MALAYSIA AND SINGAPORE

One of the most ambitious overseas projects with which the ORR has been involved in recent years is the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High Speed Rail project, which is intended to follow a similar timeline as HS2 in the UK, with work starting in 2017 and completion in 2026. The 220-mile (350km) railway will be mainly on the mainland, with a fixed link (probably an undersea tunnel) to Malaysia.

Because of that tunnel, Head of Railway Safety Policy Martin Jones was called in to offer regulation advice in June this year. He and his team work with colleagues in France to regulate the Channel Tunnel, which was a very similar project.

“What they were particularly interested in was governance structures. How did we go about setting up the Channel Tunnel Intergovernmental Commission and safety authority? What sort of competence does it have? How do we operate it? What are the big challenges? What should it not cover, what should they reserve for themselves? And what they might do domestically in terms of regulatory frameworks.”

Jones and a colleague saw both the Malaysians and Singaporeans separately before spending time with the two together. Jones explains: “We did a half-day workshop with the Malaysians to get them to think about their needs, expectations and concerns about this kind of bilateral governance structure, and then did the same with the Singaporeans for half a day. We then got them all together to summarise for them what we’d heard and just to get them talking to each other.

“There are differences between their project and what we’re doing, but the sense is the same and the key principles that they need to establish, like an equal partnership, are comparable.”

Like Abu Dhabi, what Malaysia and Singapore need is neutral advice that they can both trust. Jones says that the UK makes a good choice because we have no hard commercial interest in the railway.

He says: “One of the things that really struck me is the extent to which we have come to rely on Europe to do a lot of the detail for us in terms of legislation and regulation. But also it’s a bit intangible. It gives you a fresh perspective on what you’ve done, when you talk to people whose background and experience is totally different but who know about the subject. They ask you searching questions that make you reflect on why you’ve done things a certain way. They have none of the historical baggage.”