CIE UK Tenders

Stephen15

Just a quick little question why doesn't CIE throw its hat out and try and win a few bus and rail tenders in the UK. A few other inter national rail providers do this in the the like the Dutch railways ,SCNF and dautche bahn own arriva. Why don't CIE have a crack at this too. It might help sudsudise our public transport fare.

L1011

Stephen15 wrote: »

Just a quick little question why doesn't CIE throw its hat out and try and win a few bus and rail tenders in the UK. A few other inter national rail providers do this in the the like the Dutch railways ,SCNF and dautche bahn own arriva. Why don't CIE have a crack at this too. It might help sudsudise our public transport fare.

Because they're incapable of running the systems they already have here?


NS and DB are known for being quite high quality domestically - CIE are not.

CIE Consulting were involved in the Manchester Metrolink - mainly for their recent experience in electrifying the DART as Metrolink involved some conversion of existing heavy rail lines (that were already electrified, third rail though). Not sure what they've done since.

The UK TOC tenders are not guaranteed money printers either.

Grandeeod

Stephen15 wrote: »

Just a quick little question why doesn't CIE throw its hat out and try and win a few bus and rail tenders in the UK. A few other inter national rail providers do this in the the like the Dutch railways ,SCNF and dautche bahn own arriva. Why don't CIE have a crack at this too. It might help sudsudise our public transport fare.

Cheers! I needed a laugh.

Itssoeasy

Stephen15 wrote: »

Just a quick little question why doesn't CIE throw its hat out and try and win a few bus and rail tenders in the UK. A few other inter national rail providers do this in the the like the Dutch railways ,SCNF and dautche bahn own arriva. Why don't CIE have a crack at this too. It might help sudsudise our public transport fare.

Bus and rail tenders ? As in building buses and trains ? Well because they haven't built a train carriage or loco in inchicore in nearly 30 years. All diesel locos were built outside of Ireland since the fifties. And I've no idea when the republic of Ireland last built a bus from the ground up.

Victor

Itssoeasy wrote: »

As in building buses and trains ?

Running them.

murphaph

Disintegrated ticketing and fares coming to a previously well run system near you soon!

Kyleboy

murphaph wrote: »

Disintegrated ticketing and fares coming to a previously well run system near you soon!

Think your posting on the wrong thread mate this one is about cie, you need the one on the nta.

Losty Dublin

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Bus and rail tenders ? As in building buses and trains ? Well because they haven't built a train carriage or loco in inchicore in nearly 30 years. All diesel locos were built outside of Ireland since the fifties. And I've no idea when the republic of Ireland last built a bus from the ground up.

One of the fallouts of Cherryville and Buttevant was that tubular bodied and steel framed vehicles such as the Cravens and the Mark 2 and 3 class were vastly superior in crash scenarios to the likes of the Bredin and Park Royals of old. No steelworks in Ireland had the expertise to make them so it followed that new stock would come in from abroad rather than locally. That said, a lot of the Mark 3's were built and fitted out in Inchicore, the carriage body shells coming in from England.

Euro Coach of Donegal were bus building until a few years ago. They had a few buses of their own design on Mercedes chassis though they mainly dealt with bodywork and refurbishment. This is their Loxia model.




And lets not forget Unilok of Tuam. A specialist in Road Rail and industrial vehicles, they have built close to 3,000 off the peg units for export. Sandyford Luas depot and Cultra use Unilok shunters on site.

LeinsterDub

Kyleboy wrote: »

Think your posting on the wrong thread mate this one is about cie, you need the one on the nta.

The reason we have the NTA is because cie was incapable of providing an integrated service amongst many reasons

Kyleboy

LeinsterDub wrote: »

The reason we have the NTA is because cie was incapable of providing an integrated service amongst many reasons

The reason we have the NTA is that government made a balls of it and have now passed the buck on to someone else.

Grandeeod

Kyleboy wrote: »

The reason we have the NTA is that government made a balls of it and have now passed the buck on to someone else.

Explain that one please.

Del.Monte

Grandeeod wrote: »

Explain that one please.

