The Growth Plan - Rail Projects

[Nottingham59]

Cambridge South Infrastructure Enhancement	A proposed four platform station and associated infrastructure improvements to support the growth and development of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC) and Southern Fringe development area.
Northumberland Line	The opening of the Northumberland Line will see reinstatement of passenger services to an existing freight line between Newcastle and Ashington. Closed almost 60 years ago as part of the Beeching Cuts, local communities will benefit from six new stations being served by two trains per hour, with a 35-minute journey time. This is a Restoring Your Railways scheme; DfT is working with Northumberland County Council, Network Rail, and other key stakeholders to return services to one of the largest populations in the UK not currently served by a passenger railway.
White Rose Station	Two platform station with footbridge and lifts south of Leeds between Morley and Cottingley Stations. The Station will have a two trains per hour service. This is a Restoring Your Railways scheme.
Thorpe Park Station	Two platform station with footbridge and lifts east of Leeds on the Leeds to York line. The station will also have a 500 space car park. The Station will have a two trains per hour service. This is a Restoring Your Railways scheme.
Trans Pennine Route Upgrade	The scheme will provide an extra two train paths across the Pennines, reduce journey times from Manchester to York by 10 minutes , halve delay minutes and electrify the route for operational efficiency and decarbonisation. The Integrated Rail Plan has also given TRU a role to lay the foundations of the Northern Powerhouse Rail Warrington-Marsden-York vision through extra scope
East West Rail Connection Stages 2&3	Extension of East West Rail services from Oxford to Bedford (Connection Stage 2, upgrade existing Marston Vale Line railway) and provision of a new railway line between Bedford and Cambridge (Connection Stage 3), enabling East West Rail services to run between Oxford and Cambridge as well as towns and cities in between. The project is currently in design.
Leeds Existing Station Programme	The Leeds Existing Station Programme contains a number of discrete but interconnected station improvements focussed on resolving critical station capacity issues, improving passenger experience, better integrating the station with the city, building resilience to accommodate future rail programmes and enhancing the station retail offer.
Manchester and North West Transformation Programme	Electrification, new track capacity, more platforms and resignalling to improve capacity and performance in Manchester and North West England. Manchester has a pivotal position in the North that affects services locally and to/from Scotland, Yorkshire, Liverpool and the wider national network.
Midland Main Line Phase 3	Electrifying Midland Mainline to Nottingham and Sheffield.
Northern Powerhouse Rail	The Integrated Rail Plan set out core the route between Liverpool and Leeds, comprising a mix of new lines and stations and upgraded/electrified lines and enhancements to existing stations.

From the spreadsheet provided by @GRALISTAIR on the MML electrification thread

 

[CdBrux]

Yes but you wouldn't. You'd build the wrong projects.

I'm not suggesting to not evaluate the business case to at least a certain level (and if it was obviously good not too much detail) but the huge pages of other evaluations reference above

 

[Roast Veg]

I'm not suggesting to not evaluate the business case to at least a certain level (and if it was obviously good not too much detail) but the huge pages of other evaluations reference above

The problem is that "obviously good" is not quantifiable. A politician will say a project is "obviously good", even if the benefit to cost ratio is near zero...

 

[Starmill]

The problem is that "obviously good" is not quantifiable. A politician will say a project is "obviously good", even if the benefit to cost ratio is near zero...

Precisely. And a project is only considered 'high' value for money if the BCR is more than 2.

 

[CdBrux]

Precisely. And a project is only considered 'high' value for money if the BCR is more than 2.

And there you neathly make my point, if the BCR is very high after a decent first evaluation and has a low sensitivity to the most likely changes then its probably safe to preceed. May not get every single decision correct bit the vast majority that's good enough. It's about being choiceful where to spend the analysis effort. And producing huge volumes of reports that do not contribute to either the analysis or to progress construction seems way overkill to me. The amount of reports I\ve read for NPR for example that look barely different to the previous one seems more quantity over quality

 

[Nottingham59]

, if the BCR is very high after a decent first evaluation

The problem is that there are very few projects around with very high BCRs. East-West rail and HS2 both have derisory BCR figures until they invent Wider Economic Impacts to boost the figures

 

[Bald Rick]

The problem is that there are very few projects around with very high BCRs. East-West rail and HS2 both have derisory BCR figures until they invent Wider Economic Impacts to boost the figures

There are lots of projects out there with very high BCRs, 10 and above. Almost all of which have been stuck in this same planning / funding blight of indecision.

They are all road schemes, however. (And before anyone asks, all assessed on exactly the same criteria and using the same methodology as for rail schemes).

 

[Nottingham59]

There are lots of projects out there with very high BCRs, 10 and above. Almost all of which have been stuck in this same planning / funding blight of indecision.

They are all road schemes, however. (And before anyone asks, all assessed on exactly the same criteria and using the same methodology as for rail schemes).

So we should be doing the road schemes. I don't remember seeing a rail investment recently with a BCR better than around 1.2

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

So we should be doing the road schemes. I don't remember seeing a rail investment recently with a BCR better than around 1.2

Seeing as apparently treasury has now told departments to look for efficiencies in spending to help look as though they have funded the tax cuts lets see how far any of these projects get

 

[Starmill]

There are lots of projects out there with very high BCRs, 10 and above. Almost all of which have been stuck in this same planning / funding blight of indecision.

They are all road schemes, however. (And before anyone asks, all assessed on exactly the same criteria and using the same methodology as for rail schemes).

Indeed. And of course, without the government rewriting its capital budget or upending the tax system, any relaxation of the consent process will just result in more roads being built. Which is of course bad even on the narrow assessment of wanting to reopen more lines, because it reduces the competitiveness of the railway.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Sep 2022 ==

So we should be doing the road schemes. I don't remember seeing a rail investment recently with a BCR better than around 1.2

If you take that approach, you'd do zero new rail capital spending. And strictly limit maintenance and renewals in order to spend more renewing roads. Quite the opposite of what we actually want.

 

[Bald Rick]

I don't remember seeing a rail investment recently with a BCR better than around 1.2

There’s lots of them. I’m assuming you don’t see the BCR of every rail enhancement project?

 

[Nottingham59]

There’s lots of them. I’m assuming you don’t see the BCR of every rail enhancement project?

No I don't. I'm going on published reports that say for instance that:

- for EWR "the full EWR scheme which has a level 2 BCR range of 0.5 to 1.1 (poor value for money)." [East West Rail, Connection Stage 1: accounting officer assessment (April 2021)], and

- HS2 Phase 2: "The BCR range for the scheme is between 0.5 and 1.2, with a reference case BCR of 0.7 over a 60-year appraisal period and based on DfT’s common analytical scenario. Using a 100-year appraisal period, the reference case BCR is 0.9. The VfM of the Crewe to Manchester scheme without the Golborne Link will therefore fall within the ‘poor’ to ‘low’ DfT VfM categories." [High Speed 2 (HS2) Crewe to Manchester: accounting officer assessment (April 2022)].

I've not seen any recent BCRs for projects like MML electrification. Can you point me to any sources for those? And if there are "lots" of rail enhancement schemes with high BCRs, we should be doing those rather than subsidising property speculation by the big housebuilders in Cambourne and elsewhere with EWR.