Examination of Witnesses (Questions 9400
- 9419)
9400. Just in case a comparison is made, as
I think TfL made it, are there any dissimilarities in terms of
integration between Heathrow Express and the Crossrail central
section?
(Mr Gisby) I think in scale and location, yes, there are.
It was sensible for both parties that we have ended up where we
are with Heathrow Express. Had we not done so, it would have been,
I think, a brave move for them to be involved in the maintenance
and operation of a relatively short stub of railway. It would
have created a planning and timetabling interface between the
two organisations, which I think would have been difficult and
a signalling interface which would have been difficult. If my
staff were just running the Great Western Main Line, they would
constantly be on their toes, wondering what trains were coming
up the tunnel and how they would fit them in and so on. If you
consider a high-speed train coming up from Cardiff, that takes
about two miles to stop, one and a half miles depending on the
gradients and so on. If you are running those at times to ten,
you are trying to clear a headway in front of it because it is
going at two miles a minute and it has about a 14, 15-mile headway
in front of it, so you are trying to match things coming in at
a high speed from the west with things coming in relatively slowly.
Why Crossrail is so different is that you are doing that at either
end of two of the busiest parts of our network, so you have trains
emerging into what we call "the throat" at Paddington
and trains emerging into the throat of Liverpool Street heading
west and east in some very difficult, busy parts of the network
to run. I have seen some previous hearings; the scale and intensity
of those are really, really quite significant. There has been
debate about a western cord into Heathrow. Liverpool Street Station
handles twice the volume of Heathrow every day and it does it
in about a three-hour window in the morning and in the evening.
We all know regrettably from 2 January what happened if Liverpool
Street Station does not open for a few hours. It is not a comfortable
place to be. Being able to do this in an integrated manner seems
to me quite important.
9401. Thank you very much. I think we have finished
exhibit 5. Can we then come on to the question of integration
and fragmentation and can you help us just a little bit more of
the implications so far as Crossrail is concerned?
(Mr Gisby) I think one needs to get a sense of what the broad
scale of something called "operation" it is. It is not
just running the trains in the morning and signalling them; it
is not just dealing with them when they may go slightly wrong
and getting them on back on plan, as we say. It starts a couple
of years in advance. The timetabling process is not quite as arcane
as described in previous meetings and hearings and so on, it is
more automatic and systematic than might have been the case. We
work with the industry, we listen to where they would like to
run services, we are cognisant of the commitments they have already
made in franchise agreements and we get into some very detailed
analysis and modelling of how we could fit that all into together
and what would be the ideal pattern of services. We do not always
get unanimity and it is useful, I think, for all parties that
the ORR is there to judge, to make considered views, to act as
arbiter where there are difficulties in relation to some of the
pinch points on the network that we have at the moment, people
want to run more trains then we might reasonably be able to fit
in given the criteria and pressure on raising performance, but
we do that under a set of regulations, practices, case law, appeals,
hearings and judgments that have been quite fine-tuned and very
well-tuned under the ten years plus they have been operating.
It works pretty well. I think the evidence of the last three or
four years shows it works pretty well. Performance is very good
and volume is up and seems never-ending in its increase. To come
into that with a different structure and to come into it bidding
for things in a different way to what I think the rest of the
industry is used to would be very difficult to manage and it seems
to me to make things more complicated than probably they need
to be.
9402. You have dealt with maintenance and renewals.
What about the efficiency of the system itself? To what extent
is that going to be affected?
(Mr Gisby) Again another aspect of the job and the role that
we carry out is how live minute-by-minute the railway is. Something
happens somewhere on it all the time and, while there is a planned
timetable which one can model and say, "Yes, in this route
with these trains you should get a high level of performance",
things in a live system happen all the time. A part of my function
is about controlling it, bringing it back to plan, getting it
back on track, an eye to what is happening in the next hour, an
eye to what is happening in the next rush hour and tonight and
tomorrow.
9403. Just how widespread are effects of perturbations
or other problems, for instance, in the Crossrail area on the
rest of the network?
(Mr Gisby) They are huge in as much as they are intense and
spread rapidly and the impact can be felt 50 or 100 miles away
and on some routes within five or ten minutes or half an hour.
Given the scale of Liverpool Street, if one had got everybody
into Liverpool Street in the morning and lost the services, something
happened, there is an electricity blackout or something, we would
have public order issues at Liverpool Street Station probably
within 45 minutes, things escalate that quickly. If we had delays
or something, for instance, between Reading and Paddington that
would ricochet back up the tracks towards Cardiff, Bristol and
Exeter very quickly within about ten or 15 minutes depending on
the time of day. Again, if Reading locks up, then services, say
the freight trains, running from Southampton up to the North West
again would be affected almost immediately. Of course, there is
not a lot of places you can put trains of that size once they
have started out on the journey. So the ripple effect across the
network because of the location of where Crossrail is would be
very profound very quickly.
