Source: Private Eye No. 1124
21/01/05 – 03/02/05
Dr. B. Ching ‘Signal Failures’
Headline: Pain in the Pancras

The shambles at St Pancras station looks like short term pain for long term gain but "New" Labour is ensuring pain for years to come.

The Victorian station is being rebuilt so Eurostars from Paris and Brussels can use it from 2007 when the Channel tunnel rail link (CTRL) is finished. The stations original users, passengers on Midland Mainline (Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester), have been dumped at a temporary terminus since Easter. Their final station will be a long walk from the font of St Pancras and will have just four platforms, limiting extra services. Eurostars will have six giant platforms for business of comparable size. Having agreed to a new hourly St Pancras to Leeds service, the govt. has changed its mind because of the infrastructure constraints; the £220m fleet of new trains for the service has already been built and now lies idle.

Thameslink passengers are also affected. The cross- Thames service is split into two sections, seperated by a 0.6km walk, while the tunnel under St Pancras is turned into a void for a new Thameslink station. Consumers on the long march can at least console themselves with the prospect of new facilities. Or not: Labour has refused to pay for turning the voidinto a new station.

Its excuse is that the new station is part of the Thameslink 2000 scheme, devised more than 10 years ago but stalled due to Government inertia. Thameslink 2000 would provide more and bigger trains, and services from the city and south of the River would reach Cambridge and Peterborough via connecting tunnels North of St Pancras. Those newly dug tunnels will also remain unused until Thameslink 2000. Without that upgrade package, overcrowding will worsen on tube and Thameslink stations in the vicinity and on the Trains.

St Pancras marginal location means many passengers fro CTRL trains and other routes will need onward travel by tube. To cater for the extra crowds an extra underground ticket hall has been designed, north of the existing one, but the government has blocked construction because if concerns about the cost.

All these deferred or abandoned projects are pretty mundane so Labour isn't interested, however necessary they are. High speed commuter trains to link Kent and London via the CTRL are les important but more glamorous, so the usual questions about cost haven't stopped progress. The choice of Japanese firm Hitachi to build the £200m commuter trains seems to have been stage managed to generate positive headlines about "bullet trains" coming to England. Normally competition for train orders helps keep prices down; but this time Britain’s main train builder was told not to bother bidding if it couldn't have trains ready by 2007, an unrealistic deadline. Hitachi is allowed till 2009-10.

Crucially for Labour, those new trains support London's bid for the Olympics in 2012, when they would provide a shuttle to Stratford. But what about the rest of the 30 years that they are meant to last? The government assumes masses of Kent commuters will happily pay a premium,on top of some of Europe’s highest rail fares, to ride at over 100mph to St Pancras (to the platforms now used temporarily by Midland Main Line). But then commuters face a long walk to tube or Thameslink stations so they can travel like sardines to areas of London served by trains direct from Kent. The crowded, inadequate interchange facilities at St Pancras will be another deterrent. They may also detract from Eurostar, which will abandon its only terminal in Central London.

But unless the CTRL carries huge numbers of people, it won’t appear a sensible use of well over £5bn of public funds when numerous worthy rail schemes in England, including a north-south highe speed line, have been ditched or deferred for want of government cash and support.

I'm sorry James but that article is failing to point out

1) There actually isn't capacity on the line near Leeds to run these extra fast services

2)WHY do Midland mainline want to run a service to Leeds when they cannot hope to compete with King's Cross -Leeds timewise?

In a similar vein , why is all this money being wasted upgrading the very bendy west coast route to Scotland?. They should have invested in the STRAIGHT line from King's Cross in my opinion.

Re 1) That may change with the redrawing of Cross Country and Central train franchises

2) To pick up local traffic and better link Sheffield to Leeds, thus aiding regional regeneration

As for West Coast Main line its upgrades are designed to allow Manchester, Liverpool and Brum faster links to London and Scotland and there are a lot more Labour seats that will benefit

James

I would be wary of any article written by a Dr. B. Ching.
Is he related to the Dr. Beeching who axed the railways back in the '60s?
Sounds like a wind-up to me.

Dr. B. Ching is a pseudonym and a regular column in the Eye. Its purpose is to expose incompetence in the rail industry. It has given the Tories a kicking in its time but now Labour is all grown up and making cock ups of its own, lol

James

a very apt nom-de-plume.

Questions that stem from this to the Minister for Rail, Tony McNulty:

Can the Rt Hon Gentleman confirm that the full rebuild of Kings Cross St Pancras has been postponed due to financial overruns?

OR

Can the Rt Hon gentleman explain why the New Midland Mainline fleet that cost £220m is lying idle and the Govt has recinded permission for Midland Mainlines hourly St Pancras- Leeds service? Does Sheffield no longer count with the resignation of David Blunkett?

Could the High Speed Hitachi Trains order be rescindd in favour of using these trains to free up Electric Rolling stock that could run to the Olympic village?

Should the Thameslink 2000 project be renamed the 2020 project to coincide with a successful bid for the Olympics by a co-ordinated Conservative government?

Also the West Coast route runs to Glasgow (leftie town) whiole the East runs to Edinburgh first.