Memorandum by JPM Parry & Associates
Ltd (LR 38)
INTEGRATED TRANSPORT: THE FUTURE OF LIGHT
RAIL AND MODERN TRAMS IN BRITAIN
Your Transport Select Committee has decided
to examine the future prospects for light rail in Britain due
to reports of disappointing financial performance of existing
services and rising cost estimates of several proposed systems.
I understand that the Committee will look at examples of bus-based
alternatives to assess whether they can provide an acceptable
alternative.
JPM Parry & Associates Ltd (JPA) are "interested
parties" having in the 1980s investigated making an investment
in development of a public transport technology and concluded
at that time that there was considerable scope for innovation
in the "streetcar" or "tram" mode. This has
resulted in £2 million of market development and R&D
investment mainly by associate firms including specially formed
independently-owned licensee companies, Parry People Movers Ltd
(PPM), Holdfast Carpet Track Ltd and Pre Metro Operations Ltd
(PMOL) and a customer, Bristol Electric Railbus Ltd.
JPA was formed with the encouragement of friends
and colleagues in 1973. At the time a personal conviction which
I held (and still do) was that the people who are among the best
placed to understand the key technical issues behind investment
decisions were those in professional services such as civil engineering,
architecture and business consulting, and in universities—but
in-built into the motivations of these people, the best and brightest
of the technologists concerned, were serious flaws. All these
professionals are keen to demonstrate absence of "conflicts
of interest" so they are careful that any advice they provide
cannot be connected with any financial gain derived from other
interests (such as would occur if an equipment supplier or contractor
were favoured as a result of the advice). But these are not the
things which most endanger achievement of best practice in the
implementation of schemes. Inherent among the difficulties currently
affecting the promotion of light rail schemes is that every stage
of the process is subject to the influence of organisations and
individuals many of whose interests are vested in actually prolonging
the process. These are the professionals who are paid to undertake
the preparatory work. The longer it can be dragged out, the greater
accumulation of their fees.
Just as the railway legislation of the 1990s
opened up an Aladdin's Cave of riches for professionals including
legal firms, the 1992 Transport and Works Act, instead of simplifying
the process of achieving approval for schemes, has been seized
upon by the industry professionals and their counterparts on the
local authority side as profitable and career-building work: the
more elaborate and time consuming, the better.
The mushrooming of professional activity has
both slowed the progress and greatly added to the cost of implementing
conventional light rail schemes. It has also increased the difficulties
of introducing technical innovations aimed at saving costs. Professionals
stand to earn far more money working on elaborate projects than
on simple ones, so why encourage any plain and straightforward
initiative?
Central government has reacted by treating the
growing cost of implementing schemes as inherent to the engineering
nature of the tram mode rather than as something artificially
imposed upon it. This error has in part been redressed by the
House of Commons select committee's own enquiries into practices
in certain European countries where the preparation procedures
were noted to be very much simpler and quicker. The National Audit
Office's report of April 2004 has thrown further light on this
subject and has given some attention to "barriers to innovation".
I will revert to the significance of this in the final section
of this submission.
In the select committee's current investigation
it is giving attention to whether bus services, the setting up
of which are subject to far less regulation than tram services,
can achieve equivalent benefits. The summary which follows reviews
the key differences between buses and trams from the perspective
of the operator, the transport user and the non-user who experiences
the "externalities": the impact of the service in operation.
The advantage of a bus service is that it generally
makes use of an asset which is already there: the public road.
The perceived disadvantage to all parties associated with this
service is that, because buses continually have to stop to pick
up and set down passengers, the occupants of private cars complete
the same journey more smoothly and quickly. If no special provision
is made, buses have to fight their way back into the run of traffic.
The more aggressively the driver behaves, the more likely he is
to maintain his schedule. Where drivers are highly incentivised
(as in some third world countries) buses are driven in a frantic
manner and are a principal contributor to the high death toll
on the roads. In Britain bus drivers just have to cope with stress
and the annoyance of other drivers.
Highway engineers in Britain have implemented
measures which improve the ability of buses to re-enter the traffic,
in some cases making it impossible for cars to pass a stopped
bus and an assortment of bus lanes and "guideways" have
given buses near exclusive use of parts of the road. While improving
the situation from the perspective of the bus operator and user,
this in effect involves the bus service in a major capital investment,
paid for in the case of a purpose-built guideway or simply handing
over at no cost to the bus operator half of a valuable two-lane
highway. The members of the public who cannot or will not use
bus services and go by private car instead, frequently becomes
antagonistic towards bus prioritisation measures. In the case
of bus lanes, special markings and cameras have to be used, backed
by the police and the courts to deter motorists from trying to
drive along what used to be "their" road. Meanwhile
clashes between car and bus drivers pulling out from stops are
common.