Surely it's quite obvious, the Minister has another layer of bureaucracy between himself and decision making? Bad and all as the Health Service was in the days of Mary Harney she at least carried the can.

Grandeeod

Del.Monte wrote: »

Surely it's quite obvious, the Minister has another layer of bureaucracy between himself and decision making? Bad and all as the Health Service was in the days of Mary Harney she at least carried the can.

But there's a suggestion that CIE aren't responsible in any shape or form.

Kyleboy

Grandeeod wrote: »

But there's a suggestion that CIE aren't responsible in any shape or form.

I think most people would agree that cie aren't world beaters either, but over years there has been a lot of outside interference in the 3 companies.

L1011

Kyleboy wrote: »

I think most people would agree that cie aren't world beaters either, but over years there has been a lot of outside interference in the 3 companies.

In the case of the NTA the vast majority of that 'interference' has been to stop CIE self-destructing and force some positive changes.

tabbey

Del.Monte wrote: »

Surely it's quite obvious, the Minister has another layer of bureaucracy between himself and decision making? Bad and all as the Health Service was in the days of Mary Harney she at least carried the can.

I disagree, She had some credibility prior to her stint in Health, when she started to parrot at question time in the Dail : That is an operational matter for the health service executive.
Since the NTA started, ministers for transport are also afraid to say boo to the CIE companies. Regardless of who is in power, we need ministers to have accountability, not faceless bureaucrats.

Grandeeod

tabbey wrote: »

I disagree, She had some credibility prior to her stint in Health, when she started to parrot at question time in the Dail : That is an operational matter for the health service executive.
Since the NTA started, ministers for transport are also afraid to say boo to the CIE companies. Regardless of who is in power, we need ministers to have accountability, not faceless bureaucrats.

And the minister is the shareholder afterall.

monument

L1011 wrote: »

NS and DB are known for being quite high quality domestically - CIE are not.

From talking to fellow passengers on a few NS services this year, NS maybe a lot less so than DB.

L1011

monument wrote: »

From talking to fellow passengers on a few NS services this year, NS maybe a lot less so than DB.

It's all relative - NS poor to a DB customer is still vastly better than what we have here.

Terrontress

The train companies which DB and NS run, Abellio and Arriva Trains, are fairly poorly regarded compared to their parent company's domestic efforts. SNCF's involvement in Govia as well. All these companies have done is made an investment and watch the money come in. Their services, possibly with the exception of DB Schenker, bear no relation to their core business.

DB just bought out Arriva Trains, and the interesting thing is that most of the companies who initially invested in the rail franchises did so because they spotted a money making opportunity, rather than having a knowledge or history in train operation. Whether that's Richard Branson or the Cowie Group, even bus companies, or if it's the private equity companies who subsidised management buy outs and made a killing.

So, to answer the original question, I'd say that CIE are about twenty years too late as trying to put together an investment proposal to outdo DB, NS, SNCF, there is no chance. And CIE's experience is probably worthless.

monument

L1011 wrote: »

It's all relative - NS poor to a DB customer is still vastly better than what we have here.

Yes, but the different between the two is also relative stark -- on DB a few mins late and I got refreshments on the platform and sorry, but delays and a no show on NS and I'm told it's typical by different, unconnected Dutch people.

devnull

Terrontress wrote: »

The train companies which DB and NS run, Abellio and Arriva Trains, are fairly poorly regarded compared to their parent company's domestic efforts. SNCF's involvement in Govia as well. All these companies have done is made an investment and watch the money come in. Their services, possibly with the exception of DB Schenker, bear no relation to their core business.

Believe me, the operators in the UK are hamstrung to a large part by the UK department of transport, effectively franchises over there are more and more management contracts running things to a tight specification ordered by people in Whitehall who know little about transport who tie the operators two hands and one leg tied behind their back.

Only 3% of revenue from UK train operators is profit, and believe it or not even some of the operators think that is too high and would rather see a smaller margin and drum up more business thereby earning them more money by having capacity in-line with demand and then some. However that is far too innovative and forward thinking and thus the department will never allow someone who is proposing such progressive ideas.

