S thousands of people were pressed against barriers in a life-threatening crush at London Bridge last week — the latest of many disruptions, delays and now dangers at the supposedly “upgraded” station – politicians from Boris Johnson down told Network Rail it must get its act together.
The truth, however, is that London Bridge is only the beginning, and some of the miseries suffered by its users will soon be passed on to travellers across large parts of Britain. From Leeds to Swansea, a Sunday Telegraph investigation has found, Network Rail has been losing control of its “enhancement programme” to modernise the railways.
Costs have been vastly inflating, delivery dates look almost certain to be missed and some key schemes trumpeted by ministers may even have to be cancelled. Criticism that until now has been spoken off the record and within the industry is starting to break into the open.
“We have increasing concerns about Network Rail’s track record and its ability to deliver its enhancement programme,” said Graham Richards, the deputy director for rail planning and performance at the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR). “The productivity rates are not what they should be.” His boss, Alan Price, said that Network Rail’s borrowing has become an “unsustainable credit card on which no one makes the minimum payments” .
“The extent of the chaos at Network Rail is not yet widely realised,” said another senior figure in transport. “It’s going to become a major issue when it starts hitting services and upgrades.”
The biggest problem, however, is not London Bridge — or King’s Cross, where overrunning engineering works left thousands of travellers stranded at Christmas — but the electrification of Brunel’s Great Western main line.
According to Network Rail’s own documents, the first section, from Paddington to Bristol Parkway, Newbury, Oxford and Chippenham, is supposed to achieve “entry into service” in June next year, with the electric trains carrying their first passengers in December.
This section covers 126miles (a further 24miles, between London and Maidenhead, was electrified years ago for the matter that across the whole route – one of the country’s busiest — most of the work can only be done in the four hours a night when trains do not run. “It is one of our greatest concerns,” said Mr Richards. “The Great Western line has really challenging complexities.”
Yet Network Rail’s website proclaims that the project is “on schedule”. A company spokesman insisted to The Sunday Telegraph that “we are still aiming for a completion date of 2016” for the first phase. Philip Rutnam, the permanent secretary at the Department for Transport (DfT), told MPs in December: “On the Great Western main line, we get very clear reassurance from Network Rail that it will deliver to time — the schedule remains absolute.”
Roger Ford, the industry editor of Modern Railways magazine, said that modernisation of the route was “becoming a slow bicycle race” between electrification and signalling. “Oxford-Didcot signalling is around a year late and Bristol area signalling is reported to be a year late also,” he said. “The general view among informed sources is that the electrification is a year late, but the feedback I get is that the Treasury and the DfT are more concerned with the rising cost than timescale.”
When he spoke to the MPs, Mr Rutnam did admit that the costs on the Great Western had risen a bit — by 70 per cent, in fact, from £1billion to £1.7billion. That will almost certainly mean less money for other electrifications that ministers have promised, in particular the politically sensitive upgrade of the Trans-Pennine line between Manchester and Leeds, which is supposed to be finished by 2018, but has not yet started. That project, or others, could drop off the queue if things go too badly in the West Country or elsewhere. And they are going badly elsewhere.
On the western side of the Pennines, Network Rail’s electrification work from Manchester to Preston is meant to be finished in two years. It, too, has barely started. Another electrification, from Manchester to Liverpool, was supposed to have opened to passengers last year. It finally did so last week, but with just two trains because the other 18 had not yet arrived.
In a brilliant marketing move to undermine the entire benefit of the investment and convince Northerners that the Government does not care, the “new” electric trains are actually 25-year-old cast-offs from the London commuter lines, only three years younger than the diesels they replaced.
All the Lancashire and Yorkshire rail projects are part of a pledge by the Chancellor, George Osborne, to create a “Northern powerhouse”, but the house seems, for the moment, somewhat underpowered. The challenge to the programmes was “very large”, Mr Rutnam admitted. Some of the Northern voters Mr Osborne is trying to woo may have to wait until 2021 – and the election after the election after next – to express their gratitude.
The crunch may come in a report by the ORR about something called the “enhancement costs adjustment mechanism”. This dry-sounding process will rule on what Network Rail should be spending, though it will be up to the company to decide what it wants to cut if its costs are deemed too high.
The ORR, however, is starting to lose patience, because it is not just the enhancements that are going wrong. Routine maintenance is lagging, train punctuality is deteriorating and almost every aspect of Network Rail’s performance is getting worse. Just before Christmas, the regulator wrote an official letter to Network Rail calling its performance “very disappointing” and saying that “it is essential for your company’s credibility as an infrastructure manager that this is put right”.
Whether Network Rail got the message is still unclear. Mark Carne, the chief executive, has attacked his own company’s “macho culture” and “institutional incompetence”. But people who have had close dealings with the organisation recently said it still appeared to be in denial.
If promised rail upgrades start falling apart, two months before an election, reality could very quickly bite.