edwin_m
Veteran Member
If I were preparing a manufacturer's bid (and I most certainly am not) I would include tilt as part of the bid. Alstom have publicly said that a tilting AGV will probably be their submission, and I think it would be majorly remiss to gain all that time on HS2 up to north of Crewe, only to drop another half an hour between there and Glasgow. We know for a fact that it is not impossible, and the benefits are immediately apparent.
In the tendering documents, HS2 will have to tell bidders what they want, but also how they will "score" different suppliers' offerings to choose the winner. A bidder gets no extra credit for offering something that wasn't asked for and will most likely be undercut on cost by other bidders who have stuck to the specification.
So unless tilt is explicitly specified, or there is extra credit in the procurement for beating predicted schedules on classic routes, no supplier is going to include tilt in their core offering. It's possible that some might offer it as an option.