Should Crossrail be mothballed?

[Ken H]

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/crossrail-opening-delayed-opening-date-not-yet-known.169160/

Getting back to CR1 Omnishambles too ...
Just like GW electrification, so much optimism bias aka dissembling?
I've given up listening to so-called updates while hoping the trains will not be unuseable rusted hulks by whenever they are called for.

I am wondering if, post COVID, this project will ever cover its operating costs, never mind pay back any capital.
I dont think London commuting will ever recover to pre COVID levels for many many years, if ever.
Maybe worth mothballing it, using the trains for something else and stop haemorrhaging money at it.
I am not sure. what do others think?

 

[JonathanH]

I am wondering if, post COVID, this project will ever cover its operating costs, never mind pay back any capital.
I dont think London commuting will ever recover to pre COVID levels for many many years, if ever.
Maybe worth mothballing it, using the trains for something else and stop haemorrhaging money at it.
I am not sure. what do others think?

If mothballing really was an option, I suspect you would cut back the service on the parallel underground lines, not Crossrail. The trains aren't particularly useful for anything else.

 

[Scottychoo]

Apparantly the idiot Mayor wants to rip the tracks up in the tunnel and turn it into a cycle super highway

 

[Tube driver]

Got a source for that?

 

[Wolfie]

Apparantly the idiot Mayor wants to rip the tracks up in the tunnel and turn it into a cycle super highway

Really? Or just a ludicrous comment? Any evidence whatsoever? Oh, and don't forget who was mayor when the governance and contracts were set up...

 

[matt_world2004]

I am wondering if, post COVID, this project will ever cover its operating costs, never mind pay back any capital.
I dont think London commuting will ever recover to pre COVID levels for many many years, if ever.
Maybe worth mothballing it, using the trains for something else and stop haemorrhaging money at it.
I am not sure. what do others think?

I think it will the predicted 5 passengers per square metre peak loadings between West Drayton and old oak common that was modelled before covid . Even if that dropped to 20% of what was modelled. That's still a huge amount of passengers on the most profitable section of line. The line will cover it's operating costs and even return a little bit of profit even with suppressed loadings. What it won't be is the breadbasket for TfL that was originally planned

Really? Or just a ludicrous comment? Any evidence whatsoever? Oh, and don't forget who was mayor when the governance and contracts were set up...

Sounds like some made up bs from the LTDA or breitbart or Guido Fawkes. Particularly as large amounts of the crossrail route will be paralleled by cycle superhighways and quietways . And hence converting the tunnel into a cycle super highway would be redundant infrastructure

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

I am wondering if, post COVID, this project will ever cover its operating costs, never mind pay back any capital.
I dont think London commuting will ever recover to pre COVID levels for many many years, if ever.
Maybe worth mothballing it, using the trains for something else and stop haemorrhaging money at it.
I am not sure. what do others think?

Conceptually this is brilliant project that London need(ed) thats been VERY badly executed with all reviews seeking to blame politicians and structure not the fundamental fact that it has been over engineered and over complicated. The Victoria Line was finding its way without anything before to draw upon but got commissioned without much delay yet 50 years on we can't get it right. Yes computers can help us but we need to stop adding in unnecessary complications as this just creates too many interfaces and permutations of software that then take an eternity to test and validate.

What this should allow to be mothballed was many parallel bus routes.

Note most public projects never pay back the capital but they should always be judged on benefit they bring to peoples lives as thats there real purpose.

 

[Tio Terry]

Conceptually this is brilliant project that London need(ed) thats been VERY badly executed with all reviews seeking to blame politicians and structure not the fundamental fact that it has been over engineered and over complicated. The Victoria Line was finding its way without anything before to draw upon but got commissioned without much delay yet 50 years on we can't get it right. Yes computers can help us but we need to stop adding in unnecessary complications as this just creates too many interfaces and permutations of software that then take an eternity to test and validate.

What this should allow to be mothballed was many parallel bus routes.

Note most public projects never pay back the capital but they should always be judged on benefit they bring to peoples lives as thats there real purpose.

Don't think you can compare the Victoria line with Crossrail. The Victoria line is largely self contained and does not have to interface with all the differing signalling systems that Crossrail does.

