By Richard Johnstone | 29 October 2013
MPs have urged the government to develop a long-term investment plan for transport projects to avoid a repeat of the nearly 30-year wait for the Thameslink upgrade.
The Thameslink line, which runs north-south through London, is to have its capacity boosted from 8 trains an hour to 24 under a £6bn programme. Work is due to be completed by December 2018.
But in its examination of the project, the Public Accounts Committee said it had taken too long to get off the ground. Although it was clear that more capacity was needed on the line as long ago as 1989, it was only in July 2005 that work got underway.
The MPs recommended that: ‘The department should develop a long-term investment strategy for transport projects built on a strong evidence base, including better passenger travel data and more reliable forecasts. This should help to secure political consensus and greater certainty of funding, which will in turn help to get projects up and running much more quickly.’
Elsewhere in its report, the PAC said the Department for Transport had done well to ensure infrastructure improvements were on time, but observed that other elements were going less well.
In particular, it highlighted the £1.6bn Private Finance Initiative deal with Siemens to provide new trains, which was not finally agreed until June this year. Given this delay, the MPs said they were ‘sceptical’ that the trains could be built by 2018, and questioned the DfT’s use of the PFI to construct the carriages.
‘Meeting the timetable for delivering the new trains will be very demanding and risky,’ Hodge said.
‘It is alarming that the department compared the PFI option against only one other private sector option and did not construct a public sector comparator to understand better the relative costs, risks and rewards of choosing a PFI funding route over a public one.’
Hodge added: ‘Another source of worry is the small size of the department’s core Thameslink team – just five people for a programme of this size and complexity.
‘We question whether the department has enough people with strong project management and commercial skills necessary to take forward its very ambitious portfolio of big projects.’
Responding to the report, a DfT spokesman said the department was confident that the new trains would be ready on time.
‘Difficulties in the financial markets, caused in part by uncertainty regarding the euro, alongside the complexity of the deal and our drive to secure maximum value for the taxpayer, did lead to a delay in concluding the rolling stock contract but we remain confident that the trains will be delivered at the right time. Construction of the depots and manufacture of the new trains is on schedule.’
He added that DfT was recruiting a new team to support all aspects of its rail activities.
