Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 199)
WEDNESDAY 9 MARCH 2005
MR PAUL
DAVISON, MR
ROGER HARDING,
MR PETER
HENDY, MR
PAT ARMSTRONG
AND MR
NEIL SCALES
Q180 Chairman: How about Transport
for London?
Mr Hendy: Our view is very similar
to what you have heard from both Mersey and the previous witness,
which is that there are flows in London, which are big enough
to justify a system more permanent than buses and yet less than
you would need to justify a new rail system. Some of those corridors
are by their nature unsuitable for light rail and therefore there
are not proposals for those, but we have identified some corridors
where we believe it is suitable and those are the ones that have
either been taken forward or are being taken forward now.
Q181 Chairman: Nottingham?
Mr Armstrong: Nottingham has a
very limited rail system historically and we have a very tight
city centre, and one of the problems we have had, although we
have managed to maintain it—
Q182 Chairman: Not a tight city centre,
constrained!
Mr Armstrong: Constrained. Where
we have wanted to increase buses and have been successful in maintaining
bus patronage, unlike most other places outside London, we have
found it difficult to get the large number of buses we want into
the constrained city centre, and the light rail proposal is partly
put forward simply because it would go there and we have a clear
zone which means it is highly compatible with pedestrianised areas
and traffic free areas, which buses are not so compatible.
Q183 Chairman: Croydon?
Mr Davison: Our view is fairly
simple and it was expressed by AEA, that in high volume routes
into town centres or, as far as Croydon is concerned, across the
South of London, then the most economic way to provide the service
is through a tram system. Once you get beyond 3,000 passengers
per hour in the peak then it is cheaper to use trams, high volume
vehicles, rather than use a string of buses.
Q184 Chairman: Did you do that kind
of calculation, precisely that kind of calculation?
Mr Davison: We have done it in
reverse. If you were to take the trams out of Croydon and replace
them by buses you would actually have to run 144 buses instead
of 24 trams and the cost of running those 144 buses would actually
exceed the cost of running the trams by 10 to 20%. So in fact
if we went back to buses then it would be more costly for the
population and less satisfactory as well because you would end
up with the 144 buses in the peak and you would have 120 of them
trying to get into the centre of Croydon, which is constrained
anyway, and it would be very, very difficult as a traffic management
problem.
Q185 Chairman: Mr Scales, we cannot
record nods, but you are indicating that you agree with that?
Mr Scales: I agree with that entirely,
Chairman. One tram will take 200 people. If you try to load passenger
loads above 3,000 per hour you would need buses nose to tail.
Trams are clean and green at point of use and fully accessible,
and the tram system we are trying to put into Merseyside is basically
an urban, linear regeneration.
Chairman: I want to bring everybody in.
Miss McIntosh first.
Q186 Miss McIntosh: If trams are
so clean and green, Mr Scales, why did we dig them up in the first
place?
Mr Scales: That is a very good
point. We took the trams out of Liverpool in September 1957 and
the reason for that was the overhead electrical systems were becoming
really difficult to maintain. That is not just true for Liverpool;
it is true for every city apart from Blackpool, who kept them
as a tourist attraction. At that point the diesel bus was a lot
cheaper, diesel fuel was a lot cheaper to buy and they were much
more flexible; it was post-war and a lot of estates were being
built outside of the city centre and buses could serve them a
lot more flexibly and a lot more easily. Unlike our colleagues
on the Continent, who kept their tram systems as part of an integrated
network, we decided to dismantle ours and now we are slowly putting
them back.
Mr Davison: Could I just add something
to that?
Q187 Chairman: An extension of that.
If you agree, gentlemen, you are not going to tell me, are you?
Mr Davison: I agree, but people
forget that the old tram was a very small vehicle, it was not
actually the size of a current tram carrying 240 people; it was
actually the size of a bus.
Q188 Chairman: How many seats were
there, Mr Davison; do you remember?
Mr Davison: I am not old enough
to remember!
Mr Hendy: That is not quite right.
It was between 100 and 120. They were bigger but an important
point for the historical record is that by and large the systems
were completely clapped out due to a lack of renewal, and in fact
the origin of the trolleybus certainly was that the track and
the trams were clapped out but the overhead was not, so it got
another life with trolleybuses, and then at the end of their life
the electrical equipment was clapped out.
Q189 Chairman: So it was a mixture
of the two reasons?
Mr Hendy: Yes.
Miss McIntosh: I omitted to specify my
interests in FirstGroup.
Chairman: Miss McIntosh wishes to record
an interest in FirstGroup.
Q190 Miss McIntosh: The first witness,
Mr Ambrose, told us that no two systems are the same and that
means that they cannot be joined up. I would imagine that there
would be potential in the long term for joining them up. Do you
agree with that?
Mr Scales: Certainly I agree with
that for Merseytravel, and we have actually agreed whilst sitting
down here that when I order my 21 trams for Line 1 I will make
22 and we will do one for Croydon as well!
Q191 Chairman: I am not sure you
should be telling us these trade secrets! It sounds like a very
good idea!
Mr Hendy: You might find that
the public sector might have an interest because I have the feeling
that the public sector is going to pay for it.
Q192 Chairman: Come now, Mr Hendy,
everybody likes a free sample!
Mr Armstrong: If I could make
a comment on the procurement of vehicles? A lot promoters under
the procurement system just ask for outputs and we do not specify
precisely what the vehicle should be, and I do feel that I have
some disagreement with the first witness in that our ability to
specify is very limited by the procurement procedures and we are
looking for outputs, we are looking for easy access, reliability
and all these rather softer issues rather than precisely how it
is built, what it is made of and whether it is actually like one
in another city down the road.
