Nigel Harris says detailed planning is crucial for a project’s success.
Detailed planning and a clear voice are utterly crucial
My thanks to Stefanie Foster for stepping in to write Comment in the last issue, when I returned from holiday into a press week, completely disconnected from the modern world and in desperate need of a ‘catch-up’. Narrowboats have that effect!
Stef did a great job and she ‘called it’ right in her argument. Network Rail’s ambitious Waterloo upgrade blockade, closing ten of the termini’s 19 platforms, generally got off on the right foot. Sure, there were infrastructure failures - seven points and signals failures in the first two weeks of the blockade - so no, it wasn’t perfect. But services ran, despite disruption. It was crucial both for staff morale and NR’s reputation that it was not the firstday disaster that broadcast and daily print media were almost salivating in anticipation of. It is clear that the long months of planning paid off. Lessons had indeed been learned from the London Bridge (2015) and King’s Cross (2014) debacles, when poor planning and yet worse implementation led to utter chaos accompanied by toxic media coverage.
On the down side, Stef also predicted - again, rightly - that it would be a miracle if the 24-day blockade passed without major incident. On August 15 a signalling testing failure led to the 0540 Waterloo- Guildford being routed into a low-speed flank collision with a rake of bogie spoil wagons. They were in use as a barrier between the worksite and the operating part of the terminus, which with 100 million passengers a year is Britain’s busiest. Thankfully there were no injuries, but this sideswipe cost a day of signal testing, three days loss of a relay room and the removal of two scarce testers - and thereby raised the awful prospect of the blockade overrunning. That doesn’t bear thinking about, but as RAIL closed for press, with five days of blockade to go, NR was confident that bringing in extra resource and using contingency meant there would be no overrun and that the station would be handed back on time on August 29.
After the derailment, we all braced for the onslaught. But again, as Stef predicted, the fact that NR/SWT had been warning about this blockade since January meant that the media needle barely twitched. NR was indeed granted the benefit of the doubt. The lessons are clear: the improvement since London Bridge needs to be sharpened further. If a job this complicated and risk-laden can pass relatively well then there is simply no excuse for future screw-ups in jobs which are far less demanding.
And this job was extremely demanding. Because Waterloo is our busiest station, with more passengers by 0900 than Heathrow has all day, for many years no one had even dared to tackle this job, which has been repeatedly deferred because of its complexity.
NR is also to be congratulated, by the way, on its excellent use of Twitter during the blockade. Chief Executive Mark Carne’s opening short videos were good, but they were eclipsed by the subsequent time-lapse offerings and especially the regular updates from Twitter star ‘Engineer Steve’, whose engaging and cheerful manner led to some great videos that passengers certainly seemed to like and which I looked forward to seeing. There’s nothing to beat easily assimilated, interesting information to lubricate public understanding. Cheap, too.
It’s exam results time, so if it was a good marking day I’d maybe give NR/SWT a ‘B?-‘ for the blockade, given its massive complexity - but a resounding raspberry for whoever thought it was a good idea to switch franchisee in the middle of it! And please, three cheers not only for the magnificent ‘24/7‘ efforts of the ‘Orange Army’, but also for the unseen but quietly effective Wimbledon signallers, whose dexterity, juggling and artistry ‘on the panel’ choreographed a hugely complex train plan with considerable aplomb.
More widely, other big rail issues - electrification (or not), how to use bi-mode properly strategically (rather than merely to save money), the future of the Midland Main Line, freight’s future, franchise reform and NR costs, to name but a few - continue to confuse, collide and generate heat and not light. The need for NR devolution at the fastest pace (commensurate with having the best people to devolve to) and the urgent need for a new, knowledgable and credible guiding mind are, for me, the two most urgent issues. All other problems flow from these.
Away from London, the suddenly bitter spats involving Secretary of State Chris Grayling - firstly with Wales (see pages 6-7) but more particularly northern England over investment in general and High Speed 3 in particular (pages 12-13) - exploded just as RAIL closed for press. Sure, in the North, Grayling’s abrasive approach raised hackles - the toxic politics of apparently smiling on Crossrail 2 (which starts in his own constituency!) while telling the North to fend for itself did not help his case. Interesting, then, that the very next day (August 23) Prime Minister Theresa May was in the North East, committing afresh to building a Northern Powerhouse and that “in continuing our programme of vital infrastructure investment, including in High Speed 2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail, we’re improving connections to and across the North although we recognise that further progress must be made”.
The Prime Minister stopped short of committing to what she described as “the proposed high speed rail line across the Pennines”, and the Financial Times leader on August 23 referred to a “…decision due this year on a third high speed railway - connecting cities in the north of England better”.
I’ll happily comment on HS3 - but someone needs to explain to me what it actually is, because as far as I can see it’s neither a named route nor is it high speed! The term seems to be thrown around in an increasingly febrile atmosphere, as a generic label for a network of east-west route upgrades from Liverpool to Hull, possibly including onwards to Newcastle and taking various other areas. As a northerner I want to support the agenda - but that means having an actual agenda, an agenda on which campaigners are agreed.
So, please, fellow northerners - tell me specifically what you want, what the benefits are, what it’s going to cost, and show us that everyone is beating the same drum? Transport for the North urgently needs to draw all this together in a clear plan. Then it needs to send an early copy to George Osborne, because while the former Chancellor’s support is welcome, he causes further confusion every time he urges construction of ‘HS3’. Until there is clarity, the heat and angst achieve nothing.
At Waterloo, notwithstanding disruption after failures, NR carefully planned what it wanted to do and effectively communicated (not least on social media) the consequences and benefits. TfN urgently needs to follow a simlar strategy with ‘High Speed 3’
Whatever it actually is. Please decide soon.
“HS3 seems to be thrown around in an increasingly febrile atmosphere as a generic label for a network of east-west upgrades...”