Instead we have the current punch and judy show where the government sets a timetable specification and what stock is allowed to be leased and bought, and a growth prediction which normally is very conservative, by the time the franchise starts or a short while later the trains are over-crowded, the government, who prevented adequate rolling stock being provided at the start for the franchise or shortly after or cut the order if there was one place, blame the franchisee for over-crowding, but don't allow the franchisee to do anything about it or micro-manage the order so it takes several years to fulfil.

Then you have the current situation in Britain, where there is a chronic shortage of Diesel units, but nobody is allowed to order any by the government because of the electrification going on over the next number of years, and there is nothing any operator can do about it. No operators will break ranks and criticise the department through fear of it harming their chances of future franchise contests.

But it's simple to criticise operators for the state of the UK system, the over-regulation of rolling stock management in the country is the biggest issue of them all and that issue lays firmly at the door of the DFT.

murphaph

Kyleboy wrote: »

Think your posting on the wrong thread mate this one is about cie, you need the one on the nta.

If CIE had had more top people willing to make noise about the political interference rather than just sit back and take their fat salaries I might agree with you. CIE was and is stuffed to the gills with people who just want to take the fattest pay cheque possible home and care not one iota about public transport. It was and remains a shambles of a company.

LXFlyer

murphaph wrote: »

If CIE had had more top people willing to make noise about the political interference rather than just sit back and take their fat salaries I might agree with you. CIE was and is stuffed to the gills with people who just want to take the fattest pay cheque possible home and care not one iota about public transport. It was and remains a shambles of a company.

With respect - that's easier said than done, and probably rather unfair.


It's not going to happen in public but you can be damn sure they fight their corner in private, but that's just not going to always get the right result.

end of the road

devnull wrote: »

Believe me, the operators in the UK are hamstrung to a large part by the UK department of transport, effectively franchises over there are more and more management contracts running things to a tight specification ordered by people in Whitehall who know little about transport who tie the operators two hands and one leg tied behind their back.

and why do you think that is? well, its because of the companies who almost ran their franchises into the ground, and in the case of one company, being so bad that they had to be kicked out of the uk altogether. while the DFT do want control, its not as simple as saying "if the operators were left to their own devices they would make the railway fantastic but the big bad department are preventing them from doing so" . there are a lot of issues, both of the departments making and of former operators (and even some current ones at the start) . i'm not saying the operators are fully to blaim, infact i'm the first to say they are used as scapegoats for the government. but the failings that the early years of privatization brought had to be stopped.

devnull wrote: »

Only 3% of revenue from UK train operators is profit, and believe it or not even some of the operators think that is too high and would rather see a smaller margin and drum up more business thereby earning them more money by having capacity in-line with demand and then some. However that is far too innovative and forward thinking and thus the department will never allow someone who is proposing such progressive ideas.

well as the government are paying for it all more or less its probably not surprising they may not let certain operators increase capacity as it would mean infrastructure works to allow it. specially with the way network rail is at the moment. heavily in debt, way behind and over budget on some projects.

devnull wrote: »

Instead we have the current punch and judy show where the government sets a timetable specification and what stock is allowed to be leased and bought, and a growth prediction which normally is very conservative, by the time the franchise starts or a short while later the trains are over-crowded, the government, who prevented adequate rolling stock being provided at the start for the franchise or shortly after or cut the order if there was one place, blame the franchisee for over-crowding, but don't allow the franchisee to do anything about it or micro-manage the order so it takes several years to fulfil.

yes that happens but lets not pretend the operators are these innocent people being hard done by. the reason for the tight contracts is not only about control but about the original failings of some operators.

devnull wrote: »

Then you have the current situation in Britain, where there is a chronic shortage of Diesel units, but nobody is allowed to order any by the government because of the electrification going on over the next number of years, and there is nothing any operator can do about it. No operators will break ranks and criticise the department through fear of it harming their chances of future franchise contests.

i can see their point to an extent. you could order a large number of diesel units, then end up with a situation where you possibly have to many units due to electrification with few places to cascade them. the electrification program should have started years ago however, then the railway over there would be in a better position.

devnull wrote: »

