at the moment certain types of project in particular are not delivering to time and budget so it would be silly not to account for that in future budgeting.
Will be interesting to see what Mayor Burnham makes of Mayor Khan getting a government backed bail out. Rightly or wrongly this will play very badly oop north.
Isn’t Crossrail just back up to the original budget, before it was “value engineered”, now ?
And, to underscore PoP’s comment about it not just being railways (rather than jumping off topic, honest) – the BDUK (Broadband Delivery UK) Phase 2 project in Devon & Somerset has just, errr, hit the buffers too. Almost all delivery dates for each area now set to “TBC”. Carillion going under has proved to be a handy whipping boy, but of course it’s more complex than that.
Gigaclear aren’t the common denominator in the problems that are there nationwide, either.
PeterW. Understand your concern about the Treasury using this delay as an excuse to curb rail investment. One hopes they apply equal standards when reviewing road projects… Example – The A1 upgrade (Leeming Bar to Scotch Corner) opened earlier this year was a year late – and that didn’t require any tunnels to be dug or new software to be integrated.
@ CVM – what “bail out”? London has been saddled with the entire cost of the overrun barring the DfT covering Network Rail’s extra costs for the “on network works”. The announcement today is about £100m from the GLA that was earmarked for other initiatives that won’t happen now. All the rest is a loan facility which is to repaid via the Crossrail levy and Community Infrastructure levy (CIL). Again this imperils other works – the Crossrail levy was extended to fund CR2 but will now continue for years just covering CR1’s extra costs. I assume the use of CIL monies will have an opportunity cost in that whatever it would have been spent on won’t happen or be pushed many years into the future. The other missing factor in all this is TfL’s revenue projections and how that will affect their ability to remove the current huge deficit. The only way that is covered is if the Mayor puts fares up or we get more cuts to services and more projects cancelled. In short more pain for users of London’s transport system. If the current Mayor was considering a further fares freeze past 2020 he’s just had that idea squashed. He is going to be very strongly criticised for the state of TfL’s finances and the borrowing legacy which will stretch for many years beyond 2020.
I don’t see that “up north” has lost anything. London is saddled with the bill. If anything what has happened here is perhaps massively instructive for Mr Burnham about how the government would treat Greater Manchester if it was to embark on its own Crossrail scheme. I don’t see that Greater Manchester’s rate payers or passengers have forked out anything special or extra in respect of recent and ongoing national rail improvements in their area. Yes they needed the investment but it’s not being locally funded. I recognise that Metrolink and some road schemes have had an element of local borrowing to fund them as part of a previous devolution settlement.
Today’s £2.15bn seems to be the sum from KPMG’s analysis to complete Stage2. I have not seen anything about surface station rebuilds. Any ideas about that amount and TfL’s share assuming some is Network Rail?
They now have the funding model issuing bonds based on CR2’s infrastructure levy but more significantly they have time to complete the infrastructure alongside service introduction.
Some platforms have barely space for one person between the blue hoardings and the yellow safety line. Surely the Railway Inspector would not sanction 200m trains on safety grounds, imagine a trial evacuation.
Aleks,
Some platforms have barely space for one person between the blue hoardings and the yellow safety line.
Where are you talking about? And what length? Is it the entire platform or just a short section? Presumably if the station is being evacuated and no trains are running then there is no requirement to have passengers stay behind the yellow safety line.
Seven Kings, Manor Park, Forest Gate are poor in the sections boarded for enhancement. The Islands used to have circulation around structures but suicide fencing prevents that. Shepherds Bush was challenged over too narrow platforms so there is a safety issue.
My point was more about the ability to synchronise service and infrastructure completion.
The capacity reductions were temporary but it’s been three years already and could be three more. With the cost of renting portakabins, scaffolding, hoardings, equipment, security it would almost pay for completion of some more straightforward sites.
The major spend I expect will be Romford, Ilford, and West Ealing with extensive rebuilds though some of the new footbridges seem to have become extensive engineering projects. I was enquiring about scale as I can’t grasp if it’s material in today’s context. Could these builds have been funded from Stage 2 cashflow, seems unlikely.
I drove out to Shenfield and Harold Wood which look finished from a superficial survey. Chadwell Heath was described as complete but has silly blemishes like the unrestored canopy. I imagine it was left so that it could be painted purple once repaired, seems like a lost opportunity not to have done so while the scaffolding was there.
Aleks,
Thanks for the info. I believe even hoardings have to have some sort of approval. There should be a licence attached to them somewhere. Sometimes they have to do mitigating action. When we had hoardings at East Croydon they were accompanied by yellow hatched lines on the platform and ‘do not wait in this area’ notices. Hence my question as to the length of the hoardings.
