Getting a grip on GRIP.

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From Christian Wolmar in a letter to The Times

Sir,

The process for reopening railway lines as currently set up is cumbersome and slow. It will take at least half a decade, and probably more to see any of the schemes proposed in the ‘reopening Beeching’ programme to see the light of day. They have to have a good ‘business case’ and then go through Network Rail’s incredibly bureaucratic but aptly named GRIP^▸ (Guide to Railway Investment Projects) (Governance for Railway Investment Projects).

Therefore if the government is serious about stimulating the economy with investment in these schemes, it should throw caution to the wind. Do a quick back of the envelope assessment and then hand out the money – some, of course, will be wasted but probably less than paying for consultants to spend months or years working out detailed but often wrongly-argued business cases. Just look at the success of the Borders Railway south of Edinburgh which has greatly exceeded expected passenger numbers and all the consultants’ predictions.

Christian Wolmar

[Trowres]

There is nothing wrong with back-of-envelope calculations provided that they are done with care and integrity; avoiding biased assumptions as much as possible.

Unfortunately there's more than a hint of bias in Mr Wolmar's reference to the Borders Railway, as he could have chosen a number of reopenings that have not achieved the forecast demand.

While professional consultants should rightly be criticised if they use "wrongly-argued business cases", it is unfortunately true that scheme promoters are also prone to shaky assumptions and logic.

(I don't think I'm going to have many friends on this forum if I keep doing this).

[grahame]

There is nothing wrong with back-of-envelope calculations provided that they are done with care and integrity; avoiding biased assumptions as much as possible.

[...]

While professional consultants should rightly be criticised if they use "wrongly-argued business cases", it is unfortunately true that scheme promoters are also prone to shaky assumptions and logic.

[...]

Agreed on both points.

The enthusiasm for a case from an early-stage promoter can give it an optimism bias and can ignore elephants in the room.  And optimism bias and elephants can compound and breed.  Sadly, it's in human nature for someone who comes up with a good idea to turn a question from "Is this a good idea?" to "this is a good idea!" without actually addressing the question.

I have seen a number of ideas floating around of late which I scratch my head at and think "I can't see there being a case there" but  (and it's a big but) I don't have the background data and local knowledge.  Surprises happen; if I had been forced to comment on the Welsh Highland Railway 50 years ago, I would probably used words like "I can't see it happening ...." and having - as it has turned out - a faulty crystal ball.

There are quality ideas out developed on envelopes, fag packets, whiteboards.   And there are also ideas on those same media which are not only not worth the media they are written on, but are doing a dis-service to the quality developed ideas and there is a need to evaluate / sort out the wheat from the chaff.

However - I agree with much that's written suggesting that the evaluation and sorting out is done in an overkill manner - the hurdles are systems that are more complex, take longer, and cost far more than is necessary or good for the final outcome.  Think of a current example such as reopening a passenger train service to Portishead and ask "is it best overall investment to report and enquire to this degree and though these cycles?"

[Electric train]

The GRIP^▸ (Guide to Railway Investment Projects) process a process the ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) expects NR^» (Network Rail - home page) to work to, and yes it is bureaucratic but the railways is a complex environment to engineer within, complex legislation, regulations, performance criteria place on it by the investor, but no where near as bureaucratic as the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) processes when they direct fund a project

GRIP is a pain in the  (neck  ) but it would need to be replaced with something else, it does take a project from conception to completion, some stages work better than others

[CyclingSid]

Consultants tend to deliver what the client expects.

Scottish Government got consultants to put a monetary value on “removing driver frustration” after A9 dualling project cost-benefit analysis didn’t pan out how it wanted

from https://road.cc/content/news/cycling-live-blog-july-07-2020-275229.

This means that the project would return 78 pence in benefits for every pound spent by the Scottish Government. ... The value of removing driver frustration is assessed as £430 million – £86 million more than the value given to collision reduction.  Once the value assigned to removing driver frustration is added, the project would return £1.12 for every pound spent by the Scottish Government.

from https://spice-spotlight.scot/2020/02/18/the-a9-dualling-project-crucial-for-scotland/

[infoman]

Installing tickets gates at Bradford on avon Trowbridge and Westbury MIGHT help pay for the new Devizies Parkway.

[Bmblbzzz]

There seem to be two general sources of frustration with GRIP^▸ (Guide to Railway Investment Projects): the monetary value assessment, and the number of stages a project has to be taken through with no way of saying "Case proved! Jump the next stage, call in the diggers!"

[Red Squirrel]

[...]

Unfortunately there's more than a hint of bias in Mr Wolmar's reference to the Borders Railway, as he could have chosen a number of reopenings that have not achieved the forecast demand.

While professional consultants should rightly be criticised if they use "wrongly-argued business cases", it is unfortunately true that scheme promoters are also prone to shaky assumptions and logic.

(I don't think I'm going to have many friends on this forum if I keep doing this).

It's right to question these things, though it's always good to cite examples! Which reopenings were you thinking of?

The two biggest ones I can think of are the Borders Railway and Ebbw Vale, both of which have been far more successful than the professional consultants anticipated. This has led to constraints where value engineering based on anticipated loadings has rapidly become an obstacle to further expansion.

[IndustryInsider]

Eurostar was much lower than initial predictions, as was Midland Metro, though I think the general trend is for expected numbers at new lines and stations to be handsomely beaten.