In terms of Political interference, the decision to "Buy British" Bombardier trains when the project had already specified and bought the Siemens CBTC system has proved to be an absolute disaster. A lot on money has been, and is being, spent on engineering an interface between Bombardier and Siemens systems that would not have been necessary if compatible equipment had been purchased and with the various Networkrail signalling systems as Stratford and Paddington plus the Heathrow tunnels.

 

[Mikey C]

Don't think you can compare the Victoria line with Crossrail. The Victoria line is largely self contained and does not have to interface with all the differing signalling systems that Crossrail does.

In terms of Political interference, the decision to "Buy British" Bombardier trains when the project had already specified and bought the Siemens CBTC system has proved to be an absolute disaster. A lot on money has been, and is being, spent on engineering an interface between Bombardier and Siemens systems that would not have been necessary if compatible equipment had been purchased and with the various Networkrail signalling systems as Stratford and Paddington plus the Heathrow tunnels.

OR they shouldn't have chosen CBTC is it's so hard to make other manufacturer's trains compatible with it...

 

[moggie]

Don't think you can compare the Victoria line with Crossrail. The Victoria line is largely self contained and does not have to interface with all the differing signalling systems that Crossrail does.

In terms of Political interference, the decision to "Buy British" Bombardier trains when the project had already specified and bought the Siemens CBTC system has proved to be an absolute disaster. A lot on money has been, and is being, spent on engineering an interface between Bombardier and Siemens systems that would not have been necessary if compatible equipment had been purchased and with the various Networkrail signalling systems as Stratford and Paddington plus the Heathrow tunnels.

But on that simple logic Bombardier would be out of business, any planned rolling sock planned to run with ETCS would have to be be built by Siemens or Alstom AND whole route resignalling using ETCS would have to be supplied by a single source supplier compatible with the target rolling stock even if they could dovetail procurement of both.

The nonsense that is CR was that cemented in the early days of the project (under the auspices of the previous major) when the project failed miserably to identify the various technical interfaces being created by their procurement strategy and in the case of Heathrow Tunnels zero system migration strategy at the outset. Yes there were reasons at the time, not least the immaturity of the UK ETCS programme but that doesn't negate the fact that ETCS was planned to be present on the existing mainline network and therefore as far as the CR project was concerned would exist. For me it's the simple 'black box' thinking that if a signalling system exists elsewhere in the world it can work in the UK without implication should it be chosen. If there are ever lessons learned from this debacle perhaps they should start by asking why the lessons learned from Railtrack's failed signalling procurement strategy from the noughties was repeated by CR?

 

[gsnedders]

But on that simple logic Bombardier would be out of business, any planned rolling sock planned to run with ETCS would have to be be built by Siemens or Alstom AND whole route resignalling using ETCS would have to be supplied by a single source supplier compatible with the target rolling stock even if they could dovetail procurement of both.

OTOH, by design ETCS is an open standard (although yes, I'd bet interoperability isn't perfect despite that) whereas CBTC is a proprietary technology. It seems very unsurprising that ETCS has a better interoperability story than CBTC.

But I won't disagree that the project management seemingly completely failed to account for risks associated with delays/cancellation of dependent work items (and sure, some like platform extensions are much harder to mitigate), especially when it came to things that were not a physical requirement (like signalling implementation).

 

[hwl]

Don't think you can compare the Victoria line with Crossrail. The Victoria line is largely self contained and does not have to interface with all the differing signalling systems that Crossrail does.

In terms of Political interference, the decision to "Buy British" Bombardier trains when the project had already specified and bought the Siemens CBTC system has proved to be an absolute disaster. A lot on money has been, and is being, spent on engineering an interface between Bombardier and Siemens systems that would not have been necessary if compatible equipment had been purchased and with the various Networkrail signalling systems as Stratford and Paddington plus the Heathrow tunnels.

It is also worth remembering that Siemens had pulled out as they didn't have enough factory capacity to build the trains so Siemens trains weren't an option.