The situation with trams seems to be different.
In places where trams share the road space, cars tend to clear
the way ahead of them without the need for cameras or special
policing. Similarly once a new tram system becomes familiar to
motorists, conflicts and accidents where the two types of vehicles
share the same road space are quite rare. During its investigations,
I would wish your committee to find time to review the following
observations all of which I believe to be fair and reasonable.
Where there is any doubt it should be straightforward to commission
simple independently-conducted surveys of attitudes or behaviour
if this information does not exist. Similarly data regarding occupancy
and cost factors should be immediately to hand.
OPERATOR EXPERIENCE
— Trams can maintain service schedules
better than buses;
— Average tram speeds are higher than
for equivalent bus services leading to better utilisation of vehicles
and crews with more trips in the time available;
— Off-peak, middle of the day, occupancy
of trams is higher than buses due to shorter journey times;
— Tram crews feel "safer"
than bus crews being much less likely to be involved in accidents
and conflicts with other road users. They also feel less "on
their own" and better supported by the system management;
— Possibly due to less stressful work
or greater prestige, recruitment of tram drivers is less difficult
than of bus drivers;
— Staff turnover among tram crews is
lower than on buses implying better job satisfaction and reduced
need for training of fresh personnel;
— Wear and tear of vehicles is less
with trams than buses because of the lower accident incidence
and less need to replace worn running gear items such as tyres
and steering mechanisms.
PASSENGER EXPERIENCE
— Passengers on public transport vehicles
value level access and close boarding. Trams, being guided by
rails, reliably arrive close alongside kerbs and platforms. For
buses to do so requires driver diligence and skill and the absence
of inconveniently parked vehicles. Bus passengers, including the
less able-bodied, often have to cross over a large gap when the
driver fails to pull in close to the kerb;
— Buses manoeuvring in traffic frequently
swerve and brake sharply to the discomfort of passengers. When
moving about inside the vehicles having just boarded or prior
to arrival at stops, passengers feel at risk of falling over and
sometimes do;
— Being more predictable of journey
times, tram services allow passengers to calculate their arrival
times more accurately than when travelling by bus;
— As with the crew, passengers on trams
feel better supported and protected by the system than when travelling
by bus;
— The large signage and distinctive
features of tram stops help passengers to know where they are,
whereas the restricted space available at bus stops make it harder
to provide features which distinguish one from another;
— Some passengers regard not using
the seats provided but being able to stand for short journeys
as a positive advantage. Such is the steadiness and predictable
ride of trams standing is not stressful, whereas on a bus it can
require strength and endurance.
NON-USER
EXPERIENCE
— Though the design of diesel buses
has improved of late, the noise and emissions are still noticeably
greater than from trams;
— In traffic-calmed and pedestrianised
zones, the incursion of a bus increases the sense of vulnerability
of pedestrians and cyclists. Trams have their route clearly designated
by the rails and "swept path" markings and are not perceived
as threatening;
— Though denied by one survey in Croydon,
the property industry generally judge the proximity to a rail
service either train or tram to be a positive factor in the valuation
of houses. The presence or absence of a bus route is not seen
as such a significant factor.
The "barriers" factor is the one which
exercises our company most of all. Parry Associates and its licensees
and the first customer are recognised as pioneers and the source
of many of the fresh ideas which may change the way that future
tramways are built and operate. However, the climate for innovation
could hardly have been more hostile:
APPROVALS FOR
TRIAL OPERATION
— For some four years now, PPM Ltd
has been attempting to put its 50-passenger, tram-type railcar
into trial operation for one year on Sundays only on the simplest
branch of the Network Rail system: the Stourbridge Junction to
Stourbridge Town line;
— This trial is important as it will
demonstrate the ability of light rail technologies to operate
on what are currently "heavy rail" routes to provide
better services at lower cost, fully in line with the Government's
transport policy and in particular with the Community Rail Development
Strategy;
— There exist no mechanisms which allow
the straightforward implementation of innovative technologies
on to the UK rail network, even on a branch line that is just
three-quarters of a mile long with a 20 mph maximum speed limit
and on which only one train is ever permitted at any one time.
