Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. This week’s lineup:
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- • Fourth London bus route goes fully electric (Intelligent Transport)
- • Court rules Paris car ban illegal (CityLab)
- • Trams may run again through Rome’s historic city centre (NextCity)
- • Secret bedroom discovered in Berlin U-Bahn (CityLab)
- • Seattle wants to bring back historic trolleys (NextCity)
- • LA Metro Rapid expands all-door boarding (Metro Mag)
- • Next generation Acela trains in production (Railway Gazette)
- • American cities and creeping criminalization of walking (StreetsBlog)
- • Caledonian Sleeper’s Mk 5 carriage design philosophy (Rail Magazine)
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Not sure why this is only in the Industry News section and not on the front page, I almost missed it
@Bob
You’re not alone in almost missing this.
That “Fourth electric bus route” article is interesting, but … what are the other three?
The article doesn’t say & nor does the TfL web-site, which is really odd, if they want good publicity for it.
[ And yes, I tried several search combinations … nothing ]
Seattle
2 nations divided by a common language …
I was thinking of trolley Buses, of course, not trolleypole-tramcars – silly me.
“Jaywalking”
I think my brain hurts, reading that … it’s so wrong, on so many levels, that I don’t know where to start
The Caledonian Sleeper story curiously refers to the immobilisation process immediately before Servo took over. I wonder what was immobilised? Or was it a portent of things to come? Or one of Rail’s typos?
I must admit (sad person that I am) that I was fascinated by the SNCF “non” cost-cutting proposals. This would appear to be the fourth round of closures (1938, 1950s and 1990s) without any obvious difference to (a) SNCF’s finances, and (b) any attempt to improve frequencies away from what have become the LGV routes. Comparisons with other countries ( eg the UK) may be invidious because of differing geographies but simple comparisons based on distance show that reasonably close o/d pairs of third and fourth tier cities such as Edinburgh and Inverness in the UK (or similar in Germany for that matter) sustain hourly or two hourly services; in France, you’d be lucky to see twice daily TET/TER services between say Montpellier and Toulouse. And it isn’t down to cost allocation fudges that favour freight (unless freight is even more of a basket case than appears already). The article’s point about track maintenance may be significant. When I was advising one of the bidders for the LGV to Bordeaux, SNCF were very very coy about disclosing any figures about track inspection or even about failure rates; it may be that they have an excessively expensive regime for that..
@ Greg
I found it here. The first was route 312 in 2015, followed by routes 507 and 521 in 2016 and now route 153.
https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/mayor-unveils-first-fully-electric-bus-routes
Old reports suggested the 360, not the 153, would be next. Followed by the C1 and 70 later this year
Still baffled by the popularity of items on sleeper trains on LR. Especially when it’s an ancient one that’s been dredged up from the archives complete with references to things that have since seen 180-degree changes in policy, e.g. the pod accommodation…
@Balthazar
The sleeper article is nearly three years old – it says it appeared in RAIL 771 – the current issue is 847 – issued fortnightly so that’s 152 weeks! Certainly the April 2018 in-service date for Mark 5 sleepers is not going to be met.
@ Timbeau – you are a little out of date as is the article. You are almost right in that the 312 was theoretically converted to all electric but it still sees diesel buses. The H98 has a part allocation of all electric buses of the same Optare design as seen on the 312. Two Irizar single deckers, that were trialled on the 507/521, now turn out on peak time runs on the 108 route. The main push to all electric buses came with 50+ of BYD / ADL buses on the 507 and 521. The entire garage at Waterloo is converted to electric so no option to substitute diesels. The 360 was converted next and the 153 followed close behind. Ironically I went for a ride on the 153 yesterday and I was pretty impressed by the new buses.
There are also evaluation buses on the 153 (a different BYD) and 360 (a Wright Streetair). You are correct that the 70 and C1 gain electric buses due to special investment from RATP who have won the contract for the routes. TfL actually didn’t spec these routes to be electric. The next two single deck routes to gain all electrics will be the 46 and 214. The 274 had also been tendered for them but TfL has opted to convert the route to hybrid double decks when the new contract starts later this year.