A few other bit relevant snipets on the signalling:
a) Siemens had only owned the former rail signalling division of Matra. It is effectively a Matra product not Siemens one, note the product name is TrainguardMT, MT stands for Matra Technology.
b) Siemens have yet to build a train that uses TrainguardMT
c) TrainguardMT had only previously been installed on stand alone metro lines (e.g. Paris) or for heavy rail a maximum 16tph service level.
d) TrainguardMT then won 2 big contracts soon after being bought by Siemenss: Hong Kong (Central Link) and Crossrail, it needed significant functionality upgrades for both. It was sold as this can do X, not it already does X.
e) HK central link was meant to open 6months before Crossrail, it is now meant to open in "Spring 2021" and about £1.2bn over budget.
f) Crossrail is the first TrainguardMT installation where it is subservient to ETCS which now has to be the main on train signalling system for non standalone metros. This has been problematic to address.
g) after they had bid (and around the time they won) the CR signalling contract the same time Siemens bought Invensys would seem to have much more luck with ETCS interfaces (e.g Thameslink ATO). Most of the Trainguard MT issues are being sorted by what was Invensys (ex Westinghouse) in Chippenham as the ex Matra team near Paris didn't have the bandwidth to do so.
h) The CR CBTC signalling contract price was surprisingly low "less than £50m" (CR haven't disclosed the actual cost yet - search for contract C620). For comparison Thales on the Northern Line was £330m for the CBTC and SSR CBTC (3rd Attempt) £760m, (double the 2nd attempt cost). Siemens bid with TrainguardMT for Crossrail because it would provide a business reason to develop the additional functionality not already in the system and provide a reference case for other future project showing that it had been done. Basically a complex London or NY usage case are very useful for being able to handle anything elsewhere. The Crossrail contract price still appears very low compared to other recent London benchmarks.
i) on the SSR CBTC resignalling it is way behind on schedule and cost and may be descoped. Thales is having a bad time with 2 serious software related crash issues in Asia (HK and Singapore). It isn't just Siemens who have issues.
j) Siemens also won the related tunnel comms contract but also had lots of grief there as the leaky feeder cables weren't leaky enough, sorting this significantly delay the first trains running in the tunnels and hence delayed the discovery of many other issues.
k) for some parts of ETCS systems the UK has gone down a single supplier route hence Wabtec supply all the TPWS/AWS to ETCS computer interface modules. In a couple of other areas Bombardier decided it was cheaper to buy some other ETCS parts from Siemens than develop their own, but these come from yet another part of Siemens... Bombardier also use some of their own ETCS parts

 

[Tio Terry]

But on that simple logic Bombardier would be out of business, any planned rolling sock planned to run with ETCS would have to be be built by Siemens or Alstom AND whole route resignalling using ETCS would have to be supplied by a single source supplier compatible with the target rolling stock even if they could dovetail procurement of both.

The nonsense that is CR was that cemented in the early days of the project (under the auspices of the previous major) when the project failed miserably to identify the various technical interfaces being created by their procurement strategy and in the case of Heathrow Tunnels zero system migration strategy at the outset. Yes there were reasons at the time, not least the immaturity of the UK ETCS programme but that doesn't negate the fact that ETCS was planned to be present on the existing mainline network and therefore as far as the CR project was concerned would exist. For me it's the simple 'black box' thinking that if a signalling system exists elsewhere in the world it can work in the UK without implication should it be chosen. If there are ever lessons learned from this debacle perhaps they should start by asking why the lessons learned from Railtrack's failed signalling procurement strategy from the noughties was repeated by CR?

Bombardier and Alstom are now the same company so I'm sure they will make their products compatible.

ETCS was discounted all those years ago as an unproven technology for use in a high intensity service. CBTC was said to be being used successfully in Hong Kong in similar circumstances so, as a proven technology, that was chosen.

Yes, the procurement strategy was questionable - and probably Politically motivated. Crossrail Ltd were charged with building all the infrastructure, and bought CBTC, but TfL insisted on retaining responsibility for purchasing the rolling stock. Hence the Buy British decision.

Many Systems engineers working on the project questioned this decision at the time because it introduced an additional, unknown, to be designed and developed interface. Unknown's are always big risks to projects. But, being led by Civil Engineers who knew all about tunnelling and building big infrastructure, the project plowed onwards. All the heavy civics works went very well, completed to time and budget, then the Systems guys started asking very difficult questions.

Nett result is what we have now. Designing, developing and testing a totally new signalling system to interface CBTC to ETCS, AWS, TPWS, Bombardier on-train systems and Networkrail. Even the CBTC had never been used for the same length of trains at 24 TPH in Hong Kong, where there are also problems with the system, so even that needs some mods and testing. It was a pity there was no Systems representative at the highest level within the project, nothing against Civil Engineers but they quite simply didn't understand the problems signalling would bring.