Q193 Chairman: That is interesting.
You interpret his desire for standardisation as being constraints
on your ability to specify those aspects?
Mr Armstrong: No, quite the opposite.
What we want is to have these attributes—and we know the
industry can provide them—and we would very much like them
to be standardised because that would mean we could get them cheaper.
Q194 Miss McIntosh: Mr Armstrong,
can I ask what delays have occurred in implementing your proposals,
in particular in relation to the planning process?
Mr Armstrong: We got our powers
through a private Act, the last one that went through, and it
did take quite a long time and at that stage there was no guarantee
of Government money at all, and we had a very long period then
waiting for Government to decide whether or not there should be
a system in Nottingham. Then we were hit by the change from grant
mechanisms to PFI and in effect we had to invent a completely
new procurement process because it was all new. So it did take
a long time and a lot of that is now better than it was, and in
theory at least promoters are given the nod from the Department
that the money will be available before they get the powers, and
in theory that should have shrunk the process. I am not convinced
yet it has; there is still an awful lot of uncertainty.
Q195 Miss McIntosh: You do say in
your evidence that you have a particular advantage because you
have planning and highways authorities. Can you expand on that?
Mr Armstrong: We always think
that we are a poor relation to the PTEs who have control over
a larger area on all the public transport and have more powers
than we have, but we have actually found, certainly in terms of
integration—because we are also the highway authority, the
city council for its own area is a unitary authority and the county
council is a highway strategic planning authority—we can
make integration in its widest sense work by using all our powers.
We make sure that it is an integrated process, that our planning
looks for where development will happen and encourages it to happen
on corridors where we have transport proposals, the tram or other
methods. So everything the councils do works together to make
it more successful than can happen where those responsibilities
are split. That is not to say that other authorities cannot do
it through partnerships and agreements, but we always do it because
we are one statutory body.
Q196 Miss McIntosh: Mr Scales, you
have had an expedited procedure through the Transport and Works
Act.
Mr Scales: Yes, we applied for
our funding and got an indicative allocation of £170 million
and then we launched the Transport and Works Act Order and we
got that through in about 14 months. 28 weeks from close of inquiry
to getting the powers. The inquiry closed in June and we got our
powers on 21 December. So I think that is an excellent example
of how the Transport and Works Act Order can operate in practice.
Like my colleague Mr Armstrong has just said, he is in a much
more powerful position having control over the highway network.
I would dearly like to have powers over the highway network because
it would make things a lot easier from my point of view. So our
colleagues in the city council, with Knowsley Borough Council,
who are partners in line one have to be slightly schizophrenic
because they are highways authority and planning authority and
we have to look after both sides of the coin, if you like.
Chairman: Mr Lucas then Mrs Ellman.
Ian Lucas: The Department for Transport
says that it will only fund light rail schemes if they are part
of an integrated transport strategy involving park and ride and
perhaps traffic restraint. Do you think that your organisations
have sufficient powers to deliver such a package?
Q197 Chairman: Let us try someone
different—Croydon.
Mr Davison: We do not have the
powers. We are operating in a regulated environment run by Transport
for London and it is quite clear that in order to use trams to
their best advantage you have to think about restructuring bus
network services, you have to have clear priority at traffic signals
and clear routes into the town and looking at walking and cycle
ways as well. Therefore it has to come as a package, it has to
be an integrated package to make the best of the investment in
trams.
Q198 Ian Lucas: But that is not happening
at the moment, Mr Hendy.
Mr Hendy: That is an interesting
contention. I have read the submission of my two colleagues on
my right. Our contention is that one of our statutory duties in
the whole of Greater London is to run an integrated transport
system and a bus network and that in fact is what we do. What
their evidence perhaps does not tell you is that at the time that
the concession agreement with Croydon was signed in 1996 there
was a side agreement about the effects on tram patronage in Croydon
and changes in the bus network and there was an agreement about
what routes, if they were changed, might affect the patronage,
and in fact in the light of that agreement we have paid relatively
small sums of compensation for pieces of the bus network which
remain, which the promoters in their planning might have anticipated
were withdrawn. We do not run those for fun, they are actually
run because there is passenger demand for them. The further claims
that somehow the bus network in Croydon has not been adjusted
to suit the tram network, it is actually not its primary function;
the primary function of the bus network, as with all public transport,
is to satisfy public demand. Most of the routes referred to in
their submission have nothing to do with Croydon Tramlink and
would not feed it. But we retain the duty to plan the public transport
network totally and if their submission reads rather like a claimant's
document that is exactly what it is.
Q199 Ian Lucas: I do not sense a
high level of integration in your approach to transport policy
here.
Mr Hendy: Oddly enough there is,
and I think that what you are reading is a disappointed consortium
who are not making the money that they thought they would be.
There are some reasons for that but they have not chosen to tell
you what they are in their submission. One of the reasons is because
the system was built badly and opened late. In fact in public
transport terms the Croydon Tramlink is properly integrated; it
does serve a good purpose, it is a good system, it actually satisfies
public demand, as does the bus network surrounding it. Either
in London and elsewhere, whilst it is true that it would be damaging
for the financial case for a tram system to be directly competed
against by buses, it is not the case that the promoters of such
a system or the operators deserve to be entirely protected against
the public interest, causing people to interchange and make longer
journeys.
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