To date BYD with Alexander Dennis bodywork have an absolute clean sweep of bulk orders for electric single deckers on TfL work. TfL are trying hard to encourage other electric types so there is apparently (not seen it myself) an Irizar demonstrator bus on the W13 at the moment. A Yutong single decker is also due soon as well for another route. We also have 5 BYD all electric double deckers that run on the 98.
@ Graham H – I must admit I sort of came to the same conclusion as you having read the SNCF article. It does seem to be bizarre that there is no meaningful analysis as to why SNCF’s asset utilisation and maintenance regimes are so poor / costly. It also seems odd to be contemplating route closures when with a bit of imagination and a revised approach to services and their cost base they could probably have a decent functional rural and city to city network. Heck if we can do it in the UK then the French should certainly be able to do it given they (seem to) have a greater political consensus about the role of the railway and public transport. I’ve never worked out why French rail timetables are so complex, odd stopping patterns, irregular headways and ludicrous day by day variations. It’s a miracle anyone knows when trains actually run on some lines. Could be so much better but they need a lot of reform and a different mindset to change things.
Would somebody help me out, please? I can’t see any link from or within the above articles discussing SNCF, to which Graham H and WW refer.
@Graham Feakins the following link should work but the main SNCF article is on the Pedestrian Observations site
Sorry here is the link Duh!
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2018/spinetta-wields-beeching-axe-france-pedestrian-observations/
What is not mentioned in the SNCF piece is the issue that is getting the most coverage on French media and that is the changes to staffing arrangements. This is provoking more outrage than the loss of many train services.
The government wants to reduce the status of full time “cheminots” . That is SNCF drivers but also plenty of other railway staff. They have plenty of rather expensive benefits. As i understand it, train drivers can currently retire in their early 50’s on top of having job for life status. There’s going to be a nationwide protest over all of this on March 22nd.
@ WW. I’m always surprised when travelling on SNCF to see carriage sidings full of idle stock at every hour of the day or night including idle TGVs; knowing that back home everything that’s fit to move is on the go. Is this the result of historic job creation for rolling stock manufacturers?
@ROGERB. Conversely, The Tours-Loches line has two early morning trains from Loches to Tours and two late afternoon trains in the reverse direction. The rest of the day is operated by buses. There are no sidings at Loches so presumably the trains run out of service in the reverse direction.
@St Andrean -you were lucky (or persistent and time-rich) to be able to assemble the entire timetable for Tours-Loches.Trying to find any information other than via the SNCF journey planner is difficult in the extreme, and their site is notoriously restrictive (the DB one is the better to use). Last year, some friends attempted to travel by train from Calais to Abbeville (they were entitled to FIP coupons) but gave up in the face of a lack of info – and a palpable lack of trains or buses.
@RogerB – and you are surprised at the various ploys used to protect employment? – therewas a particularly nice case a couple of years back when the manufacturing plant in Belfort was threatened with closure due to a lack of orders. EU State Aids legislation prevented a direct subsidy and SNCF had no financial headroom left to place any additional orders. And there was a risk that any new order would have to be tendered. However, the French regions were given additional loan sanction on the condition that they negotiated a deal with SNCF for a run on order to an existing build to buy sufficient stock to fill the Belfort orderbook..
The French government has said Non! to the line closures.
Some translated quotes from the Prime Minister yesterday…
“This is not a reform of the small lines. I will not follow the Spinetta report on this point. We have not decided to close 9,000 km of train line from Paris due to administrative and accounting criteria,” he announced.
“In many territories, railway is at the heart of the regions’ strategy for developing mobility,”
https://www.thelocal.fr/20180226/france-vows-to-keep-its-regional-train-lines
@ap -all they have to do now is to find the extra cash -why do I suspect we shall see even more buses replacing trains followed by fading away into the bocage?