 

[hwl]

But on that simple logic Bombardier would be out of business, any planned rolling stock planned to run with ETCS would have to be be built by Siemens or Alstom AND whole route resignalling using ETCS would have to be supplied by a single source supplier compatible with the target rolling stock even if they could dovetail procurement of both.

The nonsense that is CR was that cemented in the early days of the project (under the auspices of the previous major) when the project failed miserably to identify the various technical interfaces being created by their procurement strategy and in the case of Heathrow Tunnels zero system migration strategy at the outset. Yes there were reasons at the time, not least the immaturity of the UK ETCS programme but that doesn't negate the fact that ETCS was planned to be present on the existing mainline network and therefore as far as the CR project was concerned would exist. For me it's the simple 'black box' thinking that if a signalling system exists elsewhere in the world it can work in the UK without implication should it be chosen. If there are ever lessons learned from this debacle perhaps they should start by asking why the lessons learned from Railtrack's failed signalling procurement strategy from the noughties was repeated by CR?

Many recent Alstom rolling stock sales outside France and neighbouring countries have come from single source supplier requirements (and a few brown paper envelopes - see a string of UK Bribery act convictions).

The CR senior management failed to learn the issues from when the same individuals where doing JLE in the late 1990s - their solution then was to abandon CBTC and go for old fashioned LU signalling instead with TfL (founded 3 years later) coming back to do it properly after 10 years.

A complete lack of modern signalling understanding from the management team. A key failure was not understanding that whatever CBTC system they installed would have to be subservient to ETCS i.e. in the core section it would have to control the train through the trains ETCS systems (TrainguardMT uses ETCS balises for some functionality but it gets the data through the ETCS systems and it tells the trains ETCS computer (EVC) what it wants the train to do (i.e. indirect rather than direct control).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Aug 2020 ==

Bombardier and Alstom are now the same company so I'm sure they will make their products compatible.

ETCS was discounted all those years ago as an unproven technology for use in a high intensity service. CBTC was being used successfully in Hong Kong in similar circumstances so, as a proven technology, that was chosen.

Yes, the procurement strategy was questionable - and probably Politically motivated. Crossrail Ltd were charged with building all the infrastructure, and bought CBTC, but TfL insisted on retaining responsibility for purchasing the rolling stock. Hence the Buy British decision.

Many Systems engineers working on the project questioned this decision at the time because it introduced an additional, unknown, to be designed and developed interface. Unknown's are always big risks to projects. But, being led by Civil Engineers who knew all about tunnelling and building big infrastructure, the project plowed onwards. All the heavy civics works went very well, completed to time and budget, then the Systems guys started asking very difficult questions.

Nett result is what we have now. Designing, developing and testing a totally new signalling system to interface CBTC to ETCS, AWS, TPWS, Bombardier on-train systems and Networkrail. Even the CBTC had never been used for the same length of trains at 24 TPH in Hong Kong so even that needs some mods and testing. It was a pity there was no Systems representative at the highest level within the project, nothing against Civil Engineers but they quite simply didn't understand the problems signalling would bring.

Only if the deal completes next year!

"Buy British" - Siemens had pulled out and Bombardier trains were the lightest and most energy efficient (noticeably better than Desiro City) so even if siemens had remained in the tender they may have been beaten.

Some of the big civils did go well (on time and near budget) but an awful lot didn't, some costing twice as much as estimated. Look at the Farringdon Station on box as the best early documented example (a split civils and fitout contract hence clear documentation on civils issues). Several of the construction websites have articles covering the various civils contract cost overruns.

HK - the line hasn't opened yet...

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Many recent Alstom rolling stock sales outside France and neighbouring countries have come from single source supplier requirements (and a few brown paper envelopes - see a string of UK Bribery act convictions).

The CR senior management failed to learn the issues from when the same individuals where doing JLE in the late 1990s - their solution then was to abandon CBTC and go for old fashioned LU signalling instead with TfL (founded 3 years later) coming back to do it properly after 10 years.

A complete lack of modern signalling understanding from the management team. A key failure was not understanding that whatever CBTC system they installed would have to be subservient to ETCS i.e. in the core section it would have to control the train through the trains ETCS systems (TrainguardMT uses ETCS balises for some functionality but it gets the data through the ETCS systems and it tells the trains ETCS computer (EVC) what it wants the train to do (i.e. indirect rather than direct control).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 Aug 2020 ==


Only if the deal completes next year!

