Petition calling for continued investment in electrification

[jayah]

I'm sure the answer will be along the lines of "no, we should wait until {thisyear+3} for mega batteries and hyperloop". It always is.

Back in the real world and electric bus did 1,100 miles on a single 660KwH charge. The technology to replace diesel on most urban and suburban duties already exists.

 

[jayah]

Well, that would be a reasonable argument, had MML electrification been paused, rather than cancelled.

It was cancelled because it meant spending £1bn on a saving of 1 minute of journey time!

 

[jayah]

I have to agree with (and have often thought) the rolling electrification programme. It is the stop-start nature of projects, with teams being formed and disbanded that is very inefficient. Time and knowledge are lost every time this is done. And contractors have to factor in extra cost (i.e. charge a higher price) to allow for the uncertainty.

Far simpler and more efficient to:
- define an amount (e.g. 200 miles) of double track that there is budget to be electrified per year. On the wild guess that that is £10m per mile on average (depends on track complexity, signalling, bridges and tunnels etc) that would be £2bn per annum
- commit to this as part of control periods, with a forward view always for 5 years
- work with one, two or three partners (to be decided) to deliver this, with each providing their own team and able to make a fair return. Put appropriate incentives in play, but don't try and transfer all the risk of huge schemes onto smaller entities that can't manage (or insure against) this risk. With long term commitment on both sides you get a fairer price (for everyone) and should get a better result
- have a defined end goal for the programme (e.g. certain lines completed) after which it can be reduced in scope (or stopped)

Over 10 years you would get 2,000 miles of electrification, which would cover the GWR mainlines, CrossCountry, MML, TransPennine (all routes), Chiltern, various urban networks (Cardiff, Manchester, Bristol), and some secondary lines.

Obviously there are related challenges (infrastructure changes, rolling stock, etc.) but that's part of an overall strategy (assuming someone writes one), and it doesn't drive the general presumption that electrification is a good thing, should be done as part of a national plan, and shouldn't be constantly stopped / started according to issues with Network Rail, franchising, government, rolling stock plans generally etc.

The way we are going at the moment things will take so long to be improved that it will be pointless.

But what would all this effort get you, besides 2,000 miles of wire?

Cardiff - Swansea was cancelled because it was the same trains on the same track working to the same timetable. You just couldn't justify £400m for an infinitesimally small improvement in air quality.

 

[D365]

Right, because there aren't any benefits beyond saving time and air quality...

 

[jayah]

Right, because there aren't any benefits beyond saving time and air quality...

They don't scrape the surface of £400m.

 

[jayah]

How about a petition calling for people who are so heavily in favour of road transport to explain why they spend their time on rail forums opposing any form of investment in the railways?

This isn't North Korea.

 

[squizzler]

Jayah's makes a good point, in a roundabout way. For a petition on electrification to gain traction, it needs to appeal to that vast demographic who have still to get a clue and start riding trains. If we focus on, as I suggested earlier, a petition to improve the environmental quality of line side communities, rather than a nebulous package of benefits or train users, we might start getting the public buy-in needed to be taken seriously.

Lets face it, the petition has not exactly gone viral in its current form

 

[bastien]

I wasn't making a point about the cost of the bridge, I am trying to impress upon you why the road network is so important and why road schemes have far greater BCRs - because FAR more people use the roads.

I don't understand what point you were making about this silly £2m signage scheme.

Lovely to know what point you were trying to make.
Didn't answer the question though, did you?

 

[squizzler]

Around 1990 a Labour local councillor in the far west of Cornwall started a petition to electrify the railway line between Penzance and Plymouth. He got a lot of publicity locally and a lot of signatures, given the population of the area. When the councillor brought copies of his petition to my bookshop expecting me to agree to display it for signatures, etc, he was surprised when I refused, until I explained my reasons, namely that electrifying the line to Plymouth and then expecting people travelling longer distances (i.e. the vast majority) to change to diesel would achieve absolutely nothing timewise or anythingelsewise. In fact, it would be an absolute nightmare, but he wasn't interested in my arguments, he just wanted re-election (he had no job and lived on 'expenses') which he duly achieved until his comparatively early death.

This illustrates the point I was trying to make in my previous post. Your councillor's petition assumed that electrification would benefit the local community (more visitors to the area, better access to jobs and markets, environmental credentials perhaps). Busaholic's desire for quantitative proof of the benefit of electrification to rail travellers represents that typical of the forum. No doubt we can all individually decide whether he was right or wrong to decline putting his name to the petition in that instance.

