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Parent Category: Network Rail

Network Rail constantly cite the joint Uff/Cullen Report's (1.7mb PDF) call for ERTMS implementation as justification for their plans. But the Uff/Cullen Report called for the implementation of Level 1 ERTMS, not the Level 2 variant that Network Rail have chosen. Both levels incorporate full Automatic Train Protection, but Level 1 is much simpler, can be implemented much more quickly, and (unlike Level 2, which is still half-developed) has already been implemented in several countries.

So why has Network Rail flouted the recommendation of the Uff/Cullen Report?

Could it be because Level 2 requires a radio network and Level 1 does not? It would certainly avoid a lot of awkward questions about Network Rail's failure to modernise their in-cab radio systems over the past decade. Opting for Level 2 ERTMS gives Network Rail a digital network "for free" - the fact that it comes bundled with ERTMS in a package that will cost £4.28 billion, of which less than 5% relates to the radio network, may seem a small price to pay for saving face - particularly since almost all of it will come from the taxpayer. Network Rail's stubborn perseverance in its mast erection programme, despite long delays in the implementation timetable for ERTMS, supports this interpretation.

GSM-R also introduces major technical risks to the implementation of ERTMS, according to Railway Safety and the Strategic Rail Authority:

Although ERTMS is similar in concept to ATP systems already in operation, it has a major difference in that Level 2 and above relies on GSM-R telecommunications. This difference remains the major technical risk. European trials carried out to date have not addressed the GSM-R data requirements for ERTMS in a UK operating and regulatory environment. Other risks include the identification of a viable operational and technical transition strategy, delivery of multi-vendor interoperability, reliability, degraded mode operation, and configuration control.

ERTMS: Towards a Better, Safer Rail System, Railway Safety and the Strategic Rail Authority, April 2002 (808-kilobyte PDF)

Network Rail are ignoring another recommendation of the Uff/Cullen Report (Recommendation 12.4, Extension of BR-ATP), which is to retain and extend the BR-ATP Automatic Train Protection system already in use on the Great Western and Midland Zone lines. Instead, Network Rail plans to abandon its huge investment in BR-ATP just as it's become "fully effective", and replace it instead with the totally unproven ERTMS Level 2.

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Parent Category: Network Rail

The implementation schedule for ERTMS has been postponed several times because of budgetary constraints. A two-year deferment of the completion date, from 2008 to 2010, was announced in October 2003 (Cutbacks delay railway system), and a further three-year delay followed in April 2004 (Will rail project ever reach its destination?). Both articles are liberally salted with the usual shroud-waving lamentations about the danger to railway passengers resulting from these delays.

A paper by HSE Rail published in May 2003 states that, “ERTMS Level 2 suitable for the UK railway remains a long way off, implementation now projected no earlier than 2015 on highspeed lines. Major uncertainties remain on technical issues and securing funding for development as well as implementation”.

Given such long delays, most organizations would reconsider the specification of the project as a whole - particularly as GSM-R is based on obsolescent second-generation mobile technology. However, Network Rail clearly isn't bothered by delays.

According to an e-mail sent by Madelene Klaasen-Bos, Head of Communications GSM-R, on 2 February 2004, mast installation will be completed in the Strathclyde region in August 2004, and also along 190 km of track north and south of Peterborough during late spring/summer of 2004.

One mast campaigner phoned Ms Klaasen-Bos on 8 April, after hearing the news of the latest delays on BBC Radio 4. “She confirmed that their funding had been cut and that this meant that the project would take longer”, he reported. “However, in all other respects, nothing has changed - they still want 100-foot masts over the whole network as soon as they can get them.”

So Network Rail are continuing to blight the countryside with huge masts - even though they can't be used for many years to come.

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Parent Category: Network Rail

The West Coast Main Line (WCML) modernisation programme instituted by Railtrack in 1995 hinged on implementing an experimental high-tech Train Control System known as moving-block, a technology that had never been used on any mainline railway system. The estimated cost was £1.5 billion. In 1999 Railtrack abandoned it, and reverted to conventional signalling. The new estimate for WCML modernisation was then £5.8 billion. In 2002 the Strategic Rail Authority estimated that the final cost when it's completed in 2008 will be £9.8 billion.

ERTMS Level 2 is another high-tech signalling system that is not in use on any mainline railway system. Will that too be aborted in four years' time? And what will be the final cost?

The full story of the WCML fiasco can be read in a two-part Guardian article: Part 1 and Part 2.

