First win Intercity West Coast franchise

[WatcherZero]

The new Secretary of State for Transport (Patrick McLoughlin) is due before the TSC on Wednesday 12 September at 1405 (with chief mandarin).
This was a pre-arranged session, but was referred to by chair Louise Ellman in her request to defer the WC franchise award.

This is DfT-wide of course, and while half the committee will want to debate the WC fiasco, the other half will want to talk about Heathrow and airports policy.
Plenty of scope to avoid difficult questions...
In any case, they will not be harsh on a new boy in his first session.

I dont know, its one of the few opposition controlled committees (theres a quota system over how many committes are government controlled and how many opposition controlled), 5 labour (including chair and chairs deciding vote) 5 Conservative, 1 Lib Dem.

 

[Pen Mill]

I'm completely confused by all this now.
Has the judicial review been completed .If not isn't the Select Committee Enquiry cutting completely accross this ?

 

[WatcherZero]

No, the Judicial review is still in progress. This is Parliament investigating the claims.

 

[Pen Mill]

No, the Judicial review is still in progress. This is Parliament investigating the claims.

Why ? they are rendering the judicial review null & void.
How much is this sham costing me ?

 

[WillPS]

Branson claims the Pendolino was Virgin's idea.

*cough*APT*cough*

 

[jimm]

I dont know, its one of the few opposition controlled committees (theres a quota system over how many committes are government controlled and how many opposition controlled), 5 labour (including chair and chairs deciding vote) 5 Conservative, 1 Lib Dem.

How is a committee with six MPs from the coalition parties and five from Labour 'opposition-controlled'? Just because the chair is a Labour MP does not mean she 'controls' it.

 

[jon0844]

Branson claims the Pendolino was Virgin's idea.

*cough*APT*cough*

He should get a job at Apple.

 

[jimm]

Why ? they are rendering the judicial review null & void.
How much is this sham costing me ?

They are not rendering the judicial review null and void. The select committee has absolutely no power whatever over the franchising process. They can write a report about their findings. That's all, No-one has to pay a blind bit of notice to a word of it, especially not the judge.

 

[WatcherZero]

How is a committee with six MPs from the coalition parties and five from Labour 'opposition-controlled'? Just because the chair is a Labour MP does not mean she 'controls' it.

The chair allows or rejects subjects, sets the agenda and controls the line of questioning, your assuming the 6 can all agree which rarely happens even with just one party as each has different constituents, ideologies and interests.

Pretty damning, Virgin sent the Dft a list questions and asked for feedback on both theirs and Firsts bids, the only response they have had back is two pages of A4. Dft assessed the public risk of Virgins bid at just £40m while Firsts bid was assesed as £200m risk to the public, Virgin are arguing that if you plug the figures from Firsts shareholder briefing in the risk should be £600m. First are also predicting by the end of the franchise they will be carrying more people on the service than the maximum capacity of the entire fleet! I.e. Over 100% capacity utilisation on every train.

First are now up, they say they based their projections of future growth on the WCML on past performance of the TPE franchise.

'We dont care if the passengers dont materialise in the early years because we are paying less in franchise payments (than Virgin)' - What about the later years eh First?

now First are getting muddled over their fares policy, they dont know how fast unregulated fares will rise and 'Its not a fare increase, its a choice to pay more'.

Now hes actually boasting that its a good thing theyve backended the payments, 'Theres no limit on how much we can grow'

'Our bid isnt five times as risky, its just that you require 5x the capital to offset the risk of our bid'

 

[F Great Eastern]

Nice they could be bothered to spell Vernon Barker's name right.

 

[WatcherZero]

'Our deliverability scores were close, very close, about 40 to 60' - Thats a 50% score difference!

He obvisouly doesnt understand the British audience, theyve repeatedly asked him to say he would resign if he failed, to put his position on the line, and hes refused, their getting quite annoyed at his evasion.

 

[Nym]

Hang on, TPE has a similar customer base to VT, what planet does this guy live on?

FTPE Also has a step change in quality on their side of growth where ICWC will not.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Two observations:
a) Martin Griffiths FD of Stagecoach was on the Virgin panel and fully supports the legal action
b) the HoC dimwits have Vernon Barker's name card shown as "Baker" and he was just addressed as such by the chair. How disrespectful.

 

[WillPS]

Hang on, TPE has a similar customer base to VT, what planet does this guy live on?

FTPE Also has a step change in quality on their side of growth where ICWC will not.

All TPE services operate through Manchester. His comment to me reads that they got Mancunians on TransPennine trains.

Same with Blackpool, I assume.

 

[WatcherZero]

First have only been able to secure the £190m loan guarentee for three years. Thats a pretty bad banking facility, normally you would have a facility from a consortium of banks that lasted the length of the franchise, Are first having cash troubles?