Unfortunately the technical merits of electrification perhaps don't resonate with the greater public, but a stronger local economy, better access to jobs and markets, and a cleaner environment probably would.

Now imagine that your councillor was joined by those in Exeter, Bristol, Swansea (just using the GWR system as example) all gathering signatures for the same petition calling for GWR electrification to enhance the economic connectivity to members of their communities. Surely we would easily get over the parliamentary debate threshold!

 

[47802]

Interesting

Around 1990 a Labour local councillor in the far west of Cornwall started a petition to electrify the railway line between Penzance and Plymouth. He got a lot of publicity locally and a lot of signatures, given the population of the area. When the councillor brought copies of his petition to my bookshop expecting me to agree to display it for signatures, etc, he was surprised when I refused, until I explained my reasons, namely that electrifying the line to Plymouth and then expecting people travelling longer distances (i.e. the vast majority) to change to diesel would achieve absolutely nothing timewise or anythingelsewise. In fact, it would be an absolute nightmare, but he wasn't interested in my arguments, he just wanted re-election (he had no job and lived on 'expenses') which he duly achieved until his comparatively early death.

Well some on here seem to think that Diesel Bi-modes are the work of Satan but seems to me they will reduce considerably the amount of Diesel Under the Wires mileage, many also don't like the idea of discontinuous electrification either, well perhaps in the case of the Core TPE route its not so great, but the current context now electrifying Plymouth to Penzance may not be a bad idea, your already getting the Bi-modes for IC services while the new Local Plymouth Penzance Service could go over to EMU's in that situation, of course how good the Business case might be in the context of many other possible scheme's might be debatable.

My own view of any further Electrification is that it should concentrate more on shorter distance Mainline Scheme's such as TPE Core, useful Fill In schemes, and Commuter Lines out of the Big Cites rather than the Long Distance IC routes.

 

[Flying Phil]

Interesting



My own view of any further Electrification is that it should concentrate more on shorter distance Mainline Scheme's such as TPE Core, useful Fill In schemes, and Commuter Lines out of the Big Cites rather than the Long Distance IC routes.

So we agree that commuting Kettering to Leicester..... to Nottingham .....to Sheffield is Ok to go electric.....sometime.

 

[B&I]

This isn't North Korea.

How stonkingly original. Any more gems from My Little Book of Right Wing Cliches? Or even any response to the actual point raised?

 

[deltic08]

I suppose the answer would be electric cars against polluting ancient diesel trains hence the need to continue electrification.
K

That is a misconception. Even the Government has been taken in by it. The biggest pollutant is not exhaust emissions but is tyre wear dust, over half a million tons of it from 50m tyres annually.
Electric cars still produce tyre wear dust. This dust becomes airborne from traffic vortices and is small enough to drift miles. If particle size is 10 microns and less, it is then inhaled to the deepest parts of the lung and causes circulation problems leading to pulmonary and cardiac disease. It is also carcinogenic and mutatogenic due to carbon black in the rubber. Electric cars are not the answer to air pollution particularly in towns and cities and roads with a speed limit above 40mph where wear rates are the highest.
Buses and lorries are the most polluting as being heavy vehicles, tyre wear is far greater.

 

[deltic08]

Have signed your petition.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

I just signed it.

Have you thought about pushing it on social media and the press, concentrating on the environmental angle?

 

[deltic08]

Top tip. If you are going to get on your high horse about road pollution, it's probably best not to mention (on the Class 800 mega-thread - https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/class-800.100841/page-227#post-3325726) that you've been driving "a lot" from Yorkshire to London/Scotland for the past few years just because you don't like Richard Branson.

You are quite right. My contempt for Branson and Soutar far outweighs my concern for the environment.
"A lot" is relative. I travelled to London and Edinburgh by train more than any other journey by train. I only travelled 1,500 miles by car annually as my daily commute was a 9 minute walk. I only travel 4,000 miles annually by car now. Hardly a major polluter considering the average annual mileage is 9,000. In fact I am subsiding all those who do more miles than myself including possibly yourself tbtc,.
I have always felt that road tax should be put on road fuel so that that those who do more mileage pay for it. It would also get those who evade paying road tax. It would make rail fares more comparable with road usage per journey.

