Cheaper? This hasn't delivered. The most expensive schemes are the ones that cost you money but don't deliver what they promised. This is one of them.
It hasn't delivered
yet, but the trains that are in service are meeting expectations. Even the unrefurbished trains are enough of an improvement over the 170s that customers are generally happy with them.
Starting from nothing, when would the first of this new wonder train enter service? What will be done to cover the services whilst Abellio run the tender and the suppliers design then build it?
In the time it takes to do that, how many HSTs can Wabtec deliver? I suspect the answer is 'all of them', likely with some time to spare. Looking at the timelines for the Stadler units in East Anglia, 3 years from contract to delivery seems about right. That's mid-2022. Without any improvement to the delivery schedules, Wabtec are on track to deliver the last of the HSTs in January 2022.
Is that as fast as we'd like? Well, no. Clearly not. But it's still faster than scrapping it all and starting from nothing. Scotrail are better off working with Wabtec to improve things than giving up the HSTs as a failure.
The major problem arising from the slow delivery is that stock supposed to be released by the HSTs being delivered has had to be cascaded anyway. Which is why we're getting two-car Class 158s working diagrams that a year ago were three-car Class 170s and should be four- or five-car HSTs by now.
What's needed is two things: faster delivery, and something to cover the shortfall of stock. Working with Wabtec is the fastest way to get fully acceptable trains into service. Covering the shortfall is more difficult - the obvious answers are more unrefurbished HSTs, getting some 170s from somewhere, or - heaven help us - getting some 158s from somewhere. Anything else would add new traction types to the Scotrail fleet, requiring crew training, which as we've seen causes no end of problems!