Examination of witness (Questions 20 -
39)
WEDNESDAY 15 DECEMBER 1999
MR DENIS
TUNNICLIFFE
20. I am sorry to have interrupted you in that
way. Why did Deputy Prime Minister terminate?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) The Deputy Prime Minister's view
was that the position of Railtrack as single bidder was only justified—and
this has been his consistent view all the way through since June
and maybe May; I cannot remember when the debate started, but
all the way through the Railtrack period—because it was
thought that the case for a single bidder was that there was something
exceptional that could be done with Railtrack that could not be
done with anybody else, and particularly some exceptional integration
between the national railway system and London Underground. Two
schemes were explored. One scheme which relates to the development
of the East London line was found by both parties to be really
quite attractive, was developable in a number of different scenarios,
and did not require anything like the same sense of common ownership
to achieve it, and I am very hopeful that that scheme will go
ahead one way or another in the relatively near future. The other
scheme was a scheme which connected the national railway to the
London Underground at a junction at Paddington. When we first
looked at it and came to the understanding to try and develop
this scheme with Railtrack it looked quite attractive. As we got
into it both sides started to understand the sheer complexity
of the task, not putting a junction at Paddington but of actually
managing the two railways together, creating enough capacity on
the Great Western Railway, so as to use any slots that were used
on the north side of the Circle and to look at other BAA aspirations
for services around that, what other aspirations there might be
as a result of more capacity becoming available from Great Western,
for instance, and some general re-appraisal of the capacity into
Paddington that developed out of the concerns over Ladbroke Grove.
When one saw the size of that it was not a debate really between
ourselves and Railtrack which was the sort of debate that one
might have had quite quickly. It suddenly became a very complex
study which concentrated and centred on the Strategic Rail Authority,
because the Strategic Rail Authority would have to make long term
commitments about investment on the national railway to enable
it to happen, and long term commitments as to how that piece of
railway was used. The Strategic Rail Authority said to the Deputy
Prime Minister that to understand all that complexity would take
a long time and under no circumstances could the Strategic Rail
Authority give him an agreement and guidance early next year,
which is what the programming was. On that basis the Deputy Prime
Minister took the view, and we all agreed, that it would not be
sensible to continue with the single bidder basis.
21. So had there merely been a negotiation between
yourselves and Railtrack about what was best for British Railways
as it were, probably a deal would have been do-able?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) If that were possible, but it simply
is not possible because the moment you start to connect the railway
in and you start to look at the capacity that then lies to the
west, what you think is a simple idea suddenly becomes very complicated.
Chairman
22. What you are saying is that the idea seemed
like a bright one until you looked at it in detail, and then you
both decided that neither of you had got it right in the first
place.
(Mr Tunnicliffe) I think that is probably fair.
Mr Gray
23. Presumably Railtrack now will be able to
take part in the bidding process for the infracos. Will they also
be able to bid for the upgrading and maintenance of the rest of
the track?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) They will be able to bid for the
SSL, or they will be able to seek to pre-qualify for the SSL,
to be absolutely correct. They are out of time to bid for the
deep tube.
Miss McIntosh
24. During an 18-month period approximately
between January 1998 and November 1999 there were 5,544 incidents
of delays to services lasting 15 minutes or more. How does this
figure compare with previous periods?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) The rate of delays of 15 minutes
or more has been pretty constant over recent years.
25. Does it not concern you therefore that of
these delays 550 were due to track circuit failure, 519 were due
to the fact that staff were either absent or not in position,
and what can be described as miscellaneous train defects accounted
for 481? Does that concern you and, if it does, what measures
are you proposing to take to prevent such delays in the future?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) The delays, as I say, have been fairly
constant over recent years. The level of delays we have is not
something we are comfortable about and that is why we are looking
to the future with the focus of the new organisation to actually
start working the number of delays down. A significant number
of the delays are train related.
Chairman
26. You mean rolling stock related?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) Sorry, rolling stock related.
27. I am sorry, but if we create words like
"infraco" we must expect people to question our English.
Forgive me.
(Mr Tunnicliffe) I apologise, Chairman.
28. Those of us who went to council schools
have problems like that.
(Mr Tunnicliffe) Both of us. The rolling stock related
ones have been very much related to major programmes like the
Northern Line PFI which has brought new trains on to the Northern
Line. It brought them on rather more slowly than we had hoped
and therefore we had old trains for longer and they were a problem.
The new trains had teething problems. We are round that curve.
29. You mean that is getting better?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) That is getting better. The refurbishment
of the Piccadilly Line trains, for instance, created, because
of the depth of the refurbishment, some quality problems. That
created some delays. The quality is now improved and the performance
is getting and will get better. There were Central Line problems;
there still are. Most of those we would expect to get better.
The delays relating to our workforce have to an extent related
to having people in the wrong place as the timing of various physical
changes like new trains coming along, like the Jubilee Line opening,
have shifted.
30. You mean it was a surprise to you?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) It was a surprise, yes. We expected
our Northern Line trains to be introduced more rapidly. We expected
the Jubilee Line, as you know from previous evidence, to become
available more quickly.
31. Is that not a reason to have people in place
before they come along?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) Yes indeed, but you get a ripple
effect through the system so if you are expecting, for instance,
Northern Line guards to fund expansion elsewhere of train drivers,
and then you find you cannot release them because you are still
using 59 stock, you have those sorts of problems.
