Welsh Government sets its signts on a very different type of franchise

If the Welsh Government has its way, the next Wales & Borders franchise will be unlike any other rail franchise in the UK. Key to this will be its aspirations for the South Wales Metro, which will serve the Cardiff City Region, largely based on the Valley Lines network.

The ambition is for the South Wales Metro to be a “modern connected transport system” integrating rail and bus services.

However, the winning bidder for the rail franchise will not simply be a rail operator, it will also be responsible for delivering infrastructure improvements.

Although the Welsh Government would not be drawn on what bidders are offering, the South Wales Metro could incorporate electrification, light rail, tramtrains, or a combination of all three, which the winning bidder will be tasked with delivering. For this reason, the winner will not be known as a train operating company, but as an operator and development partner (ODP).

A transfer of the Valley Lines infrastructure from Network Rail to the ODP is expected to take place. The logic is that if non-heavy rail elements are incorporated, this would be difficult for NR as it has little expertise in these areas. Details of this transfer are still to be finalised.

The South Wales Metro is considered vital to the economic growth of the Cardiff City Region.

Although the city itself has a population of around 400,000, the wider area has a population of around 1.5 million, and the Government sees public transport improvements as critical to speed journey times, drive economic growth and attract inwards investment into an area which in places is still suffering from the decline of the traditional coal mining and steelmaking industries.

The franchise process itself has been different to that used by the DfT. The Welsh Government has opted for a competitive dialogue process, in which it discusses desired outcomes for the franchise with bidders to prepare a detailed specification against which they can all bid. It says the outcomebased approach has worked well on other contracts it has awarded in areas such as technology.

Once the ODP has been named, it will co-locate with Transport for Wales into a new headquarters being developed in Pontypridd, allowing closer liaison between the Welsh Government and its transport provider.