Memorandum from Nottinghamshire County Council (EM2-17)

 

 

Purpose of Note

At its hearing on 17^th December 2009, the Select Committee considered evidence submitted by Nottinghamshire County Council about how, over many decades, the Midland Main Line (MML) had consistently received far less funding than other Inter-City rail lines or comparable roads.

The Committee questioned representatives of East Midlands Trains, Network Rail, Nottinghamshire County Council and TravelWatch East Midlands, and it was agreed that a paper be prepared for the Committee setting out some further small scale measures that might be undertaken to redress this historic disadvantage.

 

Background

Nottinghamshire County Council's original submission sets out in some detail how small has been the historic level of investment in the MML compared to other Inter-City rail lines or roads, and that evidence is not repeated here. As a result of this relatively tiny level of investment, the Midland Main Line has far slower average speeds than any other Inter-City route, and the East Midlands' cities have relatively long journey times to London - something which, for the reasons set out in the Eddington report, is a handicap for the economy of the region.

Recently there have been some significant steps forward.

· East Midlands Trains took over as train operator in November 2007, and has steadily increased punctuality and passenger numbers to record high levels; and

· Network Rail has reduced its unit costs, and processes and funding are now in place to allow some infrastructure enhancements, including new stations at Corby and East Midlands Parkway, and East Midlands signalling renewal.

However, although there is at last some money for enhancements, the MML has been allocated far less than other Inter-City routes or the parallel M1 (see graph on page 4), and unless something changes its disadvantage will not be addressed.

 

Current Investment plan

For the current 5-year 'railway control period' (2009-2014), Network Rail has been allocated a sum of £69.4 million for a scheme to raise speeds on the MML. The ORR has stipulated that this shall "enable a minimum eight minute improvement in journey times between Sheffield and London for services calling at Chesterfield, Derby and Leicester". No journey time improvement of eight minutes has ever been achieved on such a busy railway line for such a small sum of money as £69 million. It is just 4% of what is being spent on the parallel M1. It compares starkly with the £90 million that is being invested in the car parks at West Coast Main Line stations.

Network Rail is establishing the detailed design of this scheme. In contrast to the recent comprehensive upgrade of the West Coast Main Line, for the MML scheme the elements of the work have been carefully selected to maximise the desired outcome. Advantage will be taken of synergies with already planned track renewals and other works to minimise design costs-effectively getting a dual benefit (renewal and enhancement) from one design. And disruption, which has added so massively to the costs of other schemes, is being minimised.

 

We believe that, in contrast to the well known problems of the West Coast upgrade, the MML scheme will come to be recognised as an exemplary way of upgrading busy railway routes.

 

Possible additional works

 

The approved MML scheme does not exhaust the cost-effective possibilities on the MML. In the short term there is a strong case for enhancements at two further locations

 

a) Desborough-provision of freight loops.

For the 21 miles between Wigston and Kettering, passenger trains take 17 minutes whilst freights take 35 minutes, but there is nowhere where passenger trains can overtake slower freight trains, and this is a huge limitation on the times at which trains can run. This adds to the timetableing constraints that exist at other busy places along the route-especially St Pancras, Leicester, Trent junction, Nottingham and Sheffield-and the compound effect is severe. Additional time-known as 'pathing time'-has to be added to the schedules of MML trains to enable trains to fit round these compound constraints.

 

The long distance between loops also limits the maximum load that freight trains are allowed to take to 2000 tonnes, or the freights would be even slower and more disruptive.

 

Desborough is roughly mid-way between Wigston and Kettering. Providing freight loops there would allow freight trains to be overtaken, and would introduce far greater flexibility of the 'paths' for passenger trains. Crucially this would enable passenger trains to take full advantage of the better paths that will become available from the £69 million linespeed scheme.

 

Loops at Desborough would also allow freight trains to be heavier, because even though they would be slower the loops would minimise the disruptive effect. In fact the trains could be 800 tonnes heavier, which would have an enormously beneficial effect on the economics of operation, as each freight train would generate 40% more revenue for a very small increase in operating costs. There is a very strong desire from the freight operating companies to run heavier trains, and they have already identified traffic that they could carry in heavier trains, if allowed.