"Buy British" - Siemens had pulled out and Bombardier trains were the lightest and most energy efficient (noticeably better than Desiro City) so even if siemens had remained in the tender they may have been beaten.

Some of the big civils did go well (on time and near budget) but an awful lot didn't, some costing twice as much as estimated. Look at the Farringdon Station on box as the best early documented example (a split civils and fitout contract hence clear documentation on civils issues). Several of the construction websites have articles covering the various civils contract cost overruns.

HK - the line hasn't opened yet...

not forgetting Bond Street fiasco!

 

[hwl]

not forgetting Bond Street fiasco!

Yep the Civils issue there started to go wrong in early 2013 but the whole Bond Street saga is lacking public detail currently. The core issue at BS was that it was the first station contract to be awarded so all the bidders were bit to keen to win something and bid low. CS JV ditched the original station M+E sub-contractors very early on as they were too expensive and replaced them with some of the own in house electricians etc. with no complex environment expertise.

I'm not sure if all the BS civils are even complete yet.

Lots of civil rework has been needed at BS for example they made the pits at the bottom of the escalators too small first time round... ( think they needed to be 18" deeper so not a small oops!) The station drainage was a similar disaster story.

 

[popeter45]

issue is crossrail is already sunken cost so mothballing has zero chance of returning the investment while opening will have a chance so at this point mothballing would be possibly the worst option

 

[Taunton]

Mothballing, no, but can someone who understands project management and scheduling be assigned to the job, and actually tell, in detail, what the plan and schedule, and payments, are, so if anything goes off track it can be seen who did (or didn't) do what. At present it's just a black hole, then a demand for another year and a another billion pounds, then another black hole. We do need to see just why more time and money are being constantly demanded for things which are already contracted, scheduled and budgeted.

A further issue is Dewy-eyed engineers who just have to have the absolute latest whizzy technology. For goodness sake, buy things which are established and known to work, and simple. There are plenty of those available. The number of signalling interfaces on the line is ludicrous, and I believe will lead to be a significant unreliability point into the future - just like the voltage changeovers at Drayton Park, or Farringdon, have proved to be long-running issues because they were done in cramped, un-resilient places. Notably Crossrail has far too few emergency crossovers and other abilities to deal with issues arising, everyone thinks it will all work perfectly out of the box for generations.

 

[hwl]

Mothballing, no, but can someone who understands project management and scheduling be assigned to the job, and actually tell, in detail, what the plan and schedule, and payments, are, so if anything goes off track it can be seen who did (or didn't) do what. At present it's just a black hole, then a demand for another year and a another billion pounds, then another black hole. We do need to see just why more time and money are being constantly demanded for things which are already contracted, scheduled and budgeted.

A further issue is Dewy-eyed engineers who just have to have the absolute latest whizzy technology. For goodness sake, buy things which are established and known to work, and simple. There are plenty of those available. The number of signalling interfaces on the line is ludicrous, and I believe will lead to be a significant unreliability point into the future - just like the voltage changeovers at Drayton Park, or Farringdon, have proved to be long-running issues because they were done in cramped, un-resilient places. Notably Crossrail has far too few emergency crossovers and other abilities to deal with issues arising, everyone thinks it will all work perfectly out of the box for generations.

Part of the problem the current management have is understanding what the actual underlying picture is to base future plans on. The contractor claims for variations etc often take along time to come through so understanding of the cost picture is always very much in arrears.

Due to regulatory requirements they didn't have a lot of choice in some of their technology requirements, they just didn't budget enough money or time to make it work.

The new team gave all the contractors a chance but some continued to disappoint after several more chances.

There should definitely be an inquiry looking at every aspect in detail after it is completed so lesson can be learned.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Mothballing, no, but can someone who understands project management and scheduling be assigned to the job, and actually tell, in detail, what the plan and schedule, and payments, are, so if anything goes off track it can be seen who did (or didn't) do what. At present it's just a black hole, then a demand for another year and a another billion pounds, then another black hole. We do need to see just why more time and money are being constantly demanded for things which are already contracted, scheduled and budgeted.

A further issue is Dewy-eyed engineers who just have to have the absolute latest whizzy technology. For goodness sake, buy things which are established and known to work, and simple. There are plenty of those available. The number of signalling interfaces on the line is ludicrous, and I believe will lead to be a significant unreliability point into the future - just like the voltage changeovers at Drayton Park, or Farringdon, have proved to be long-running issues because they were done in cramped, un-resilient places. Notably Crossrail has far too few emergency crossovers and other abilities to deal with issues arising, everyone thinks it will all work perfectly out of the box for generations.