Miss McIntosh
32. For the Circle Line closure while the Gloucester
Road and High Street Kensington Line was being attended to, extensive
preparations were planned which then had to be abandoned. Can
you first of all explain why the preparations failed to work and
secondly put our minds at rest that similar difficulties will
not be encountered on a future occasion?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) Yes. We have what we believe to be
quite good modelling techniques for simulating what happens on
the railway so you simulate a line and you put some sort of perturbation
in it and you see what happens and so on.
Chairman
33. You must be quite good at perturbations
by now, I should think.
(Mr Tunnicliffe) Yes, Chairman. We use these sorts
of things, together with the teams working together, to try very
hard to take that particular link out and still deliver almost
as much of a train service to our customers as we had before,
and we invented a solution which really was a Circle Line but
because it could not go round the Circle it went down to Wimbledon
basically. In practice it was too fragile and it failed relatively
easily. Frankly, it took us longer to realise that than I think
we would like in retrospect. I think it took us about four days
to fully come to the conclusion that that was not going to work;
it was too fragile. Then we went away from that, and I think it
probably took us about five or six days to do the whole thing,
to basically taking the Circle Line out completely, ie those trains
that go all the way round, and reinforcing the Hammersmith and
City and the Metropolitan Line where we could. We achieved, if
I recall, on most sections of it 70, 80, 90 per cent of the frequencies
and because it was running to patterns which were much more robust
then the second week onwards it was not as good a service as we
were providing before we had taken the Circle Line corner out,
but then it never could be, but it was quite a reasonable service.
Our first mistake was to try too hard to push this capacity back
in a way that in the end did not work and our second mistake was
not to react to it quickly enough. At the time we apologised to
our customers for both those mistakes. We have generally been
quite good at closing lines in the sense that—
34. That may be an unfortunate quote, Mr Tunnicliffe!
(Mr Tunnicliffe) Yes, Chairman. We have closed parts
of the railway before and by extensive consultation with local
authorities, user groups and so on, we have minimised the impact
by putting in buses and different routings. The Circle Line was
one we got badly wrong and we are taking a lot of learning from
that.
35. You are not ever going to do it again, are
you?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) We will close parts of the Circle
Line either next summer or the summer thereafter because there
is no other way of taking very fragile structures and reinforcing
them. We will have extensive planning for those closures and they
will go, we believe, much better than the one this summer.
Mr Stevenson
36. One of the points which was made to argue
in favour of the PPP proposal was the Jubilee Line, but is it
not true that the PPP proposals are restricted to cover the maintenance
and enhancement of existing Underground constructions and have
got nothing at all to do with new line construction?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) They envisage some modest extensions
but they certainly have nothing to do with new line construction
of that magnitude.
37. Could I then quickly go on to the point
you made about delays and the efficiencies of the private sector
which Pricewaterhouse said could be 20 per cent? We tend to agree
with that. Is it not the case that Alstom were four years behind
schedule in delivering the new Northern Line trains, which you
say has been experiencing difficulties? Central Line trains provided
by Adtranz have also experienced delays, which have been due to
platforms having to be rebuilt because Adtranz failed to gauge
the size of their trains, which seems to me to be quite an inefficiency
if it is true. Problems have been experienced due to Adtranz not
ensuring that the trains were compatible with the Central Line's
ATP system, and continuing problems have been experienced in the
signalling installed by Westinghouse Signals on the Central Line.
All these are private companies. Do you concur with that information
and, if so, do you share the concerns some of us have about how
this demonstrates that the private sector cannot necessarily deliver
all the efficiencies that are being suggested?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) The Alstom trains were late, I am
not sure whether it is four years; I do not think it is four years
but it certainly was significantly late.
38. Could you check on that?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) Yes, certainly, and we will send
a note. The Adtranz trains I think you are mixing up with some
of the problems on the main line railway. We did not suffer a
gauging problem with the Adtranz trains. They were gauged as we
expected them. We had planned to do some civil work as part of
the project because there were not tunnel collapses but tunnels
had been squozen (sic) over the years and that was put right as
part of the total project. We certainly had something of a gauging
problem with the Northern Line trains but I do not think you can
blame Alstom for that. It was because our tunnels were twistier
than we thought they were. The signalling on the Central Line
has been a long sage and you are quite right, it is by a private
sector company, Westinghouse. At the end of the day it will be
anyway. We have no capability to either manufacture trains or
to install major signalling projects. they will always come from
the private sector. The thing that is different about the PPP
is that they will be commissioned by a private sector firm whose
rewards will be very closely tied with the performance in delivery
of upgrades and delivery of reliability, and it is that direct
relationship between performance and reward that we and our advisers
believe will give better performance.
39. Is that the reason Taylor Woodrow have withdrawn,
and is it the reason the Government have now decided to accept
the principle of public subsidy which was never in the Pricewaterhouse
document?
(Mr Tunnicliffe) Taylor Woodrow have withdrawn as
I understand it because they have been re-assessing their portfolio.
They have got a new management team and the new management team,
looking at the shape of the company in the future, did not feel
as enthusiastic of this project as the previous management team
did. The Government had an aspiration for there not to be any
subsidy when spec-ed up this thing, but Gavin Strang, who made
the statement, made it very clear that whilst that was an aspiration
that was all it was. It was not a condition. The key test of the
success of the PPP is, is it best value for money and will it
produce a sustained quality investment programme? Our working
with the PPP so far leads us to the view very firmly that the
answer is yes to both of those questions.
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