9404. Is there anything you want to add on the
importance of integration, so far as safety is concerned?
(Mr Gisby) I think I come back to the point earlier that
if things are across different contractual commercial interfaces
it does raise questions about standards, about compliance, about
checking, cross-checking, inspection, and so on, that just get
unnecessarily complicated. I think that is one of the lessons
coming out of Railtrack and going to Network Rail and bringing
maintenance back in-house. I think, also, on the efficient cost
and the efficient operation of what is being contemplated being
built here as well, it is very useful if the organisations that
are going to run it at the end of the day are involved early on
in its specification and its design, because you can apply hard
lessons that we have learnt day-in, day-out from the results of
things that have gone wrong, and so on, and make sure that you
build something that you have a much better chance of operating
next time round. Clearly, what is being built here is going to
be tremendous but it is going to take performance, volumes and
intensity further up to new levels than we are used to at the
moment. So getting it right at the design stage and designing
things out and having an integrated approach to operating it,
seems to me, absolutely vital.
9405. Thank you very much. I want to turn to
some other exhibits, if I may, very briefly, because I have gone
through them in opening the case. We have exhibit 8.[29]
This is a letter of 18 July, 2007. I will come back to the email
in due course, if I may. I do not want to take time on how this
letter is construed. What was your understanding—Network
Rail—as to the infrastructure manager of the central section?
(Mr Gisby) At the time that all this was going
on, I was quite clear that that is what we were going to do and
that it was not defined narrowly, as I would say it, in terms
of the ROGS but it was the broader understanding of what an infrastructure
manager does in the wider context of access planning, of judging
the right balance between performance and capacity, which is something
that was given to us on behalf of the industry post the rail review,
as well as the day-to-day safe operation and management of the
railway in its actual delivery.
9406. So infrastructure manager as within the
2005 regulations?
(Mr Gisby) As we do everywhere else; as we do for the main
network, as we do for Heathrow and as we do for one or two odd
bits of railway in ports and elsewhere. Yes, exactly the same
as everywhere.
9407. When one finds (this is in tab 9) the
Network Works Development Agreement, which you appreciate is one
of the areas being looked at, referring to the role of Network
Rail as "assuming the role of network operator and maintainer",
first, what was the position so far as this agreement was concerned?[30]
We know it was not signed because of TfL's board, but what was
the position as far as those who were negotiating were concerned?
(Mr Gisby) There were some interesting details
in the negotiation but this seemed a very obvious thing to do.
As I have said earlier, Crossrail is a tremendous scheme. Its
impact on an awful lot of people who come in and out of London
for many years will be wholly negative. There is some massive
work to do at Paddington and to the west, and some significant
work to do at Liverpool Street and elsewhere. Getting that done
when you are also trying to run a railway for the next few years
is going to be a major challenge. We will have reduced access
into Paddington and Liverpool Street while this work is going
on. So it just seemed obvious that such an agreement would come
into being that we would be directly accountable for the works
that were on our railway.
9408. Was it controversial as a point, during
the negotiation of this agreement?
(Mr Gisby) Not as far as I am aware; not at all.
9409. We know what transpired. The next thing
chronologically was your appearance with Mr Fuhr at the railway
hearing. That is tab 11. I have read the relevant parts of that.[31]
What was the basis, as you understood it, and would the ORR, as
far as you could see, have understood, for the maintenance and
operation of the railway?
(Mr Gisby) I have been to ORR hearings on these
kinds of issues a number of times. While, again, Crossrail is
a big and new scheme, I had no sense, sitting there, that one
was not doing it in any way other than, dare I say, the normal
way now that the railway goes about these things; that the timetable
modelling had all been done by my staff jointly, under the Timetable
Group, on behalf of the Promoters, all the existing operators
and the new train operator that would run the Crossrail services;
that everybody had contributed to that; and that this was unusual
in that it was an access option but that we were all talking about
an infrastructure that we would timetable, operate and maintain
as infrastructure manager. I had no sense that it was going to
be anything else.
9410. I am not going to take you through the
correspondence; we have got that. I want to take you to tab 22,
please. We now have the email which has been copied. My Lords,
I think the email has been passed to your Lordships. We can see
it as I have described. The only point I want to ask you about,
because it is entirely clear what is being said in it, is if we
go to paragraph 14.[32]
This is about deregulation. You have dealt with the Heathrow link
and differences. What about the Channel Tunnel Rail Link?