 

[Busaholic]

This illustrates the point I was trying to make in my previous post. Your councillor's petition assumed that electrification would benefit the local community (more visitors to the area, better access to jobs and markets, environmental credentials perhaps). Busaholic's desire for quantitative proof of the benefit of electrification to rail travellers represents that typical of the forum. No doubt we can all individually decide whether he was right or wrong to decline putting his name to the petition in that instance.

Unfortunately the technical merits of electrification perhaps don't resonate with the greater public, but a stronger local economy, better access to jobs and markets, and a cleaner environment probably would.

Now imagine that your councillor was joined by those in Exeter, Bristol, Swansea (just using the GWR system as example) all gathering signatures for the same petition calling for GWR electrification to enhance the economic connectivity to members of their communities. Surely we would easily get over the parliamentary debate threshold!

As I've always been prone to having my views misunderstood because they're rarely black and white, can I just say that I'm very much in favour in principle of rail electrification. I grew up with trams (yes, really!), trolleybuses and the Southern Electric and I regard electric traction as much superior to anything else BUT new schemes come at great cost and they have to be done properly.

 

[47802]

How about a petition calling for people who are so heavily in favour of road transport to explain why they spend their time on rail forums opposing any form of investment in the railways?

I don't think there is anybody on here who is apposing any form of Investment in the Railways, but there is difference between receiving some investment and investment which requires a bottomless pit of money. I'm certainly in favour of some further electrification but it has to be delivered at reasonable cost by contrast some people seem to want a rolling program which wire the whole network over the next 20 years regardless of cost, but in my view that's unrealistic and unaffordable. Am I also in favour of road Transport yes I am and I certainly make no apology for that, firstly because I like road transport as well as rail and secondly because its the only option in many parts of the country, and the idea of putting most of the railway lines back in many of these areas really would be unaffordable and unrealistic.

I am old enough to remember when railways were still in decline and roads were the main Transport for the future, in comparison to those times the amount of investment now going into the railways is huge by comparison and I think some people need to remember that.

 

[B&I]

I don't think there is anybody on here who is apposing any form of Investment in the Railways, but there is difference between receiving some investment and investment which requires a bottomless pit of money. I'm certainly in favour of some further electrification but it has to be delivered at reasonable cost by contrast some people seem to want a rolling program which wire the whole network over the next 20 years regardless of cost, but in my view that's unrealistic and unaffordable. Am I also in favour of road Transport yes I am and I certainly make no apology for that, firstly because I like road transport as well as rail and secondly because its the only option in many parts of the country, and the idea of putting most of the railway lines back in many of these areas really would be unaffordable and unrealistic.

I am old enough to remember when railways were still in decline and roads were the main Transport for the future, in comparison to those times the amount of investment now going into the railways is huge by comparison and I think some people need to remember that.

At least you're honest about your preferences, so I'll state mine. I am militantly in favour of private road traffic being limited as much as possible, and traffic being redirected to rail where possible and other forms of public transport where not. Partly th8d is down to personal experience, being unable to drive for medical reasons but having to travel very ling distances for work, but also it's down to the slow-motion environmental, publix health and social catastrophe that dependence on roads amounts to. There is a reason why, as environmental, technical and medical knowledge has advanced, roads are no longer seen as the means of transpirt of the future.

This is not an argument in favour of rail spending without heed to efficiency of effect. Someone really has to get a grip on electrification, whether it's by a reappraisal of clearance standards, or by devising an effective means of ground survey before works begin.

However, in the binary world in which we operate, if momentum is not maintained for electrification, it will be sidelined. Expertise and resources will be dissipated, and the whole process will be much harder to start next time round. So an efficient and properly-managed rolling programme of elrctrification is not just feasible, it's also sensible. Why should England and Wales be an exception to the approach taken in almost every other advanced country, Scotland included ?

 

[59CosG95]

I just signed it.

Have you thought about pushing it on social media and the press, concentrating on the environmental angle?

I certainly have - published it on Twitter, highlighting the environmental pros and giving my student friends (of whom a lot are keen environmentalists) a way to hold Chris Grayling to account (not that they'll need much persuasion!).
The director of Furrer+Frey also gave it a retweet - that should certainly help spread its reach.

 

[The Ham]

I certainly have - published it on Twitter, highlighting the environmental pros and giving my student friends (of whom a lot are keen environmentalists) a way to hold Chris Grayling to account (not that they'll need much persuasion!).
The director of Furrer+Frey also gave it a retweet - that should certainly help spread its reach.

Thank you.