But it's simple to criticise operators for the state of the UK system, the over-regulation of rolling stock management in the country is the biggest issue of them all and that issue lays firmly at the door of the DFT.

but the problem is a number of operators were responsible. they badly managed their franchises. that meant more regulation had to happen to ensure that such things wouldn't happen again. at the end of the day the government is mostly paying for it all and while i agree their handling isn't necessarily the right way this is what you get when you see what happened during the early years of privatization. i'd imagine whatever about the freight sector the roscos wouldn't really bother with buying passenger rolling stock if there wasn't some government funding to do it. the government probably guarantees the money and the charges as a just in case. the whole system over there is a complicated money go round and i hope to god we don't repeat the same mistake. whatever about CIE (and it is known on here i do have issues) i'd rather the system we have and its faults then the UK system and the money go round. maybe the government would be better off cutting out the roscos on future stock buying if they want to micro-manage but i suppose at the end of the day dogma will come first to probable common sense

devnull

end of the road wrote: »

and why do you think that is? well, its because of the companies who almost ran their franchises into the ground, and in the case of one company, being so bad that they had to be kicked out of the uk altogether.

There are certainly good and bad franchisees that is for sure and nobody was more glad than myself to see Connex getting kicked out, because they had many problems and were the very worst of the privatised system both financially and operationally, they were without a doubt the worst operator to ever operate in the UK and you won't hear any defensive words from me about them.

National Expresses tenure on both East Coast and East Anglia were also some of the lowest points and one of the main reasons that East Coast in public hands was so highly regarded was because of the fact what became before them was so bad. The penny pinching of National Express in East Anglia was even bigger than that of East Coast, but since it wasn't a high profile area rarely got a mention. The fact that broken information screens were allow to persist for years and stations looked like they had been run into the ground for years and they couldn't even manage any refurb of any trains other then bargain basement ones and couldn't even paint their trains properly (with many famous rainbow formations!) tells you all you need to know.

The funny thing is in East Anglia, they took over from two very much loved operator which were both popular, punctual, customer focused and award winning in First Great Eastern and Anglia Railways and over the course of 2 years destroyed 7-8 years of hard work, leaving a massive backlog in work that is going to take Abellio years to put right and they're by no means any great shakes, but vastly better than National Express.

while the DFT do want control, its not as simple as saying "if the operators were left to their own devices they would make the railway fantastic but the big bad department are preventing them from doing so" . there are a lot of issues, both of the departments making and of former operators (and even some current ones at the start) . i'm not saying the operators are fully to blaim, infact i'm the first to say they are used as scapegoats for the government. but the failings that the early years of privatization brought had to be stopped.

Nobody disputes that there were operators who had a terrible approach to things but the way most people look at it is that everything is the operator's fault when in a lot of cases it is not. There's only one operator who have got a huge investment in infrastructure on their line in the past few years, they have never had an order for stock blocked by the DFT and have always got pretty much what they wanted from the government, they carry very little time-sensitive commuter traffic, were allowed to build up the most modern fleet and discard their cast-off's in what is generally viewed as very poor condition and don't have the bother of serving small Towns, cities or rural lines. It's no wonder they have such a good reputation. It'll be pretty hard to balls it up.

The system in the UK is not perfect by any means, and I agree that there had to be tighter regulation in some sectors. But the DFT has proven many times over that it is incompetent at managing and allocating rolling stock. Virtually all of the overcrowding in the UK is related to either orders which were cut down, micro managed, cancelled or the subject of a lengthy DFT procurement policy which took in some cases over half a dozen years from placing a tender out there and actually seeing the first train rolling off the production line whilst the civil servants start moaning at them to "do something about the overcrowding." clearly they don't seem to possess a mirror.

well as the government are paying for it all more or less its probably not surprising they may not let certain operators increase capacity as it would mean infrastructure works to allow it. specially with the way network rail is at the moment. heavily in debt, way behind and over budget on some projects.

Some of the improvements that need to be made don't require more infrastructure, they require longer trains. There are trains which are operating at far too short lengths, but the issue is if you pair units up, you then have to cancel a service somewhere to free that unit up, people moan about length of trains, but the same people would moan if the number of peak time trains was cut to allow more capacity. They can't win.