 

[Nym]

But it's a completely different user base to the ICWC services, and like I said, they've had new trains with a step change in service to aid growth, this will not be the case for the ICWC service.

 

[SkinnyDave]

Place the slanging match aside..

They are right to be questioned on the risk of the bid especially after the East Coast fiasco. First getting a harder time in my opinion

 

[WatcherZero]

First have contradicted themselves, initially they claimed if they put their numbers into the risk assessment they got the same value as the Dft. Now their claiming their own risk assessment showed £0 risk and not the £190m the Government asked for, theyve also just revealed they negotiated £15m off this figure and it was originally £205m.

 

[WillPS]

Tim O'Toole rightly points out that Virgin would have faced exactly the same reality as NXEC did.

 

[WatcherZero]

First have said they require seat occupancy of 50% to break even, 10% higher than they have achieved on TPE and 15% higher than on FGW.

O' Toole 'Will the trains be crowded at the end of the franchise? Yes, thats why we need HS2.'

 

[WillPS]

But it's a completely different user base to the ICWC services, and like I said, they've had new trains with a step change in service to aid growth, this will not be the case for the ICWC service.

New trains, new routes, substantially improved trains, more attractive options for business travellers (since most businesses have banned 1st class - at present many drive rather than travel standard, the intermediate class will redress that)...

 

[Pen Mill]

First have said they require seat occupancy of 50% to break even, 10% higher than they have achieved on TPE and 15% higher than on FGW.

O' Toole 'Will the trains be crowded at the end of the franchise? Yes, thats why we need HS2.'

45 on FGW and 50 on TPE is what I heard.

 

[jon0844]

Did First just get asked about buying walk-up fares, with the assumption that nobody would ever buy one?

Imagine if everything was based on advance ticket sales!

 

[WillPS]

I think FirstGroup defended themselves rather well.

 

[tbtc]

The hate for Branson if frankly an alarmingly demonstratable example of people hating a winner and loving the underdog, hes a self made man and for some people thats a living example of their own personal failures and jealousies breeding irrational disdain

Thanks for pigeon-holing me, just because I don't buy in to the whole "Virgin saved the railway" story

How does this differ substantially from what First have announced they will/would do?

It differs greatly in that Virgin would apparently be able to do all of this without increasing the fleet size - First would require a net increase in the number of trains whilst Virgin can apparently run all these new services with the same number of trains as they have now (albeit six coach EMUs replacing five coach DMUs)

 

[WatcherZero]

I think FirstGroup defended themselves rather well.

Questioning was harder, the committee members verbally said they were getting annoyed at his twisting of words, accused him of talking like a politician and kept getting him to reverse his position with sustained questioning. It may not have been as bad as your average PMQ's but I cant say First did well.

 

[WatcherZero]

Roll on the Judicial Review is all I can say, on this performance the Dft are going to lose it.

 

[jon0844]

He said only 21% of people buy walkup fares.

Given the prices, isn't that quite a lot?

I wonder who these people mainly consist of? Business people forced to pay top dollar for last-minute minutes and the need for flexibility, or ordinary people who are - also for the need for flexibility - forced to pay the top rate?

And if the rates were lowered at all, would it increase the sales of walk up fares?

It was nice to hear that First admitted rail usage might be sufficiently high in the last two years that it proved HS2 needed to be built. Clearly if either Virgin or First made a real success of the WCML then you'd expect usage to reach a point where you needed to add more rolling stock or capacity - and that effectively means HS2 without doing a lot of work on the existing route.

Maybe Virgin will claim HS2 isn't needed because it will always cope somehow!

I still think Virgin should have graciously accepted defeat and then put in a killer bid for the ECML, or indeed push the need for HS2 and offer to invest in that somehow. Virgin is still a great and powerful brand, but let's not pretend SRB is some timid little boy that is being bullied and needs everyone to help him out. He's now bigger and more powerful than most.

 

[WatcherZero]

Given the prices, isn't that quite a lot?

I wonder who these people mainly consist of? Business people forced to pay top dollar for last-minute minutes and the need for flexibility, or ordinary people who are - also for the need for flexibility - forced to pay the top rate?

And if the rates were lowered at all, would it increase the sales of walk up fares?

He claimed 40-80% of people/passengers surveyed were only aware of the standard rate and didnt know about discounted or advance fares, to me that seems rather high, especielly if only 21% of people are actually using them.

 

[F Great Eastern]

He already said right at the start that their average revenue per passenger would rise through the introduction of the new class and he expects people to choose to pay higher fares.

We were talking about advance fares no????

Nice of you to change the subject though.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

He claimed 40-80% of passengers were only aware of the standard rate and didnt know about discounted or advance fares, to me that seems rather high, especielly if only 21% of people are actually using them.

Go look at a single article about the railways in the UK and every article quotes the highest anytime fare. I believe he said the word people, not passengers which is a huge difference.