[Red Squirrel]

Would it be a cheap shot to point out that Eurostar was not a re-opening? Probably; for many schemes so much re-engineering is required to meet modern standards that we might as well consider it to be a new railway.

This report, which I'll admit I only scanned over, may make interesting reading for someone with time on their hands. It looks and the demand forecasts for HS1^▸ (High Speed line 1 - St Pancras to Channel Tunnel) and attempts to assess why they were so wide of the mark. 'For all sorts of reasons' seems to be the answer!

I haven't found anything on the Midlands Metro - how far out were the forecasts for this? I note that they are still expanding this, so presumably they weren't too disappointed with it...

[IndustryInsider]

I haven't found anything on the Midlands Metro - how far out were the forecasts for this? I note that they are still expanding this, so presumably they weren't too disappointed with it...

It was forecasted at 20 million a year, but stalled for many years at 5 million after opening.  It only started picking up (as you would expect) when the terminus moved to New Street, and with many extensions and new lines planned, hopefully it will climb to 20 million eventually?

There's an interesting article here:  http://www.britishtramsonline.co.uk/midlandfarewell.html

[Red Squirrel]

According to Richard Faulkner and Chris Austin's 'Holding the Line', the top ten passenger re-openings by mileage are:

Nottingham-Mansfield-Worksop	28.7mi	1993-1998
Airdrie-Bathgate-Edinburgh	23.7mi	1986-2011
Ladybank-Perth	20mi	1975
Barry-Bridgend	19mi	2005
Ebbw Vale-Cardiff	18.1mi	2008
Crediton-Okehampton (Sundays only)	18mi	1997
Peterborough-Spalding	15mi	1996
Middlesbrough-Northallerton	14.3mi	1996
Wallsall-Rugeley	14mi	1989-1998
Barassie-Kilmarnock	13.3mi	1969

To this we can add 29.3mi of the Borders Railway.

Most of these involved re-introducing passenger services to freight lines. I can't help noticing that England seems rather under-represented in this league table!

How many of these, though meet Trowres' criterion of not having 'achieved the forecast demand'?

[Trowres]

It's right to question these things, though it's always good to cite examples! Which reopenings were you thinking of?

The two biggest ones I can think of are the Borders Railway and Ebbw Vale, both of which have been far more successful than the professional consultants anticipated. This has led to constraints where value engineering based on anticipated loadings has rapidly become an obstacle to further expansion.

I was thinking more of this report than of any particular reopening:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/3932/demand-forecasting-report.pdf

However it does say of Ebbw Vale:

The forecast demand for Ebbw Vale Parkway station was 45,000 passengers, compared to the 2008/9 actual demand of 252,000...
... Two of the reasons for the under-forecast of demand have been identified as:

• The exclusion (as requested by the Strategic Rail Authority) of rail demand arising from regeneration of the area and also the assumption that the local steelworks would remain open; and
• The fact that the rail service operates to Cardiff, rather than Newport (as assumed in the modelling).

So, 780 ex-steelworkers; many looking for new jobs - and a service introduced to a more attractive destination (sorry, Newport!) than envisaged by the forecast?

[TonyK]

Consultants tend to deliver what the client expects.

Scottish Government got consultants to put a monetary value on “removing driver frustration” after A9 dualling project cost-benefit analysis didn’t pan out how it wanted

from https://road.cc/content/news/cycling-live-blog-july-07-2020-275229.

This means that the project would return 78 pence in benefits for every pound spent by the Scottish Government. ... The value of removing driver frustration is assessed as £430 million – £86 million more than the value given to collision reduction.  Once the value assigned to removing driver frustration is added, the project would return £1.12 for every pound spent by the Scottish Government.

from https://spice-spotlight.scot/2020/02/18/the-a9-dualling-project-crucial-for-scotland/

As I have said before, the Benefit/Cost ratio is determined by writing the answer you want on a piece of paper, then giving that, plus £10 million, to some consultants to work backwards from, until they establish the right question. It becomes a tool to use to be able to go ahead with something - Borders - or not go ahead, as in the Bristol area tram system. In that respect, it is a political thing, deciding whether to do something or not, leading to GRIP^▸ (Guide to Railway Investment Projects), which decides how.

GRIP isn't political, because if Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak announce a new railway tomorrow, they know there will have been at least three more Prime Ministers and Chancellors before the first train runs. They know also that the way things work, the opposition party that fiercely opposes the new railway plan could easily be the government party taking the credit when it comes to fruition, as happened with the Edinburgh trams. So there is more political capital to be had in making short-term decisions, leaving the inconvenient jobs like Hinkley C, Heathrow's third runway or HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) for someone else. But ET is right - there would have to be something instead of GRIP, and it could be worse.

[Trowres]

...
How many of these, though meet Trowres' criterion of not having 'achieved the forecast demand'?

Bearing in mind that most of the projects will have had more than one demand forecast and some were quite a long time ago, that isn't going to be an easy question to answer. The report I quoted earlier listed 23 stations studied (i.e. for which they could find the forecasting reports!) of which 10 had outcome passenger numbers below forecast. Of the 23, nine were within +/- 20% ... demand forecasting is difficult! I would suggest, however, that the spread of figures given falls far short of supporting the idea that schemes always turn out better than forecast.