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Post by TNL33036 on Oct 13, 2016 16:23:30 GMT
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Post by snoggle on Oct 13, 2016 16:36:22 GMT
Interesting list of bidders but I don't believe this franchise will be as transformative as the Welsh administration hope. I'm very sceptical that they will get anything like the scale of electrification they expect and that will cause enormous issues for this franchise. Without certainty on the electrification schemes - I'm not aware there is a firm funding package for Cardiff - Swansea or the Valley Lines - I don't see how bidders can bid properly. You really need three scopes to be be priced - a diesel operated service broadly as now, an electrified service as hoped for and a cost per 4 week period to maintain diesel services because the wires aren't ready or the electric trains aren't ready. The Welsh govt will want lots of new trains and I bet the DfT want to send lots of old trains from Greater Anglia to Wales. I suspect no one will like the bid prices either. I do think an electrified network would be great but the fare levels, patronage and funding don't really add up to support that scale of investment on routes which often only have hourly services at the extremities and half hourly a bit closer in to Cardiff. It's not exactly a train every few minutes as we have in parts of Greater London.
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Post by TNL33036 on Jul 17, 2017 13:41:11 GMT
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Post by TNL33036 on Oct 30, 2017 21:36:34 GMT
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Post by snoggle on Nov 3, 2017 23:56:19 GMT
This is an interesting move. Arriva say it is for commercial reasons which is an interesting statement given they've got three reasonably big franchises - Cross Country, Northern and London Overground. 2 of these are recent gains so why the sudden lack of appetite? I wonder if they are fed up with the way the Welsh Government are managing the procurement or if they think the scheme to develop a "South Wales Metro" is just too risky for any franchisee to cope with. Trying to electrify all the South Wales valley lines is one hell of a task and could take an entire franchise term to achieve.
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Post by ServerKing on Nov 4, 2017 4:56:01 GMT
This is an interesting move. Arriva say it is for commercial reasons which is an interesting statement given they've got three reasonably big franchises - Cross Country, Northern and London Overground. 2 of these are recent gains so why the sudden lack of appetite? I wonder if they are fed up with the way the Welsh Government are managing the procurement or if they think the scheme to develop a "South Wales Metro" is just too risky for any franchisee to cope with. Trying to electrify all the South Wales valley lines is one hell of a task and could take an entire franchise term to achieve. I read they were even cutting back on some of the electrification in Wales anyways... it might be quite expensive to electrify some lines which may see few passengers during the day outside the major cities or towns. Mick Cash had a moan about Welsh operators being blocked from the franchise processes but I didn't think there were any. Still, this is the same union complaining about sleep detectors being fitted in the Croydon trams in the wake of that terrible derailmemt
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Post by snoggle on Nov 4, 2017 10:14:44 GMT
This is an interesting move. Arriva say it is for commercial reasons which is an interesting statement given they've got three reasonably big franchises - Cross Country, Northern and London Overground. 2 of these are recent gains so why the sudden lack of appetite? I wonder if they are fed up with the way the Welsh Government are managing the procurement or if they think the scheme to develop a "South Wales Metro" is just too risky for any franchisee to cope with. Trying to electrify all the South Wales valley lines is one hell of a task and could take an entire franchise term to achieve. I read they were even cutting back on some of the electrification in Wales anyways... it might be quite expensive to electrify some lines which may see few passengers during the day outside the major cities or towns. Mick Cash had a moan about Welsh operators being blocked from the franchise processes but I didn't think there were any. Still, this is the same union complaining about sleep detectors being fitted in the Croydon trams in the wake of that terrible derailmemt AFAIK only Cardiff - Swansea electrification has been cancelled. The Valley Lines haven't and those routes are all pretty busy - electric traction there makes a lot of sense given it's a localised network. I suspect there may be funding issues for Valley Lines electrification but that's for the Welsh and UK govts to resolve. Is it the RMT objecting to sleep detectors on Tramlink? I confess I'm not up to date but I doubt they're objecting to detectors per se more how they will be used. I remain convinced that some horrible issues around drivers hours, rostering and management of staff are going to eventually emerge from the crash investigations when they finally conclude. I get a sense of "stable doors being closed long after the horse has bolted" on some of the Tramlink issues.