 

The financial benefit from the heavier freights is so large that it fully justifies the business case for loops at Desborough. It is included in the draft East Midlands Route Utilisation Strategy, in which it is "recommended for further development"

 

There used to be freight loops at Desborough until the 1980s. Ironically they were removed as part of the Leicester resignalling upgrade, because at that time there were only half as many passenger trains as now-2 per hour then which has risen to 4 now. However that does mean that there is suitable land available, already in railway ownership, which would make re-instatement a straightforward matter.

 

The estimated cost of each loop is £5 million, including ground preparation, 2 points, the signals to control them, and 800 metres of track-or £10 million in total

 

 

 

 

b) Market Harborough

The section through Market Harborough is the most curved on the entire MML, with a series of s-bend curves (known as 'reverse curves') as the line snakes its way through. This imposes a string of speed restrictions over around 2 miles, so that the speed drops from 100mph to 75mph, then 60mph, then 85mph before finally returning to 100mph.

 

This poor alignment is a result of historical factors. For over 100 years from the mid 19^th century, Market Harborough was a junction between the MML and two other lines. At Market Harborough station the MML had to bend eastwards to make room for a line from Northampton. And a mile to the north the MML was originally on an almost straight route but was subsequently diverted onto a long bend to allow a line from Peterborough to pass underneath it.

 

However both those lines have now closed. The Peterborough line was closed by Beeching in 1966, but he didn't reinstate the MML over its original straight route, and for the last 46 years MML trains have had to slow down to travel over a curve to avoid another line that no longer exists.

 

The Northampton line was closed in 1981, so freeing up the land that would allow a more gentle curve and a higher speed through the station. In anticipation of just such a realignment, when BR rebuilt Market Harborough station in 1978 it put the new buildings in the revised place necessary to allow the track to be moved to the better alignment. Unfortunately, this piece of admirable forward planning by BR was thwarted because by 1982, when the Northampton line had closed, BR's budget had been severely cut and there was no money to move the track. In a sense, the realignment of the track through Market Harborough is a job that was started in 1978 but has remained unfinished for 32 years.

 

It would now be possible to realign the track over a couple of miles to give a much straighter and faster route through both former junctions. This would reduce the length over which any speed reduction was necessary, and raise the minimum speed from 60mph to at least 80mph. It has several big advantages that make it cheaper than work elsewhere

· it involves old railway land that is already suitable for railway track; and

· because much of the work will be 20 to 50 metres away from the existing track, it can be done without the disruption that was so problematic on the West Coast upgrade - this will make the construction easier and cheaper, and minimise compensation costs.

 

The work would reduce on-going maintenance costs by eliminating the redundant flyover bridge.

 

This low-cost approach is entirely consistent with the innovative approach that has made the MML linespeed scheme as a whole so exceptionally cheap for the benefits it will produce.

 

As part of the scheme the platforms at Market Harborough station would be rebuilt to full DDA standards, thereby achieving another government objective.

 

It is estimated (at a mixture of GRIP levels 1 and 2) that the cost of the works at Market Harborough would be £17.5 million, inc £5 million contingency. Detailed design work and finalising of costings and business case at GRIP stage 4 is needed.

 

Moving the track onto a better, faster alignment was considered as part of the £69 million linespeed scheme, but doing the full job was precluded by the fact that any time gained at Harborough would, with the present service, only mean that passenger trains tend to catch up with freight trains.

 

Provision of the freight loops at Desborough would mean that passenger trains would be able to realise time savings from higher speeds at Market Harborough. Such time savings would benefit MML passengers from Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham-and, outside the region, from Sheffield.

 

We believe that there is an extremely compelling case for an additional £27.5 million for the MML to fund freight loops at Desborough (£10 million) and substantial works at Market Harborough (£17.5 million).

 

Even with this additional £27.5 million, the MML allocation for CP4 would only just equal the £90 million that is being invested in the West Coast main Line car parks, and would still be far, far less than is allocated to the other Inter City routes or to the M1. It should be noted that the £90 million investment in West Coast car parks is entirely justified, as it will more than pay for itself in additional ticket revenue that it will facilitate; the point about it is that is sets in very sharp relief just how small a sum has been allocated to the MML.

 

 

 

Medium-term

 

The MML linespeed scheme and the additional works at Market Harborough would cut journey times. And, as explained above, provision of loops at Desborough would allow far greater flexibility of paths in which MML trains were timetabled to run.