As for Network Rail, well I'll not go too much into my opinion on them, but at the same time, the government really has to take responsibility for that one and this government in the UK has just announced further cuts to their budget and it tells you all about how pro-rail the government is.

i can see their point to an extent. you could order a large number of diesel units, then end up with a situation where you possibly have to many units due to electrification with few places to cascade them. the electrification program should have started years ago however, then the railway over there would be in a better position.

The problem is though that dates keep slipping a year here, a year there. You have Thameslink and Intercity Express rolling stock programmes which are now many years late. If these rolling stock orders were finalised when they were supposed to have been everyone would be in a vastly better position. But since they are not, it just plays a further strain on the whole system. The problem is the DFT cannot be trusted to deliver rail projects or rolling stock procurement on time. Holding off on Diesel stock would have been fine if they stuck to their original targets, but they didn't and year on year demand gets higher and operators on Diesel lines can't do a single thing about it.

the roscos wouldn't really bother with buying passenger rolling stock if there wasn't some government funding to do it. the government probably guarantees the money and the charges as a just in case. the whole system over there is a complicated money go round and i hope to god we don't repeat the same mistake. whatever about CIE (and it is known on here i do have issues) i'd rather the system we have and its faults then the UK system and the money go round. maybe the government would be better off cutting out the roscos on future stock buying if they want to micro-manage but i suppose at the end of the day dogma will come first to probable common sense

The UK system is not perfect but stations and passenger information in the UK is streets ahead of what is going on in the UK. If you look at the amount and quality of information shown on screens in the UK, it's streets ahead of what can be found here. There is absolutely no comparison in that area.

As for the government cutting out the ROSCOs, I'm no fan of them, I think they are one of the very worst things to happen in the UK system, however at the end of the day the way the government has managed rolling stock in the past I wouldn't trust them either. The one time they didn't use the ROSCOS it took many years to sign the bloody deal after agreeing i which created even bigger problems.

There are operators who have wanted to buy stock off their own back and did so in the past, this was what happened a lot in the first 10 years following privatisation and there are operators that want to do the same now and others who worked it into their franchise bids and some operators have also tried to take on the ROSCOS by buying them out when they were at their lowest period because they don't like them anymore than you or me.

That's what happened when First bought a whole load of HST's from the ROSCOs, they were worried that the government would allocate them somewhere else and would not give them any firm long term lease despite the fact passenger numbers so they just took the government out of the equation completely and bought them with their own funds, the DFT have since made it impossible to do that anymore and also have heavily restricted operators being able to lease trains to sister companies and other operators.

That's why you see silly short term ideas going on in the Uk at the moment such as removing tables, removing buffets, going for more airline style seats and other things like finding old abandoned sleeper and buffet cars and converting them to standard class carriages and operators leasing ulta-unreliable trains because it's either those trains or no trains. All of these things occurring directly because of the fact that the government is incapable of properly managing rolling stock.

dubscottie

There is some UK tenders CIE could go for if they did it right. Not running but fixing.

For example Springburn seems to be the place for EuroStar body repairs.

If they specialised in a certain area (I know aluminum extrusions are a c*nt to repair) they could be quids in..

As most trains are made that way now, it is mad that vehicles are being sent to Glasgow to be repaired when we could have a facility in Ireland that could do it and compete with the UK.

(and yes I know it costs money)

end of the road

dubscottie wrote: »

There is some UK tenders CIE could go for if they did it right. Not running but fixing.

For example Springburn seems to be the place for EuroStar body repairs.

If they specialised in a certain area (I know aluminum extrusions are a c*nt to repair) they could be quids in..

As most trains are made that way now, it is mad that vehicles are being sent to Glasgow to be repaired when we could have a facility in Ireland that could do it and compete with the UK.

(and yes I know it costs money)

would we even need a facility in ireland? CIE could simply open a facility in the uk itself? hypothetical situation obviously

ClovenHoof

CIE must be destroyed. You cannot keep putting a blow dryer to the corpse and expect it to come to life.