Taunton, they've had an army of people on planning, cost forecasting, risk management and programme controls from the outset with an oversight team sitting alongside them and it managed to screw up royally couldn't even spot incomplete physical works let alone software. Just another example where the structure of the organisation is over complicated and largely self serving of each other rather than the goal. Wilde has allowed the organisation to bloat with a Chief Programme Officer supported by a Chief Projects Officer, Programme Controls Director, Head of Delivery Strategy, Programme Transition & Assurance Director, Programme Integration Director, and a Technical Director with only the latter two roles seemingly what is really needed.

 

[Energy]

he number of signalling interfaces on the line is ludicrous,

They can't really do much about that, TPWS is already on parts of the line, Heathrow would require its own special signalling system for the tunnels so they decided ETCS would make the most sense (it really does), computer control is needed in the core to be able to achieve so many trains per hour. The best way of doing it in my opinion is to have ETCS throughout the route, with the core running with ATO over ETCS like Thameslink. Or atleast have the core ATO over ETCS.

 

[Taunton]

computer control is needed in the core to be able to achieve so many trains per hour.

It is of course a supreme irony that the quest for so much capacity and so many trains per hour has led to year after year with nothing provided at all ...

 

[HSTEd]

So...... we should scrap the entire signalling system in the core, and start again and just put ETCS in instead?

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

It is of course a supreme irony that the quest for so much capacity and so many trains per hour has led to year after year with nothing provided at all ...

Encapsulates the situation very succinctly

 

[Belperpete]

The trouble with mothballing something that is not quite finished, is what would happen when you tried to unmothball it. The engineers responsible for testing it to completion would almost inevitably start testing from scratch, at which point they would find it no longer meets the latest standards. If you wanted to mothball it, you would be better off getting it to a commissioned state, and then mothballing it. Those responsible for unmothballing it at a future date would then at least know they were starting with what was a proven, working system.

Note that the initial commissioning will be essentially of a self-contained system, without any of these so-called complex interfaces.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think suggesting mothballing Crossrail would also mean you should also mothball, say, the Merseyrail Northern Line before COVID. Even with reduced commuting Crossrail will, when it eventually gets finished, probably carry more passengers per day than Merseyrail ever did.

 

[Energy]

So...... we should scrap the entire signalling system in the core, and start again and just put ETCS in instead?

No, CBTC has already had its equipment bought and lots of work done around it. In the ideal world they would have gone for ETCS from the start with ATO over ETCS in the core but this is not the ideal world. I would still promote replacement of TPWS with ETCS when the equipment needs replacing but ripping out the cores signalling would just take too long, cost far more and probably take more work

It is of course a supreme irony that the quest for so much capacity and so many trains per hour has led to year after year with nothing provided at all ...

Still going to require signalling in the tunnels... ETCS in the tunnels may have allowed it to be open (still delays with construction at some stations though) without ATO at a reduced frequency while they were testing out ATO.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

No.

I apparently need to add something to the thread, and can't call the idea idiotic, despite there being no other way to really describe this idea. Mothball a railway line still under construction, for which rolling stock has been procured, extensive changes made to the existing network and which only needs signalling issues sorted out. How else can you describe this idea ? Seriously ?

 

[HSTEd]

No, CBTC has already had its equipment bought and lots of work done around it.

And yet apparently they are nowhere near having a usable system.

We must be careful of the sunk cost fallacy.

In the ideal world they would have gone for ETCS from the start with ATO over ETCS in the core but this is not the ideal world. I would still promote replacement of TPWS with ETCS when the equipment needs replacing but ripping out the cores signalling would just take too long, cost far more and probably take more work

We have no idea when the existing system is going to be available.
At some point you just have to stop throwing good money after bad.

 

[Energy]

And yet apparently they are nowhere near having a usable system.

We must be careful of the sunk cost fallacy.

We have no idea when the existing system is going to be available.
At some point you just have to stop throwing good money after bad.

Have a look at Crossrail's youtube channel, they don't look too far off... If we had to wait 2-3 more years I wouldn't be against replacing the signalling with ETCS/ATO provided it could be done in the same or shorter timescale.