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Post by routew15 on May 23, 2018 6:21:36 GMT
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Post by TNL33036 on Jun 4, 2018 11:06:31 GMT
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Post by snowman on Jun 4, 2018 15:01:13 GMT
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Post by TNL33036 on Jun 7, 2018 0:46:26 GMT
More details for the fleet plans unveiled:
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Post by joefrombow on Jun 7, 2018 16:44:03 GMT
More details for the fleet plans unveiled: Looks interesting glad the good old trusty D stock will still live on as the class 230 and be interesting to see this new tram/train stock and how it will operate .
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Post by snoggle on Jun 7, 2018 17:19:20 GMT
More details for the fleet plans unveiled: Looks interesting glad the good old trusty D stock will still live on as the class 230 and be interesting to see this new tram/train stock and how it will operate . Unless the Welsh government has done a lot of preplanning and pre-positioning with local authorities and affected groups I can see the tram-train concept not happening. If there are already reserved alignments to take the trams then fair enough but I can see the usual ferago happening if road space is going to be lost. We've seen all too well what can happen in London (West London Tram debacle) and I just hope the politicians haven't got themselves in contractual knots over who does what to get tram train working and what happens if it doesn't. The ridiculous delays in running Sheffield Supertram to Rotherham as a "tram train" do not set a good precedent. That's taken 5 or 7 years and it's still not really finished. I can completely understand the strong desire to make a big step change in Cardiff and the Valleys rail transport but there are huge risks if this stuff runs late. Keolis Amey have not exactly had a good start on the DLR and their performance is not at Serco levels. I know there's little love lost for Arriva's operation in Wales but this "brave new world" has to come in on time, to spec and it has to work.
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Post by routew15 on Jun 7, 2018 20:16:55 GMT
Looks interesting glad the good old trusty D stock will still live on as the class 230 and be interesting to see this new tram/train stock and how it will operate . Unless the Welsh government has done a lot of preplanning and pre-positioning with local authorities and affected groups I can see the tram-train concept not happening. If there are already reserved alignments to take the trams then fair enough but I can see the usual ferago happening if road space is going to be lost. We've seen all too well what can happen in London (West London Tram debacle) and I just hope the politicians haven't got themselves in contractual knots over who does what to get tram train working and what happens if it doesn't. The ridiculous delays in running Sheffield Supertram to Rotherham as a "tram train" do not set a good precedent. That's taken 5 or 7 years and it's still not really finished. I can completely understand the strong desire to make a big step change in Cardiff and the Valleys rail transport but there are huge risks if this stuff runs late. Keolis Amey have not exactly had a good start on the DLR and their performance is not at Serco levels. I know there's little love lost for Arriva's operation in Wales but this "brave new world" has to come in on time, to spec and it has to work. The tram-train to Flourish does not appear to be that complex on the face of it. There does not appear to be a road capacity issue in the Bay area as the roads are quite wide with a lot of vacant space either side. With the extension being a couple hundred metres long here's hoping it is not that complex. I have confidence in the Cardiff tram-train working as it is the inverse of the Sheffield scheme, in that you adding a small segregated tram line to an underused section of National Rail network (and not adding a tram line to a mixed use busy national rail network). I think late 2023 is a realistic date for having this up-and-running should the planning and contracts be let by 2020. Can't really speak on the performance with the DLR as I'm not aware of large scale problems there, but we all know the problems Keolis (albeit with large stakeholder Go-Ahead) are having with GTR
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Post by TNL33036 on Jun 8, 2018 0:09:55 GMT
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