 

The faster times will require a complete rewrite of the MML timetable. This rewrite opens up the possibility of a further benefit, which is to free up a train. On its own the speed up will mean that all trains reach their destination earlier, and would then sit round in the terminating platform for longer before their return trip. But that is dead time. Using the pathing flexibility it might be possible to cut the turnround time, and for each train to set off earlier on its return. This means they would reach the next destination even earlier, and set off on the next trip even earlier etc. This makes productive use of the spare time that would be freed-up by the higher linepseeds.

 

By mixing and matching which trains go where-i.e. St Pancras-Pancras-Corby-St Pancras-Nottingham-St Pancras-Corby etc, which is already done to some extent on the MML, it might well be possible to operate the current service with one less train set.

 

Something like this has already been done on the MML. In December 2008, East Midlands Trains recast the timetable. EMT cut what had previously been long layover times at terminal stations, and made each train do more trips per day. This enabled the service to be increased from 4 trains per hour each way to 5 trains per hour using the existing rolling stock. This was a highly efficient move by EMT, and is believed to be on of the key reasons why EMT was successful in winning the franchise.

 

Because the funding for the MML linespeed scheme is so small, it will not cover all the possibilities, and there will still be some further works that could be done that would produce further journey time reductions. The easiest elements will be included in the £69.4m scheme, so the further elements will be somewhat more costly, but it is possible that they could have a strong business case if they enabled a train set to be freed-up.

Some of these elements will have had some initial work done on them in as part of the considerations of the current MML linespeed scheme. In addition, we would ask that the Trent - Nottingham section be assessed, as no consideration at all has yet been given to this section of the route and what enhancement to it might be possible.

 

What we propose is a study to asses the inter-related issues of

· what reductions in journey time might be possible from the currently unfunded elements of work on the MML;

· what reductions in journey time would be required to produce a timetable which allowed operation of the existing service with less rolling stock, thereby freeing up some of the vehicles currently used;

· what would be the best use of any MML vehicles thereby freed-up (e.g. strengthening selected busy trains, reforming the existing fleet into different train set lengths, running some additional trains at peak times using the 6^th MML path)

· and what would be the business case for the most promising combinations of the above factors.

 

Such a study would help address the need identified in the East Midlands Route Utilisation Strategy for more capacity on MML to cope both with the trend of strong growth in patronage (which has doubled over the last ten years), and to cope with the huge housing growth that is planned along the route.

 

It would also make sense for such a study to examine how Bombardier's concept of hybrid Meridian (i.e. the type used on the MML ) vehicles might take advantage of the electrification that already exists between St Pancras and Bedford and of possible interim electrification (e.g. Bedford-Kettering or Leicester).

 

The region was disappointed that the MML was not selected for electrification, even though it had a better business case than the lines that were selected-indeed, as correctly identified by Network Rail's Electrification Strategy, the MML has the strongest electrification business case of any line in England. However, we recognise that those decisions have been taken. The absence of any immediate plans for electrification gives strong urgency to considerations of how to provide the additional train capacity on the MML that the draft RUS identifies will be required. And there is no realistic prospect of additional diesel vehicles being built.

 

Indeed, the need for new vehicles was the stated reason for the Great Western Main Line being chosen for electrification. That being so, the issue of how to obtain the additional vehicles needed for the MML deserves to be treated equally seriously.

 

The proposed study would assess a possible way of creating additional capacity in a most cost effective way. Indeed, because rolling stock is so expensive, a scheme that effectively made vehicles available could have a high value benefit and a strong business case. And of course further journey time improvements, as well as redressing the historic disadvantage of the MML, would also have a further significant financial benefit from generating additional patronage and revenue.

 

Conclusion

 

We are grateful to the Select Committee for the consideration it has given to this matter, and for offering us the opportunity to submit this further paper following the hearing by the committee.

 

We believe that the MML linespeed scheme, for which £69.4 million is allocated, is an exemplary way of delivering journey time improvements. We believe that provision of loops at Desborough and the full linespeed improvement at Market Harborough are equally valuable, and should be funded in the short term to complement the linespeed scheme. And we believe the MML deserves a study to identify what other linespeed increases might have a strong business case as part of releasing vehicles to cater for the coming growth of passengers.

 

The cost of such a package is still extremely modest by comparison with other inter-city routes, but its outcomes could be extremely significant. Any support the Select Committee could give would be most valuable.

 

 

 

12 January 2010