[A-List] UK infrastructure crisis: railways

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Taxpayers' millions wasted on new trains

Replacements break down more than old stock

Andrew Clark, transport correspondent
Wednesday February 4, 2004
The Guardian

Railway bosses have wasted millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by
mishandling the launch of new trains, many of which have arrived late and
are breaking down too often, says the National Audit Office.

In a highly critical report, the spending watchdog said yesterday a "lack of
organisational coherence" had hampered planning for 4,500 new carriages
bought by operators such as Connex, c2c, Virgin and FirstGroup at a cost of
£4.2bn.

Government subsidies of more than £760m helped pay for the trains, many of
which were intended to replace ageing slam-door rolling stock, which is soon
to be outlawed on safety grounds.

But in some areas, smart new airconditioned trains are breaking down twice
as often as their predecessors. Many carriages have fewer seats because of
safety-conscious "crumple space" which is making overcrowding worse.

The spending watchdog revealed that the Strategic Rail Authority faces a
£7.2m bill to mothball 300 trains bought by South West Trains and South
Central, which cannot be used because rail bosses failed to upgrade power
supplies on south-east commuter lines.

Keith Holden, an audit office director, said: "When they're in service and
working well, new trains are offering significant benefits to passengers.
Buy they've been delivered late and, in a significant number of cases, they
are unreliable."

The report was particularly critical of a 1999 decision to bring forward a
deadline for the removal of all slam-door trains from 2007 to the end of
this year.
Mr Holden said the rail authority and its predecessor, the Office for
Passenger Rail Fran chising, had failed to investigate whether the deadline
was "feasible or realistic".

It seems unlikely to be met because of the power problem, which is being
tackled at a cost of £1bn while new trains sit in storage at Ministry of
Defence depots.
Edward Leigh, the Conservative chairman of the public accounts committee,
welcomed the report but described the renewal of rolling stock as "a
catalogue of blunders".

Mr Leigh said: "Thousands of passengers are condemned to continue travelling
on the overcrowded, grubby, slam-door trains which they had been led to
expect would soon be replaced."

When new trains were introduced, he said, they were "highly prone to
breakdown, door failure and broken airconditioning".

Figures obtained by the audit office showed that Connex South Eastern's new
trains break down every 12,000 miles - twice as often as older rolling stock
and well below the 40,000-mile target agreed with the manufacturer.

First Great Western's new rolling stock achieves 2,400 miles per failure,
compared with 3,500 miles for older trains and a 31,000-mile target. First
North Western's trains run on average for 4,200 miles between breakdowns,
just a tenth of the 43,500-mile target.

The unprecedented flurry in buying new rolling stock was greeted as one of
the few successes of privatisation, replacing British Rail carriages which
often dated back to the 1960s.

The audit office said part of the problem with reliability was a lack of
dedicated testing facilities.

Train operators had to test new rolling stock in brief periods overnight and
when lines were deserted, leaving them without adequate time to check that
they worked reliably in varying conditions.

The government refused a request from the rail authority last year for £50m
to build a new test track.