Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 177)
WEDNESDAY 9 MARCH 2005
IAN AMBROSE
Q160 Mr Stringer: How do you put
together the ideas that you have about a standardised system with
ideas about consultation?
Mr Ambrose: I do not see that
there is any conflict there because consultation should be about
the key issues such as route, is the corridor the right one, is
it going to affect people along that route in a positive or negative
way? The actual design of equipment should not have a major impact
on that except in certain sensitive areas. I do accept that there
will always be some exceptions, such as where there are listed
buildings or sites of historical interest. But when I say standardisation
I am inclined to believe that it should not be so standard that
you cannot have flexibility to meet certain special conditions.
Q161 Mr Stringer: The real example
was when people in Grenoble were consulted. The route was clear
and they went very close to some listed-type buildings, but the
real concern of the population there was disabled access and,
if I remember correctly, they therefore completely redesigned
the tram to put the engine elsewhere so that there was good disabled
access. If you had a standardised tram you would be excluding
that as a possibility, would you not?
Mr Ambrose: No, you would not.
As part of the LibeRTiN project we did a major exercise on access
to look at the best practice to come up with some recommendations
for design, to give the optimum access on and off the tram and
also within the interior. There have always been clear guidelines;
general VDV standards for instance specify the steps and the gaps
quite clearly, and the difference you have to decide is whether
you are going to low floor or high floor trams because that defines
your platform height.
Q162 Mr Stringer: Precisely. So that
if you decide that you will go for very good disabled access you
load some of your costs up front by having to put the engine in
a different place, or you also exclude the possibility, as has
been the case in this country in a number of situations, of running
on old railway lines with high platforms. So you put your costs
on removing the platforms.
Mr Ambrose: Not necessarily. Your
first point about where you put the engine, most tram equipment
is up on the roof now, whether it is a high floor or low floor
vehicle, and so it does not change the cost when you decide what
floor height to have. In terms of whether you are using old railway
lines, again, because they are standard designs of high and low
floor you choose the one that is appropriate to your situation.
Q163 Mr Stringer: So you would have
more than one standard design?
Mr Ambrose: Yes, because, as you
quite rightly said, there are a number of different situations.
In many situations you have standard designs but they cover a
range to suit the different functions.
Q164 Mr Stringer: How many standard
designs do you think you would have?
Mr Ambrose: In the tramway industry
at the moment you have high floor, then 70% low floor and 100%
low floor, and that would be the optimum because that would give
you compatibility with heavy rail in this country and compatibility
with the standard low floor heights found elsewhere.
Q165 Mr Stringer: So three?
Mr Ambrose: Yes.
Q166 Clive Efford: On standardisation,
what is the implication to existing light rail of standardisation?
Mr Ambrose: The implication is
that you would not retro-rebuild unless you were coming up to
something like half life refurbishment, and so the systems that
we have, if they are functioning perfectly well, I would say,
"If it's not broke, don't fix it." Where it is important
is thinking about your extensions and future design and future
requirements. You may have to end up doing as Docklands did and
selling up a whole range of vehicles and replacing them to meet
new conditions. But, again, if there is a second-hand market then
that is less of a problem than if you have to scrap it.
Q167 Clive Efford: Presumably standardisation
increases the second-hand market?
Mr Ambrose: Exactly.
Q168 Clive Efford: Do you think that
promoters of light rail are pursuing it at the expense of other
forms of transport?
Mr Ambrose: Sorry?
Q169 Clive Efford: Do you think promoters
of light rail are pursuing schemes at the expense of other options
for transport?
Mr Ambrose: I think in most of
the cases that I have been involved with they have done a very
thorough examination of all the options. Clearly there have been
some schemes which have not got off the ground where they have
been looking for a gold plated solution or a light rail solution
because it sounds good, but I think they have thoroughly examined
the options of the schemes that have been implemented and it has
come out as the best option for that particular corridor. I think
of the ones that have recently been under scrutiny and were put
on hold in the summer that there are probably some instances where
the routes could have been rethought, although I guess that the
promoters themselves may have other views. But I think the promoters
should be looking at, quite rightly, what is the most appropriate
form of transport for a particular corridor rather than just because
something looks good.
Q170 Clive Efford: What evidence
is available about the relative merits of light rail, tramways,
guided busways?
Mr Ambrose: It depends on what
sort of merits you want. Let us take simple carrying capacity.
A bus is particularly good if you have up to 3,000 passengers
an hour, and after that you tend to find that you need more buses
than will fit on the road. Light rail, typically 5,000 to 10,000
people per hour, Metro and heavy rail above that figure.
Q171 Clive Efford: So it would be
guided by the amount of demand at any one time?
Mr Ambrose: Your first guidance
is, is this corridor going to generate this level of traffic?
Obviously you have to look at it over the lifetime of the scheme
rather than what is the situation now. So if you have a corridor
that currently would generate about 3,000, so it is on the borderline
of a bus scheme, what is the growth potential for that corridor?
Is it going to be 10,000 in two years' time or five years' time,
in which case a bus solution would only be a very temporary one?
Q172 Clive Efford: Are there any
examples of where on the Continent they have pursued a bus option
for an extensive transport system?
Mr Ambrose: Very few. There have
been a number of guided bus experiments, most of which are dropping
by the wayside at the moment, some through unreliability and some
really because they have been found to be unsuitable. I think
the best examples of successful busways, Adelaide is one of the
best where they have put together a busway where buses can go
at high speed—
Chairman: The Committee has seen the
Adelaide scheme, thank you.
Q173 Clive Efford: Have you got any
knowledge of the system in Utrecht? We have had evidence to suggest
that there has been a system there.
Mr Ambrose: Is that the Phileas
one or something?
Q174 Clive Efford: I do not know
the name of it but it is a high quality bus system.
Mr Ambrose: I am not overly familiar
with that one; I have to be perfectly honest.
Q175 Clive Efford: How does the cost
of guided busways compare to that of trams?
Mr Ambrose: We have had much discussion
about that in the last two or three days because for most of the
guided bus schemes the figures published do not break down nicely
into the various components, and so the expensive bit, which is
the segregated concrete guideway, which is clearly the most expensive,
it is difficult to say exactly what that is per kilometre. We
suspect that it is quite high and approaching the same costs as
on street tram track. But, as I say, it is very difficult to prove
that at the moment because if you look at a scheme most of them
are quoted in whole numbers for the whole scheme, which includes
the vehicles, the non-guided bits as well. Most of the guided
bus schemes in the UK have very short guided sections too so you
are not really comparing a like for like scheme. If you have a
segregated tramway there are very few guided bus systems that
have the same degree of segregation. So the guided bus scheme
may appear cheap but it is not doing the same job.
Q176 Clive Efford: Are guided buses
practical in the cities in this country? Do we have the space?
Mr Ambrose: The biggest problem
with guided busways is that we do not have the space in the areas
where we would get the most benefit, which would be in town centres,
because the step involving a kerb guided bus would cause safety
problems, particularly in pedestrianised areas. So you would not
be able to build a guideway in that situation. If you were to
put it on a completely reserved area you would have to buy up
some corridor of land, probably already in use for some other
reason at the moment, to create it; so that would be extremely
expensive.
Q177 Clive Efford: The likelihood
of being able to do that along an entire route so that you would
get the full benefit of guided buses in major cities in the UK
is pretty remote?
Mr Ambrose: Pretty remote, yes.
Chairman: Mr Ambrose, we are very grateful
to you for being so tolerant when being ejected from your seat.
You have been very helpful this afternoon. Thank you very much
indeed.
| 