Of the GSM-R 188 masts Network Rail had erected by March this year, 176 were installed on the West Coast Main Line. Which is odd, because the version of ERTMS Network Rail plans to install on the WCML (north of Crewe, at least) is Level 1, which does not require GSM-R!

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Parent Category: Network Rail

An article in the June 2004 issue of Modern Railways called ERTMS: can it be made cost-effective? bluntly states: "Quite simply, as it stands ERTMS is unaffordable."

The latest estimate of the cost of ERTMS, which is contained in the National ERTMS Project Team [NEP] 2003/2004 Progress Report (a 675 kilobyte PDF) is £4,280 million (up from £3,600 million in April 2002). This covers just three lines (the East and West Coast Main Lines and the Great Western route to Bristol/Cardiff) and the trains that run on them. We have found no estimate for the cost of extending this to the entire 16,000-kilometre UK network, which Network Rail now wishes to do.

The £4,280 million budget also excludes “the capital cost of signalling renewals, consequential costs and ETML”. According to a technical report prepared by the NEL Consortium for the Health and Safety Executive in 2003, “The cost of the resignalling with CBI [Computer Based Interlocking] is estimated to cost £50 billion over the ERTMS implementation period. The level of this cost compared to the ERTMS capital cost [then about £3 billion] may cause concern and delays, but is thought to be unlikely to stop the project.” That's more than 90% of the total projected cost - and its omission from the master plan is nonetheless dismissed as inconsequential!

Reading the 2003/2004 Progress Report is a surreal experience, since virtually all the figures given are positive - that is, Network Rail is representing ERTMS as a profit-making venture. To quote again from the article in Modern Railways:

...present costs and values at discount rates at this stage of development are smoke and mirrors stuff. And for connoisseurs of this sort of thing can I commend the business case for the EDS (ERTMS Demonstration System). This has, we are told, a positive Net Present Value of between £44 million and £48 million over six years on a reported project cost of £60 million.

How can such a trial scheme on a bit of railway more than adequately signalled by Radio Electronic Token Block (RETB) have a business case? Well NEP has put a value on the reduction of risk to the ERTMS implementation programme. Perhaps I should see if the Open University offers a degree in financial sophistry so I can explain this sort of thing more convincingly.

Network Rail are betting huge amounts of public money on unproven technology, in return for virtually no safety benefit and minimal, and entirely speculative, performance gains. In fact, the likelihood is that ERTMS will reduce capacity, just as TPWS has reduced it, according to Train Protection - Review of economic aspects of the work of the ERTMS Programme Team(a 1.5 megabyte PDF), published in 2003 by the Health and Safety Executive.

ERTMS, which has been described by the Strategic Rail Authority as "probably...the largest safety-critical control system project ever undertaken in the UK", is a far more complex project than TPWS. TPWS cost £525 million, exceeding its original budget by £360 million - a 218% overspend (Rail safety: the effectiveness of TPWS for overspeed mitigation, a Health and Safety Executive Paper by HSE Rail, 2003.

The West Coast Main Line (WCML) modernisation programme, which also depended on unproven signalling technology, will over-run its original budget by 650%. If the cost of ERTMS Level 2 overruns to the same extent, it will rise to £32,500 billion (plus the £50 billion for re-signalling, of course, as well as the unbudgeted cost of "consequential costs" and ETML).

It could be even worse: the Health and Safety Executive Paper cited commented that “A further matter of considerable concern is the large increases in the cost of automatic train protection equipment, as is illustrated in Table 2”. Table 2 showed that the costs of fitting different components of ATP to the Great Western and Chiltern regions in the five years between 1997 and April 2002 went up, in real terms, by between 324% and 386%.

Perversely, Network Rail are counting on costs going down rather than up. Here's a final quote from the article in Modern Railways:

...the Strategic Rail Authority's Executive Director -Technical, David Waboso, who heads the NEP, is clear that 'the business case for ERTMS is about much lower costs'. By 'much lower' he means half present figures.

This is a pretty heroic aspiration, given that ERTMS costs are uniformly high across Europe. NEP believes that one way of reducing costs would be to open the market to more suppliers.

Since the whole of the European signalling industry is involved in the ERTMS programme, and we have a British chapter in the form of RIASIG (Alcatel SEL, Alstom, Bombardier, Invensys Rail Ansaldo and Siemens), presumably NEP is hoping that the Azerbaijani Signalling Apparat will be able to knock up some reverse engineered safety-critical kit at a third of the cost. Dream on.