Examination of Witnesses (Questions 9100
- 9119)
9100. MR ELVIN: Our position is that
that will not be the case and TfL will not have sole responsibility.
9101. LORD BERKELEY: Thank you, my Lord
Chairman, and thank you, Mr Elvin. I think we take great comfort
from that remark.
9102. LORD BROOKE OF ALVERTHORPE: So
who will have the responsibility?
9103. MR ELVIN: In that case, it will
be Network Rail.
9104. LORD SNAPE: We heard that one!
9105. MR ELVIN: Mr Berryman is getting
more indiscreet the closer we get to the end of the Committee
hearings! I will have to get a special bag to put over his head,
I think!
9106. LORD BERKELEY: My Lord Chairman,
have we finished with Ms Durham as far as you are concerned?
9107. CHAIRMAN: Yes.
The witness withdrew
9108. CHAIRMAN: What do you want to do?
We have half an hour, I think. Do you want to call another witness?
9109. LORD BERKELEY: I think we could
certainly start with Mr Garratt now. I am not sure that there
will be time for cross-examination, so whether Mr Elvin would
prefer to stop now.
9110. MR ELVIN: Mr Taylor is going to
be cross-examining Mr Garratt. I thought he had sat and done little
enough as it was today! I suspect that, however far we get today,
we will need to cross-examine on another day. I am perfectly happy,
and Mr Taylor is, to hear Mr Garratt now and we can simply continue
when we come back.
9111. CHAIRMAN: You are happy to come
back on another day, are you?
9112. LORD BERKELEY: Yes, my Lord Chairman.
I think we have agreed that we can come back on Thursday morning,
but not tomorrow.
MR MICHAEL
GARRATT, sworn Examined
by LORD BERKELEY
9113. LORD BERKELEY: This is my final
witness, Mike Garratt of MDS Transmodal, who is the author of
a report which we referred to earlier and which you have all seen.
Mr Garratt, could you briefly explain your company, what it does
and your own experience in this field of timetabling and forecasting
and things like that?
(Mr Garratt)
My name is Mike Garratt and I am the Managing Director of MDS
Transmodal. Insofar as these proceedings are concerned, I think
the important thing to say is that our company runs something
called the `GB freight model' which we have been running for private
clients and for government for about seven or eight years. It
has been used to inform the port forecasting exercise which formed
part of the Government's interim ports policy last year, it informed
the forecasting of the Rail White Paper which came out last July,
and it has been used in this process.
9114. This slide summarises it.[41]
Could you just take the Committee very quickly through it.
(Mr Garratt) Certainly. The model started life
in about 1999. It was used initially to inform the Government's
then ten-year Transport Plan in 2000 and has been used subsequently
in the way I described. It generates freight forecasts by origin,
destination and mode and the results can be transformed into train
movements. We use it in a way which is entirely compatible with
the work we have done for the Government last year to generate
forecasts for 2015 and 2030 of train movements along the Crossrail
corridor or along parts of the Crossrail corridor. They are expressed
as origin and destination movements so that they can be, as it
were, dropped into a timetabling exercise. There is a relationship
between the number of trains running and the number of paths they
require.
9115. Perhaps I could just stop you there and
refer you to Mr Berryman's evidence of last Tuesday, paragraph
8173, when he said, "I ought to mention at this point that
not all the existing train paths are used, by a very, very wide
margin. I think that only about 50 per cent are actually used
now, so there is already a 100 per cent growth capability".
Is that correct, as you see it, or what is your view on that statement?
(Mr Garratt) Well, certainly not all the
paths are used, but there is a very good reason for that. In the
case of particularly non-intermodal trains, there is fluctuation
in demand which means that some parts are used some days and not
others. In the case of intermodal trains, in particular, the need
to pass trains between different terminals and on several different
routes means that you need a great deal of flexibility. Otherwise,
you would effectively have total inertia and you would never be
able to change train patterns. In fact, in this case the ratio
between the number of trains and the number of paths was agreed
with Crossrail as we embarked upon this process.
9116. You do not want to give any figures?
(Mr Garratt) Yes, the ratios on the Great
Eastern were 1.59 paths per train and on the Great Western 2.45
for the reasons I have just explained.
9117. Let's just move on to slide 32 which summarises,
I think, the modelling work which you have done with the timetabling
group.[42]
(Mr Garratt) Yes, that is correct. These are
paths demanded in 2015. The permission number sometimes quoted
in the text is 406. A handful of those paths were shown to be
exceptional movements and we have agreed that they be removed,
so we settled on 396 paths and handed our output over to Crossrail
who tested two scenarios. One was without either the Crossrail
trains, i.e., the existing trains, and no infrastructure measures
and the other was with the Crossrail services and the infrastructure
enhancements. The results of that exercise done by Mr Deal, who
is in the audience here today, were more or less neutral. It made
a little difference as to the existing situation as compared to
with the Crossrail trains and infrastructure measures.
9118. Have you got any idea what the result
would be if it was with Crossrail trains and without any enhancements?
Has any work been done on that?
(Mr Garratt) No, I have absolutely no
idea. I think the ORR took great comfort from the fact that both
sides, so to speak, were able to agree on both the demand exercise
and on the timetabling exercise it has presented and, in that
sense, that was the only show in town.
9119. Can you explain how you measure or model
PPMs?
(Mr Garratt) That is not my area of expertise.
41 Committee Ref: A52, The GB Freight Model (LINEWD-34_05-032) Back
42
Committee Ref: A52, Crossrail and freight capacity modelling
(LINEWD-34_05-033) Back
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