@ Aleks
I believe that the works on the existing Network Rail sections are funded entirely separately to the central core works. That is certainly the impression you get from the reports and the Board minutes released yesterday. Whether they are also running behind and over budget is a different matter…
CvM 10 December 2018 at 20:57
” will play very badly oop north.”
What should be playing “very badly oop north” is the 2 years+ delay in approving remodelling Manchester Oxford Road for longer platforms and constructing two additional through platforms at Manchester Piccadilly.
Enhancing signalling of the Castlefield corridor to the same standard as the Thameslink Core, which Chris Grayling has commented about, cannot offer a solution to station dwell times and longer trains.
BBC Northwest last night stated that London’s Crossrail was getting a further £1.3bn on the same day that the electrification across to Leeds was cancelled. That’s how things get reported “up north”. (I wonder how it feeds into feelings about Brexit…)
@pop, correct. There were now worn out hatching, plus zip tie safety labels, announcements, even staff marshalling sometimes.
@Herned – still a separate stalled project. It’s all labelled Crossrail so maybe the NAO look will focus minds.
Architects are redesigning Ilford again saying it will be quicker & cheaper as parts to be manufactured off site.
All this will be 100s of £m. Harold Wood had blocks in the car park so maybe their footbridge had not been started. There’s no reference source just local experience.
My Thameslink experience last night was back to Bus replacement, Elstree station now demolished. Interesting comparison between the 2, for a while it looked like Crossrail was ahead.
Having had a look in Thursday’s TFL Finance committee, the revised TFL Business Plan (http://content.tfl.gov.uk/fc-20181213-item07-tfl-business-plan-approval.pdf) says:
” While we are planning to follow the roll-out of new trains on the Piccadilly line with new signalling … such large-scale investment will not be possible without [funding from Government].
We will therefore be discontinuing the current procurement while we work with suppliers to find the best way forward. These pressures have a similar effect on major station projects, including the work to transform Camden Town station. ”
Looks like the first two projects have been cut/deferred/delayed – whatever adjective you prefer…
I’m amused by the thought that the North thinks it’ll do better after Brexit.
Would put good odds on better links between Cambridge, Oxford and London, though. Where else do cabinet members want to go?
Whilst it now seems clear that “optimism bias” led to promises which have proved to be non-deliverable in funding and timescale I would like to hope that as CR1 will necessarily succeed at creating signalling which integrates with other offerings that, should CR2 finally get the go-ahead whist we are still in a similar generation of software, that that cross-manufacturer integration work will have been completed to a ‘black box’ stage where it just works without further special effort.
My comments about Manchester / oop north is more about perception than fact. Whilst we know the facts the perception is often different and, when forming opinion of voters, more influential.
You only have to look at various internet forums where fact is a little less sacred then here to see lots of complaints already that the loan to London is prioritized above needed investment through the Castlefield corridor.
@ Pop / Aleks – Yes all hoardings have to be approved, licensed and managed in an appropriate way. If conditions were “dangerous” then surely the station would be closed or entry to it would be restricted to contain risks? I don’t doubt the Shenfield line platforms get very busy in the peaks, especially mornings but the only place I’ve ever seen restrictions be imposed is at Ilford and usually when the Central Line is on strike. In short the congestion risk is clearly being managed during the station works.
Having looked at a few of the papers that are now on line I’ve spotted the following.
– a plan at one point to descope works at Ilford completely. I assume this is down to costs. However it was recognised that it would be untenable not to improve one of the busiest stations and also for it not to be accessible. I assume an alternative has been put forward.
– there are clear cost pressures for the “on network works” (ONW) that Network Rail are carrying out. DfT carry the risk for these works. The funding provision was exceeded and, as we know, later increased.
– Following on from the previous point it seems that the costs for the western stations remain a significant problem despite them being rescoped and retendered. The last Mayoral weekly report that was published indicates yet more descoping, possible repricing and delays beyond December 2019. It also cites “significant concern from local authorities if there are more design changes”. Mild understatement there I think. Apparently NR are doing footbridge works over the upcoming festive break. I assume getting overbridge structures for accessibility works into place is highly dependent on possessions so NR don’t want to waste an opportunity.
While the core stations (barring C Wharf) are clearly not finished (none were at 100% complete in late August) I suspect they are in better overall shape than some of the ONW stations.
