Electrification: To Cardiff ... or to Swansea?

Dan Milmo started the speculation with this article in the Guardian:

     London to Cardiff rail line will be electrified to cut carbon footprint

This was followed today by a story on the BBC:

    Railway line 'to be electrified'

I've been trying to unravel the story. The facts are that Network Rail issued a consultation document on electrification in May, which I commented on here:

     Electrification from Paddington to Swansea

The consultation period ended on 15 July, and I had expected the Department for Transport to have waited a while to digest things before making a decision. But Lord Adonis seems very keen to press on quickly.

The decisive factor is that the UK Cabinet, which has recently embarked on a programme of meetings outside Westminster, is going to meet in Wales for the first time tomorrow. Without being too cynical, these are "roadshow" occasions that are more photo opportunities than business meetings. The purpose is primarily to announce things which make the government look good. So it is getting pretty obvious that the decision on electrification of the Great Western Main Line into (from their perspective) Wales will be one of the things announced tomorrow.

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Now the $64,000 question is whether electrification will go through to Cardiff or Swansea. I'm going to stick my neck out and predict it will be Swansea.

My basis for doing this is the consultation document itself. The GW line is going to be electrified as far as Maidenhead as part of CrossRail. The first option was to extend that electrification to Bristol. Then there was the option of electrifying the spur to Oxford. Both these had strong benefit to cost ratios, and are certain to go ahead.

The next option was to electrify through the Severn Tunnel and on to Swansea. There was no option presented that went only as far as Cardiff, but not to Swansea. So to my mind it would be unusual, not to say a little perverse, to only go as far as Cardiff. This is because of the very high freight tonnage carried between Port Talbot and Cardiff, which is in fact much greater than the tonnage carried on the stretch of line between Swindon and Bristol. Railways are about more than just passenger services.

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As for the practicalities, Christian Woolmer (whom the BBC describe as a rail expert) seems not to have read any of the recent documents and reports and is talking rubbish about the Severn Tunnel. There's plenty of room to electrify it without any major problem ... a subject that was discussed at length in the WASC's report on cross-border transport links.

     Cross-border provision of public services for Wales: Transport

Of course he's right to say that it won't happen "instantly", but its quite feasible for it to happen within the ten years mentioned. Bear in mind that CrossRail (the essential first element to Maidenhead) won't be complete until 2017 because of all the tunnelling work involved. But electrification is relatively quick and simple. Read all about it in Appendix 2 of the consultation document I linked to in my earlier post. If the political will is there, we could have the whole section from Paddington to Swansea electrified by 2017. We must have it done by 2020 because it is an important element in meeting that deadline date for carbon emission targets.

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The more intractable question is funding. The good news is that this is going to be funded in a conventional way by public borrowing:

It is understood that the DfT and Network Rail have discussed funding the work through an increase in Network Rail's borrowings. Network Rail's debt is underwritten by the state and the government will pay off the interest over a number of decades, minimising the immediate impact on the taxpayer.

It's the old thorny question about what is "UK" money. Other major rail improvement works (such as the £10bn upgrade of the London to Glasgow line) were paid for out of UK money. Wales has had a particularly poor share of Network Rail's capital improvements budget. Some projects have been delayed for years: the signalling at Gaer which would enable trains to go from Ebbw Vale to Newport, and redoubling from Cockett to Loughor, for example.

If Network Rail are given the borrowing capacity to electrify the section between Cardiff and Swansea, that's fine by me. The alternative would be for the Welsh Government to be given the same borrowing facility so that they could fund it. It doesn't make much difference because Wales would in effect be getting a Barnett (or son of Barnett) consequential on the electrification programme in England. Network Rail would have to manage, or at least co-ordinate, the work in either case.

But that would reopen the question of the ability of the Welsh Government to borrow. To avoid that, it may well be more politically expedient for Network Rail to programme itself to spend more, rather than less, in Wales by going through to Swansea.

If the announcement tomorrow is that electrification only goes as far as Cardiff, the outcry for Wales to be given borrowing powers to fund its own rail improvement programme will only become more compelling.

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BREAKING NEWS - 7:37pm

I've just had an email from Dan Milmo, the author of the orginal article in the Guardian. Yes, the line will be electrified as far as Swansea!

Great news. Well done to all parties involved in the negotiations!