Even if you think that we shouldn't spend significant money on electrification and that there's a need to be more of decarbonisation of our electricity generation that didn't mean that the government shouldn't have a plan, which is the main point of the petition.

 

[59CosG95]

Thank you.

Even if you think that we shouldn't spend significant money on electrification and that there's a need to be more of decarbonisation of our electricity generation that didn't mean that the government shouldn't have a plan, which is the main point of the petition.

Completely agree - it doesn't matter whether or not we do actually electrify - it's the decarbonisation element which we need to focus on. I myself am of the school of thought that hydrogen technology, while promising, hasn't been extensively tested in service (nor applied to a wide variety of rail applications), so 25kV all the way for me.
I also agree with a lot of the scepticism of the recent farcical excuses for projects we have had, but also advocate continuous investment in it to ensure that the skillsets aren't lost; I believe that the dearth of skilled OLE engineers compounded the failures of those projects further still.
More attention needs to be given to site investigation and surveying before major projects too - just look at Manchester-Bolton-Preston and the Chase Line.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

For more electrification to be credible, Network Rail has to demonstrate it can deliver it for something like the cost it posted in the 2009 Electrification RUS.
That was £650K per single track kilometre.
Currently it is running 2-3 times that, even more on the GW scheme, thus destroying the short-term business case for more wiring.
It must also be delivered in a finite timescale like 5 years from authorisation - it will be over 10 years for the GW scheme by the time it is "finished".
That's 10 years while the route is a building site (including essential resignalling), just like the WCML in the 60s and 00s.

We therefore need a decent pilot scheme to test an updated NR design/implementation/costing process, before scoping up the programme elsewhere.
I suspect the Bedford-Kettering-Corby scheme doesn't qualify, as it was designed in the GW era (which was over-specified and badly executed).
We need something modest as an infill pilot scheme, eg Leeds-York (Neville Hill-Colton Jn), part of the TP scheme.
Or maybe the top Northern local scheme, the CLC Manchester-Liverpool route (Trafford Park-Allerton).
Hardly anything over 110mph will be needed, so the core design can be optimised accordingly.

HS2 will be electrified from the start (design by SNCF apparently), and any new routes via Heathrow will also have to be electrified.
Scotland will progress its local schemes (if it deems the EGIP cost acceptable).
NR also needs to find a way to wire the short distance from the GW wires at Acton to the other main lines out of London.
Some long-distance electric freight would make a useful statement for the network as a whole.
Every diesel loco under the wires reduces the case for more wiring.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

For more electrification to be credible, Network Rail has to demonstrate it can deliver it for something like the cost it posted in the 2009 Electrification RUS. . . . .

. . . . We therefore need a decent pilot scheme to test an updated NR design/implementation/costing process, before scoping up the programme elsewhere.
I suspect the Bedford-Kettering-Corby scheme doesn't qualify, as it was designed in the GW era (which was over-specified and badly executed).
We need something modest as an infill pilot scheme . . . .

Doncaster to Hull. The route is scheduled for re-signalling anyway and electrification would enable Kings Cross to Hull trains to be electric all the way.

 

[Bertie the bus]

I would say Bolton – Wigan would be a perfect proving scheme. Planned already, an existing diversionary route for Manchester – Preston services which will be lost once that route is electrified and a fairly short distance.
If they don’t make a total mess of that then maybe look at extending electrification further.

 

[adrock1976]

Both Network Rail and the Department for Transport could simply dust down the rolling electrification report that British Rail published in 1980.

No need for various "consultants", which would help keep the costs down due to the aforementioned report having been done by people who knew exactly what they were doing.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

I think we also need a new RUS Electrification - last one was 2009

 

[cle]

They need to set up a national electrification 'academy' or similar - with economies of scales, best practice, rolling schemes, shared learnings and so forth - and get costs down. There could be apprenticeships, better procurement of materials etc etc - job creation and ongoing rather than standalone projects, modern engineering expertise (which could be exported too in time) and something for which there is a lot of demand and benefit...

Might actually be a smart legacy for a willing politician. But alas, no good ones left.

 

[Elecman]

Grayling and the Treasury are never going to allow a rolling program, he likes hs bionic duckweed and bimodes too much

 

[squizzler]

Grayling and the Treasury are never going to allow a rolling program, he likes hs bionic duckweed and bimodes too much

No, but if the organisational groundwork is put in place now the industry would be ready for the arrival of someone more enlightened into that office. Just like the industry wasn't ready in 2010.