Crossrail/Heathrow Row

Haven't they made enough over the decades charging through the nose for the H Express?

The question is not about whether Heathrow can charge for track access - as it's their railway, they can, just as TfL will pay Network Rail access charges.

Rather, it's about what they can seek to recover costs for when working out their access charges. As I understand it, Heathrow are trying to recoup the construction costs from TfL access charges despite having built the line 20odd years ago for their own services, and charged premium fares for it.

Ha! So my son starts working on the HX this week. He better do a good job and get the dividends up then, it'll be paying my pension.

I think it's a little bit more involved. In essence the revenues from HEX and charges from H'row Connect using the tunnels have already paid the construction cost of the tunnels. The rights granted to HEX up to 2023 were designed to ensure the capital and financing charges were fully recovered. You can't go round amending HEX's rights to run on the main line from Stockley Park to Paddington so suggestions of upping charges would fall foul of previous commitments plus whatever ORR determines is fair.

I believe the issue with Crossrail is whether HEX have the right to charge for paths as if they are recovering capital / financing costs *and* the marginal cost of extra wear and tear / maintenance. Really it's only the marginal cost that's a fair position but, of course, the past paperwork is unclear and HEX will argue that their service is in an "unfair" position because it has to recover more cost than Crossrail will bear. However you then get into an argument about whether Crossrail is or is not a "competitor" to HEX and what market segment the respective services will serve. The argument continues that if HEX loses patronage to Crossrail then HAL may not be able to recover all the costs it expected to do by 2023. And then the argument moves on again as to whether HEX should be given additional secured rights on the main line in order to be sure of completing its cost recovery albeit with a lower / declining user base.

My non lawyer, non competition expert view is that it's wrong for HEX to try to "gouge" the public purse on an illusory or unclear basis. The difficulty now is that a charging regime does have to be established but everyone is arguing about the future where no one knows what the effect of Crossrail will be nor how robust the market for air travel will be, especially in the light of political and economic conditions.

35b / snoggle - the problem of access charges at Heathrow is bedevilled by the fact that revenues from the Link are not included in the regulated airport income, so HAHA (as I believe it now is?) has every incentive to screw the maximum out of TOCs including CrossRail; that will continue to be the case after 2023, alas, although their scope for trying the trick will hopefully by limited by the eventual High Court decision. There is no scope for tit for tat pricing of access charges on the NR section of the HEX route - the charges are determined by ORR formulae which have to be applied everywhere. The one weapon that TfL has is the nuclear one of not serving the airport and shaming the ever greedy HAHA (and , no doubt, causing all the other schemes such as WraTH and SWELTRAC to fall down' with knock-on impact on the views about the desirability of a 3rd runway); otherwise primary legislation looms.

Well the High Court has ruled one particular avenue and endorsed ORR's right to reach a determination which is seemingly what HAHA (how appropriate [1] is that abbreviation now? ) were challenging at the High Court. Unfortunately HAHA do not seem to have accepted defeat and will no doubt dream up some other nonsense like a £1,000 charge for Crossrail passengers to step on to its platforms at the airport as that isn't a track access charge. The only sensible option for TfL, if a solution is not found, is to simply not serve the airport. No one needs to dream up false service disruption which could easily be shown to be untrue. TfL have the moral high ground in refusing to pay extortionate and "illegal" charges and pointing to HAHA as the party causing all the problems. That's perfectly tenable position for them to take. It's a complete pain for passengers but they appear not to figure in HAHA's thinking.



[1]

snoggle - there is a precedent for the airport charging the punters to use "their" station as that is what was originally proposed for the Brussels airport link PPP, with barriers openable only after purchasing a specific token railside - imagine the fun with that... Fortunately, the next idea was for SNCB to collect a small addon supplement to the fares. [That nearly failed too when SNCB refused, at first, to collect the money, leaving the banks and the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund - the main PPP financiers - to have collect the money themselves which led to delightful visions of under-performing merchant bankers being given a peaked cap and going out to inspect tickets... Eventually, common sense prevailed there, too].

You are right, time is ticking, tho' I'm not sure who is the loser (apart from Joe Public) if the issue isn't sorted by next year.

And at Madrid, where premium fare are charged to the terminal station T1, T2, T3 and the terminal station T4,  but not to the Barajas between the two.

But no agreement yet on the level of fares?

Also no mention that none of the proposed heathrow services will be from the Shenfield branch.

The Tfl board recently approved placement of funds for the acquisition of an additional four class 345 units reported according to a rail magazine (trying to find that article).

Apologies for quoting one of my own posts but it seems it has taken 8 months for TfL to actually exercise its contract option to order extra class 345s. Bombardier released a press release today confirming the order has been placed.

www.bombardier.com/en/media/newsList/details.bt_20180327_bombardier-to-provide-five-additional-aventra-trains.bombardiercom.html

Bizarrely it says the order is for 5 trains raising the number from 65 to 70 whereas the TfL press release from last year says the order was to increase the fleet from 66 to 70 (4 trains). I wonder why there is no agreement about the numbers involved and more pertinently why it took 8 months to agree a contract variation. TfL normally move much faster than that - I wonder if the fleet leasing plan (still scheduled to take up to 12 months to conclude!) is part of the reason for the delay?

What is to become of the 332s currently working the service?

Northern operate the similar class 333 units on the Aire & Wharf Valley routes to the northwest of Leeds. Some cl321 (usually used on the Doncaster line) are also used to boost capacity, IIRC some have just moved from Scotrail to Yorkshire to facilitate this. It would not surprise me at all if Northern tried to get their hands on the former HEx units.