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Railways

My Lords, I welcome this debate drawing attention to the growth in passenger and freight traffic, and I look forward to hearing more about the Government’s paper, Delivering a Sustainable Railway. I am particularly interested in the proposed infrastructure changes at Reading and Birmingham. It is interesting to note that the proposals for Reading station will not be the first major reconfiguration of that station. The original Brunel station was built with a single long platform for both up and down trains—a layout which survives to this day at Cambridge. It did not take long for the Great Western Railway to find out what an operational inconvenience this was, and to rebuild the station to approximately what it is today. It is now time for further development to provide yet more capacity. I must express my disappointment that in connection with the now almost certain advent of the Crossrail scheme, there is no sign of any intention to electrify that part of the Great Western lines, as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Snape. I would have thought that Crossrail should merely be a precursor for a scheme similar to Thameslink, providing a through electrified service from at least Newbury, Swindon and Oxford, with a longer term goal of going even further west to Bristol and north-west to Birmingham and using Crossrail continuing east to Ipswich and Colchester. Last week, as a member of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers, I had the benefit of attending a day-long seminar on ERTMS, the European Rail Traffic Management System, and ETCS, the European Train Control System. It was very well attended by some 200 people. The keynote speech was by a senior member of the Department for Transport. ERTMS has, since its inception in the 1980s, been the panacea for the European railway industry's problems. The original idea was to provide the international train driver with a uniform presentation of information as to how to drive his train, irrespective of the signalling style of the country in which he found himself. Not only that but—due to the multiplicity of track-to-train communication systems, every European country having its own special non-compatible brand—an ERTMS-equipped train should need but one set of equipment. ERTMS will provide interoperability, increased safety and, due to its moving block concept, increased traffic capacity—the answer to everyone’s prayers. The main problem up to now has been cost. In spite of that, a number of schemes are being implemented in Europe, and at last year’s railway signalling convention in Interlaken we were taken for a run on the Swiss SBB ERTMS train—so it actually works. As a passenger on the train, one was not aware that there was anything special about it, but we were shown the type of display the driver saw, which is what is significant for the operation. One of the problems of systems involving many manufacturers and different operating regimes is to ensure that everybody operates to the same standards and change level and does not go off and do their own thing, which has been common in the past. It has cost the Netherlands railways €30 million to overcome a problem due to the change in standard levels. In the UK, our first ERTMS system is being installed on the Cambrian lines between Shrewsbury, Aberystwyth and Pwllheli. I will comment on some operator concerns about that later. ERTMS costs in the UK have up to now been too high, with the payback period being too long. A critical re-examination, the ““red diamond challenge””, has recently taken place to establish a business case for ERTMS. As a result, a national implementation plan has been established, running to 2044. The breakthrough is to co-ordinate the implementation of ERTMS with the phased replacement and rollout of life-expired existing railway signalling systems and rolling stock, rather than superimposing ERTMS on the existing installations. That way, costs are minimised as less equipment should be needed on the ground, and the business case can be made. One benefit of ERTMS is expected to be increased track capacity, due to the provision of moving block capability. I am not convinced that that will be achieved in practice on a route handling a mixture of fast express trains, suburban services and freight. Another fact is that the system relies on GPS to provide train position. That is unlikely to be sufficiently precise in densely tracked areas such as London terminals, so it is likely that conventional track circuits will still have to be used in such areas, again reducing the cost benefits. I would like to comment on the practicalities of implementing ERTMS, as presented to the IRSE’s seminar by an operational staff member who has to make it happen. He said: "““ERTMS is not a technical project, but predominantly an operational one””." That organisation, which has the Cambrian franchise, is not geared up to undertake a major project of this nature as part of the day-to-day job. He has to design, install and maintain a whole new set of signalling equipment on a train that was not built for it, which may result in loss of passenger accommodation to accommodate an equipment cubicle. He has to train drivers, gain safety approvals, maintain the service and manage the costs. There are a lot of practical questions. Where do you put the kit? Is there an adequate electrical supply on the train? What is the effect on traffic of releasing trains from a limited fleet for modification? Who pays for new driving techniques and new operating rules, and so on? Such problems will occur just as much on the other major routes when ERTMS is rolled out nationwide over the next 40 years. The various ROSCO and ATOC contracts will need to take account of those considerations. ERTMS will take time to establish itself; I hope that it will be worth the wait. Finally, when will something be done about the dreadful and disgraceful state of Derby station? It has been falling down for a very long time.