(Mr Gisby) Operating the Channel Tunnel Rail
Link, or now High Speed 1, is another part of my responsibilities.
It is outside the 1993 Act of the domestic, classic railway, if
you like. At the moment, that does not really matter because it
is, if you like (it is belittling, slightly, to say it), a branch
line in relation to the rest of the network.
9411. LORD SNAPE: A pretty expensive
one!
(Mr Gisby) A rather fantastic branch line, but in network
terms it is, really. That will change next year, and that is why
some of the issues that are being discussed this morning, again,
will become quite important. When the new domestic services come
in from Kent and come on to the high speed line, and when we are
operating the Olympic service from St Pancras, and so on, that
brings with it a whole range of other challenges. The idea that
one could operate domestic trains coming in through Kent on to
the high speed line and into St Pancras in a different way seems
to be to be very difficult. We do operate the Channel Tunnel Rail
Link and we do provide the maintenance for it, but it is slightly
to one side of the rest of the network. Crossrail is just different
because it is right in the middle of two very important bits of
our infrastructure. Having another party do the kind of things
that I certainly sense fall naturally to us would be very difficult
to contemplate.
9412. MR PURCHAS: So far as your concern
about the operation or maintenance of that part of the network
is concerned, does that in any way require ownership or any involvement
in the capital funding of that section of the railway?
(Mr Gisby) No, we do not own the Channel Tunnel Rail Link
and we are certainly not involved in the capital structure of
that, nor do we own the Heathrow extension, nor would we wish
to. The rest of the railway was vested in us, so we do own the
rest of it, including the stations, but I do not have a problem
with operating and maintaining infrastructure that I do not own.
I could certainly cope with that. So this is not a thing about
ownership and funding and financing structures; it is just about
trying to run the railway properly day-to-day.
9413. A very unfair question, Mr Gisby: is there
anything else you want to tell their Lordships?
(Mr Gisby) No, not at the moment, my Lords.
9414. MR PURCHAS: Thank you very much.
Cross-examined by MR
ELVIN
9415. MR ELVIN: Mr Gisby, good afternoon.
Mr Gisby, it will not surprise you to hear that much of what you
said about the need for operations, integration, safety, and the
like, is not in issue between us. Can I just put a few matters
to you? This is about the final resolution of the issue as to
who will be infrastructure manager under the access regulations
and whether on the contrary, as TfL argues, they should be exempt
from the general regulatory regime of the Railways Act. Is that
right?
(Mr Gisby) That is
what I understand the debate to be about, yes.
9416. I hope you will take it from me that the
TfL paper represented TfL's bid for its position rather than any
view by the Department. I am here representing the Department.
(Mr Gisby) I am quite happy to accept that, sir.
9417. Thank you. You will also understand where
TfL is coming from; that TfL, now, post the financing package
in October, is putting in several billion pounds to this project,
is it not?
(Mr Gisby) I believe that is true, yes.
9418. I am not saying the Department agrees
with this, but TfL's position is that it wants to secure some
greater control over the infrastructure which it is contributing
so much to.
(Mr Gisby) I am sure that is for TfL to comment on. If I
may make a couple of points that might amplify my view: I found
some of the language earlier on a little difficult. I am not "bidding"
to do anything here; I am not trying to "up an ante",
as I think was said earlier on. We put our company's reputation
on the line to deliver access to Terminal 5 in time for its opening.
We did not have to do that. We dug BAA out of what, I suspect,
would have been quite a difficult position for them to be. I have
shown you in exhibit 5 that we will be doing some quite considerable
enhancements on the railway every day, every weekend, all the
way through the next five years.
9419. That is perfectly well understood.
(Mr Gisby) On a scale that is massive and on a scale that
is quite significant in relation to the on-track works between
Paddington and Maidenhead, and so on. We will do the Crossrail
works as well, because it is the right thing to do.
29 Committee Ref: A54, Extract from correspondence
between DfT and TfL to Network Rail, 18 July 2007 (SCN-20080430-010) Back
30
Committee Ref: A54, Extract from Network Works Development Agreement,
Schedule 5-Brief (SCN-20080430-011) Back
31
Committee Ref: A54, Office of Rail Regulation hearing on the
Crossrail Track Access Option Application, 1 February 2008 (SCN-20080430-012
to -016) Back
32
Committee Ref: A54, TfL-Regulation of the Crossrail Central Tunnel
Section, Exemption of the CTS from regulation under the 1993 Act
(SCN-20080430-023) Back
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