UK new trains fiasco

Twenty-one new electric trains may have to be fitted with diesel as well as electric engines because tracks they require between London and Wales, the Great Western mailine route, may not be ready in time. The trains were ordered in 2012 and are being built in Japan. They are then being assembled in northeast England, to be completed starting from February 2018. This development compounds mounting problems for state-owned Network Rail, which is overseeing the project. The cost of electrifying the Great Western line has mushroomed from £548m (821m CHF) in 2011 to what has been estimated this week will be £2.5bn (3.74 billion CHF) or more.

The line was scheduled for completion by December 2017, but now will overrun. The project is the largest upgrade of the line from since it was built in the 1840s. It will see more than 150 miles of track fitted with overhead electric wires. Hundreds of road bridges over the railway are having to be raised to accommodate the equipment, and the entire length of Box Tunnel in Wiltshire has had to be lowered. The problems are so serious that The Offce for Rail and Road (ORR), the railway’s ombudsman, has ruled that Network Rail has officially breached the licence given to it by the Government to run Britain's rail network. Network Rail is currently in turmoil over numerous other rail improvement programme delays and overruns.

ORR says that it has missed 30 of its project milestones, including delays to major improvements on the Midland Mainline and the TransPennine routes, and noted that there are 'systemic weaknesses' in the way it has been operating. The escalating costs and delays mean that other rail engineering projects are at risk. At a meeting of the UK Government’s public accounts committee on 21 October, Mark Carne, chief executive of Network Rail, and Richard Price, chief executive of ORR, were heavily criticised for the situation. Some Members of Parliament asked Price why he had not yet resigned. “It’s unbelievable, and unacceptable, that there was such poor planning before and such concerns now,” said Meg Hillier, chair of the committee. ends