Chris Grayling: I do not think it was flawed. The point about electrification is that it works well in places, and in other places it works less well—for example, electrifying a high-intensity suburban line where trains are stopping and starting in very short order, or electrifying a 125-mph main line railway. When a train can go at only 75 mph, as it can in south Wales, it is much less clear that it is beneficial. The benefit-cost ratio in that example, for the Cardiff-Swansea route, is very low.
Llansamlet, Skewen, Neath, Briton Ferry, Baglan, Port Talbot Parkway, Pyle, Bridgend, Pencoed, Llanharan, Pontyclun and Cardiff Central. Not short-order enough for you Mr Grayling? It isn't all about London you know. That isn't high-intensity I suppose (I would only envisage 1tph all-stops west of Bridgend), but you could also have a Swansea-Bristol calling at all (or most) stations between Cardiff and Bristol, replacing the current Cardiff-Taunton services over that section.
Chris Grayling: It does not; it has a very poor BCR▸ . But forget BCRs for a moment and just apply common sense. How does £500 million of taxpayers’ money to achieve no benefits for passengers make sense?
No benefits to pasengers? I guess Grayling does not consider 'preventing a disbenifit' to be 'a benifit'.
Q75 Chair: You describe it as a small number of projects. I have to say that is not how it is viewed by people in south Wales or across the midlands and in Sheffield.
Chris Grayling: If we take south Wales, the trains those people will be using for the foreseeable future are running today. Those trains will take time off the journey to Paddington; they will run quicker. They will run through to Pembroke dock when we have done the upgrade works for that. If we then erected the wires, it would make no difference whatsoever to passengers—literally no difference at all. I do not think people are bothered in the slightest about how the train is powered. What they are worried about is whether they are sitting in a comfortable train that gets them there faster. Why would we spend more than half a billion pounds on absolutely no benefit to passengers whatsoever?
Does that mean the we're going to see works on the Pembroke Dock branch to clear it for
IET▸ ? I had kinda thought that it would be a lot of money to spend for a dozen trains a year, and the business case would be a difficult one to make.
That is a supprising comment from Grayling. The previous announcement regarding
IEP▸ trains to Pembroke Dock was along the lines of "we'll look into it". Maybe they have now looked into it and found that there isn't really much of a problem; a lot of pepole (myself included) have assumed the new trains will not fit through the Narberth tunnel, but we could be wrong. I would
not support a costly exercise such as making a new tunnel just so that the Pembroke Dock trains can continue to run through to/from London, but if they've found a way to bring the class 800s to Pembroke Dock without much expense and will use 9-car sets* for the job then why not go for it?
* Sounds overkill and probably is west of Swansea (although I think on a sunny Saturday a 5-car set would be nearly full), but I'm not sure a single 5-car set would cope with the passenger loadings right through to Paddington and I remain opposed to the uncoupling of class 800s (and similar trains) in service.
