Topic: | Re:Re:OJEU notice | |
Posted by: | Thomas Barry | |
Date/Time: | 06/01/14 13:39:00 |
"- they've already done it once, so they should be able to move faster this time," They may have done it once, but they ballsed it up, as I'm sure you agree, although if they haven't spent five or six months preparing for retendering I'm a Dutchman - you can't write a whole new specification between the 19th December and 4th January. If you look back to 2011 they explicitly mentioned the two year period as evidence of why they'd done their homework and got it right this time... It's not the same this time around as the timescale is pushing them to a much less technologically risky solution, hence all the stuff about 'must be proven and not need any R&D' - there is only one available solution that really fits that in an LU context, which is SELTRAC, and which any SSL award could see the team move smartly onto in December 2014 after the Northern completes. However, SELTRAC uses a wired system rather than a radio based one, with two wires between the tracks. TfL have previously been rather against wiggly wires for new deployments and would have to do a bit of rowing back. Sadly DTG-R isn't in the running as Siemens, having taken over/eliminated a competitor with the Invensys purchase, are pushing their Trainguard system instead, which has already been selected as the Crossrail central tunnel system and is used in Paris and New York's automated metro schemes. I'd be surprised if that wasn't a strong contender too - it uses TfL's preferred radio communications rather than wiggly wires, but would need to be installed by the same people as are simultaneously doing Crossrail which might be a stretch - Crossrail is much smaller in terms of line length but if anything even more politically sensitive, and jeopardising the timescales there by giving too much work to a German company* might be a consideration. Mind you, Siemens are an effing large company. So I reckon it'll be Thales or Siemens, but a parallel Trainguard MT system in association with the Crossrail contract. Going back to the original TG stop story, there's a forthcoming London Reconnections story which is rather eye-opening about what TfL might be planning for the Piccadilly upgrade: 1) New trains with shorter carriages, air conditioning, low energy use, walk through car ends and wider accommodation, with no separate cabs (although there has to be a trained driver on board as with DLR, they would drive from a normally hidden panel when necessary) 2) Ealing Broadway District Line branch taken over by Piccadilly with a doubling of service through Gunnersbury 3) Chiswick Park platforms moved onto the Gunnersbury branch (I've looked and it's bloody difficult to see how) 4) All day TG stop required, apart from anything else, to replace TG-Ealing Broadway services, which is the good news - they can't wriggle out of it any more That ends up with a completely separate Piccadilly and District west of Hammersmith. Obviously this is a 2020+ option, but there's some evidence that's what's being planned - it's driven by the inability to mix automated Piccadilly trains with District Line trains between Acton Town and Ealing Common, meaning the line has to be one or the other. * Note: I don't give a monkey's where they'e from, but some idiots do. Siemens employ 14k people in the UK anyway and have been working on rail projects here for over a century. |