The logical way to approach this challenge would be to assess
the overall risk of operation for the 50-odd days of the trial
and approve (or reject) the proposed scheme on this basis. Instead—and
after several changes of mind by the rail authorities concerning
how the approvals can be processed—PPM and PMOL are currently
working their way through some 1,358 individual clauses in 35
separate railway group standards to obtain design approval, with
more requirements related to maintenance of the vehicle. This
is the start of a three-stage process to obtain engineering acceptance
of a single vehicle. If the PPM vehicle had been a bus it could
have been in service for three years already;
— Similar difficulties relate to access
to the infrastructure. Despite the fact that there is no other
service running on the branch on Sundays (in actual fact, there
is currently no rail service at all due to industrial relations
at Central Trains), a full Track Access Agreement is insisted
upon;
— Despite the urgings from both Centro
and the SRA, the process of approving the Stourbridge Trial has
already taken four years. The transport industry has been unable
to suggest alternative means of achieving the trial service and
it has been PPM and PMOL who have spearheaded efforts to find
a way through the approvals jungle.
FUNDING THE
DEVELOPMENT
— The protracted process of obtaining
permission to operate the vehicle at Stourbridge has caused PPM
and PMOL to incur continued costs without compensating revenue
which has put in jeopardy the whole project. Only the support
of PPM's private shareholders and some proportionately far smaller
grants from Centro and the SRA have kept the project alive;
— The main beneficiary of affordable
urban and rural transport will be the public sector, which will
see lower subsidy requirements resulting from falling costs and
rising revenues, while maintaining or improving the social and
economic benefits of good public transport. However, the public
sector has failed to provide the resources to bring forward the
developments at a reasonable pace. And there is the bizarre situation
of the Energy Saving Trust and Foresight Vehicle Programme being
prevented from funding rail R&D (while they are permitted
to support the inherently less energy efficient road mode), and
from an unwillingness by the DTI to support new developments related
to PPM as previous funding has not shown a commercial return;
— This lack of public sector commitment
to remove barriers and provide support could have brought about
complete extinction of the innovative light rail sector in recent
years, despite its potentially great benefits for the UK as a
whole, both in terms of reducing the cost of the provision of
transport and in terms of a new exporting industry. A rare degree
of determination by the innovative light rail promoters has sustained
the technical development but this should not be taken for granted.
SECURING AND
RETAINING SUITABLE
PARTNERS
— In order to commercialise these developments,
PPM must create partnerships with firms that have the technical
standing and engineering capacity required by the markets;
— However, because the response by
the public sector has been so feeble it is difficult to sustain
the interest of these firms and promising partnerships have fallen
by the wayside;
— This has inevitably put the putative
innovative light rail sector in a Catch-22 situation, unable to
attract the market without the support of credible partners, yet
unable to attract partners without the support of the market (which
is crucially affected by public sector response which controls
the access to the market);
— Our partners in the Holdfast Carpet
Track venture, the highly successful firm HoldFast Level Crossings
Ltd, were willing to enter the light rail sector with a transfer
of technology from level crossings to tramways. However, the lack
of encouragement given to the venture has resulted in these valuable
collaborators raising questions when they see numerous projects
discussed but none providing the opportunity to try out the technology
which stays gathering dust on the drawing board. This despite
the potential of the Carpet Track product to significantly reduce
both the technical difficulties of building tramways and the legal
and planning work required;
— PPM Ltd has been unable to sustain
the initial interest of industrial firms in vehicle development
and construction for similar reasons, and on three occasions needed
to seek out fresh partners.
CONCLUSIONThe loss
to the nation from all of the foot-dragging is best measured in
terms of time. Much of today's transport scene was anticipated
in the exercise of Technology Foresight which ran initially from
1993-1996. The report of the Transport Panel, ISBN 0-11-430116-6
anticipated the importance of what is now commonplace; hybrid
vehicles, smart card ticketing, Clear Zones, access control technologies
and the officially encouragement of inter-firm collaboration between
automotive manufacturers. In a footnote in the transport report
are the words from a conference paper presented in 1994, "there
appears to be an unaddressed need in the light rail market; the
capital cost of conventional Metro/Supertram systems limits them
to urban areas which have large populations and high density movement
corridors. A new lighter, cheaper mode is needed for all those
towns which cannot meet the requirements for a supertram but which
still have problems to solve in their centres".
Britain has over 100 such urban areas where,
for instance the municipal centres, commercial centres and principal
transport hubs are located beyond convenient walking distance
from each other, where a light tramway system would be ideal.
The same issue was brought right up to date 10 years later on
10 November 2004 when the Permanent Secretary of the DfT, David
Rowlands, was being questioned by the House of Commons Public
Accounts Committee about the criticisms in the NAO report. He
pledged to begin to put right the previous failure to try out
innovations in light rail which might deal with the needs of smaller
towns and cities.
Ten years is an awful long time for the penny
to drop!
John Parry MBE
Chairman
February 2005
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