One other puzzle that I can’t work out is that the weekly reports clearly reference a software version 7.3 from Bombardier that would allow 345s to run into the Heathrow tunnel. This seems completely separate from the previously reported “cascade dependent” work sequence to allow 345s to run. Version 7.3 has been delayed by the need to resolve bugs in a version for the core signalling. A fix was due in October this year to allow 345s to reach Heathrow but it had gone back to Feb 2019 in the last published report. Where it is now I’ve no idea at all as TfL have published no reports after August 2018 – presumably because they are too contentious vis a vis delay events / excess costs etc.
@ Alison W – CR2, if it ever happens, will almost certainly be using different trains and different signalling to what exists now. It may be 30 years before it opens and you can guarantee things will be different but probably not simpler or less complex by then. I very much doubt that there would be a common “digital” system on the existing routes north and south of the Thames that would work seamlessly with whatever is on the CR2 tunnel section. There would also be significant route reconstruction on the West Anglia main line necessitating significant signalling changes. This assumes that whatever the scope of CR2 ends up being actually includes through running on to the West Anglia route.
I’m getting the impression that a lot of problems are down to incompatible, inevitably changing, electronic systems. What is needed are optical interfaces: a robot driver that ‘sees’ signals, and trains that report their position to sensors optically rather than electronically (barcoded) – eliminating all electronic interfaces. Maybe for CR2? What would be the drawbacks?
Yes, computer systems, their complexity and their interfaces do seem to be behind many of the problems. But using optical means to collect and transmit the information would not help. The computers which process the information would be just as complex. A broken relationship cannot be fixed by the couple deciding to communicate in French instead of in English.
@ RogerB
The trains receive information directly via radio at present, so you are adding a further level of complexity by adding any optical link. Furthermore what would drive the messaging system for the trains to receive? Unless you are suggesting lots of signal boxes then the answer is electronics, so you are back to square one. This is what ETCS is supposed to solve, so there will be one standard type of signalling with compatible equipment from all manufacturers.
Optical systems (bar codes) suffer from mud and dirt obscuring lenses and barcodes. Heavy rain obscures the view nicely as well.
Cameras also have a nasty habit of “failing unsafe” where the image freezes without any notification to the operator that live pictures are no longer being transmitted. This means that if the camera fails it would always show that there was nothing in front of the sensor even when there is something there. Lots of money has been invested into cameras and encoders which “fail safe” but they aren’t cheap off-the-shelf items.
Re: RogerB – one of the prime drivers behind the new generation of signalling systems is the removal of equipment from the lineside, thereby reducing the risks and costs inherent in their maintenance. As Bob points out, your proposal risks increasing maintenance activity, even compared to existing non-ETCS signalling practice.
Thank you all for comments.
Malcolm: But if one system is saying ‘maison’ and the other only understands ‘house’, maybe communication would be improved if a pictogram of a house was used instead.
Herned: except that ETCS doesn’t seem to be solving it.
Bob: but at least it’s easy to wipe it clean.
Balthazar: that’ll be fine when we reach ETCS nirvana, but at present retro-fitting seems to be unaffordable, particularly when commissioning costs are included.
Finally, what guarantee do we have that ETCS will remain compatible over the lifetime of UK signalling and rolling stock? You can still read a 1974 bar code but my PC can’t run software more than about 10 years old.
@ROGERB – The final short range ETCS radio communications between track balise and train antenna are the least of the problems in the new technology and are actually proven to be very reliable indeed, as no doubt is the similar technology used in the core area signalling. Balise technology is analogous to RFID communication and is now a very mature technology. The Eurobalises themselves are also extremely robust items, certainly much more so than delicate TPWS loops. As radio devices they can also transmit dynamic, changing information as well as static passive data, perhaps difficult for an optical systems, and there is no light path to be kept scrupulously clean and grafitti free. I believe there are far more complex system integration issues at play with this project, not least some compatibility issues between old and existing technologies that may severely constrain the timing and sequence of certain installation and testing and commissioning activities. Once projects timescales begin to slip like this it can become increasingly difficult to reschedule such activities in a coherent order as many suppliers may have been able to design and manufacture systems on time but have been unable to fully deliver and commission due to dependencies on other uncompleted work. Their expensive specialists involved in final installation and commissioning have usually moved on to other projects elsewhere, so expect an ongoing and increasingly acrimonious climate of claims and counterclaims relating to material storage, overtime, travelling expenses, additional staff and training, not to mention demands for stage payments for work that has not yet been fully accepted. It’s no wonder project managers claim the last 10% of a project requires 90% of the effort!
@ Roger B
The fundamental question you need to consider is how do you display any messages via any means that are as foolproof and failsafe as possible, without a massively complicated electrical/computing system of some nature? I would suggest that you can’t