Political puff aside, it is actually quite difficult to think of any region apart from Rhone-Alpes (or whatever it called this week) where there is enough of a network of actual services to bear any relation any likely development plan. [There are certainly a number of regions such as Nord-Picardie where the infrastructure still exists, but the actual services offered are pitiful – 2 or three times daily].
More generally,it is disappointing to see that the government isn’t prepared to address the acknowledged accounting and cost allocation issues. Hitherto, the evidence of SNCF’s plans suggest a decades long retreat to a core of LGV routes, with many crosscountry trips being recommended “via Paris”, but the latest reports (eg in this month’s Today’s Railways) suggest that even that strategy is beginning to come apart with unsustainably low asset utilisation (average TGV daily useage= 8 hours) and the prospective removal of serrvices to minor towns off the LGV routes themselves.
@ Graham H – TGV daily usage =8 hours confirms observation through the carriage window. It looks as though IC225s average >18 hours.
SNCF
In other words, all they have to do is run more (of) useful services, rather than 2 a day or similar idiocies.
Why don’t they?
@greg
More services, even using under-used assets, require more staff to operate them.
Timbeau
I thought SNCF was overmanned anyway, so that should not be a problem. (?)
Greg: There exists a perception – which may be right or wrong, current or obsolete – that SNCF is overmanned.
But even if this is so, the excess staff are unlikely to be in exactly the right place or have exactly the right skills to operate any particular desired service. A spare porter at Hyères cannot drive a train from Calais to Lille.
Porter?! Don’t French passengers have luggage with wheels on like here? They must be over-manned.
@Timbeau – whilst that is true.in an asset heavy industry like rail, it’s also generally true that the marginal cost of labour is quite low compared with the marginal cost of capital. The tricky -and more important – version of that question is whether the marginal cost of capital utilisation exceeds the marginal revenues. The even trickier version of the question here is whether using a TGV set more intensively is less expensive than having to call up a whole new set. That does seem likely, of course, but with the cost of running at high speed rising very steeply with increased speed, it may just be that some sort of cost step is passed. tho’ I doubt it.
@AP: it looks like the Spinetta Report is more Serpell than Beeching.
The key difference to the past is that regional services in France are now the responsibility of the regions. So the transport minister is right to say that there will be no decision in Paris to close thousands of kilometres of lines – it’s just not in the central government’s remit any more. It is really up to the regional governments to decide what services they want, whether the cost base is too high, etc.
What is not clear to me is whether the regions will ever have the option of choosing a service provider other than SNCF.
What I find bizarre is that provincial routes in England will almost always have an hourly clock-face service, which makes its use practical without too much effort from the passengers over things like the timetable. And this seems to have driven a great deal of the passenger growth over the last 10-20 years on these types of services. Running the occasional one-or-two services a day seems a poor way to attempt to run rural services between smallish provincial towns. Keeping lines open for such services seems a very expensive way of providing almost no benefits to the local community.
Ian J asks “…have the option of choosing a service provider other than SNCF.”
Wouldn’t it prove ‘interesting’ if a UK company offered to operate their services? Given every other country in Europe seems to run ours, anyway!
On the electric buses, though, looking out my window at the wonderful weather we’re having (sic) I note that batteries get quite degraded in freezing weather, suggesting that electric routes might have issues in getting the same distance between charges in very cold weather than in summer?
@Alison
I don’t know the technical answer to battery performance in sub-zero weather, but given that battery powered Teslas are sold in Canada, where it can stay at -30C for weeks, suggests that the performance drop off isn’t significant.
@LBM – Maybe they wrap the batteries up well! Battery-operated trams in France and elsewhere on the ‘catenary-free’ sections of route haven’t fared so well recently in severe sub-zero conditions (and neither have other systems with road-embedded power supplies on such sections).
The cold doesn’t necessarily affect battery range that much, but they really don’t like recharging when it’s sub-zero. Teslas (and indeed most EVs) pre-warm the batteries when it’s cold.
@AlisonW: But then the Brits would have to learn a foreign language and even worse: understand a foreign culture!
On the flip side it’d be nice just to get an operator out from under the DfT over here….