By Rowland Ataguba
"And in the shadowless unclouded glare,
Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where,
A misty sealine meets the wash of air."
The immortal words of Sir John Betjeman, poet and Victorian architectural heritage campaigner, born in 1906, died in 1984, who saved the gorgeous St Pancras station from demolition in the 1960s. His statue stands majestic on the first floor of the station concourse beside the platforms for Eurostar aka HS1 and some of St Pancras’ finest restaurants and swanky watering holes.
I met up recently with a colleague and friend Tim Jones, for a bite and to catch up at Carluccio’s with its stunning views of the HS1 platforms. Tim is one of the UK’s pre-eminent authorities on infrastructure PPP/PFI. CEO at Syrius Consulting with prior stints on DLR, Crossrail, East-West Rail, and HS2. Tim is a reservoir of knowledge… but many see him as a highways man from his time at the National Highways and as CEO of Connect Plus at Balfour Beatty among others. In reality, he is a well-grounded infrastructure all-rounder like me given our QS backgrounds. We reflected on our days in the MBA class of 1989 at Henley, some 35 years ago and how UK plc has since fared.
While waiting for Tim to arrive at our rendezvous, I took in the gothic handsomeness of St Pancras International, my mind drifting across town to another iconic station, Waterloo International which was our hub at Stagecoach Rail some while ago. The then largest train operating company in the UK, Stagecoach was the brainchild of Brian Souter, who started the business driving a coach from Edinburgh to London with his sister Ann Gloag, as his bus conductor. Stagecoach would grow to own the majority of Southwest Trains, Virgin Trains, East Midland Trains, Manchester Metro, and Island Trains aside from its bus and international operations.
At Stagecoach major projects, our preoccupation was delivering on our franchise commitments and enhancing shareholder value from train operations and infrastructure with a significant interface with Network Rail’s asset stewards for Landlords consents and possessions. Operating out of Friars Court around Waterloo, I ran the Stagecoach stations portfolio through a team of dedicated project managers supported by commercial managers, a construction manager, a planner, external consultants and contractors, among others. The portfolio included Southampton Airport Parkway, Bournemouth, Guildford, Woking, Putney, Bracknell, Winchester, Salisbury, Ascot… We expanded platforms to take longer trains, reconfigured and refurbished station buildings to enhance retail opportunities, and built multi-storey car parks to encourage “park and ride” commuting by train… The key limitation in terms of investment horizon was that the franchise period was only 7 years but investors are getting so much stick these days for allegedly making too “much money” as if. The question no one seems to be asking is, where are the ORR and DfT?
Tim and I reflected on current developments on GB Rail and the buzz around what Labour promises on HS2. That it will definitely berth at Euston is a relief as the plan for an Old Oak Common terminus favoured by Rishi’s gang certainly begged questions. A review of the decision on phase 2 Birmingham to Manchester is also causing some excitement. Now, the debate is why technical and business decisions have been subjected to political whims. Truth is, the CEO of UK plc is Sir Keith Starmer, a politician. So getting around politicians and their machismo may be asking much especially when it concerns expending public money. The Tories generally do well by aligning with business sometimes incestuously while Labour bears the cross of the unions and bias for public sector delivery. Both sides always failing to curb the excesses of their traditional allies. The trick as always is sound independent strategic and technical advice, and to listen more to those who disagree with you.
In many ways, Naija Rail’s situation is not too dissimilar from GB Rail’s, of plenty of motion but no real movement, or call it movement in fits and starts. We’ve been talking about reforming the railway since Obasanjo’s second coming. Indeed the reform and restructuring swansong began with Hamzat Zayyad’s TCPC and nearly 30 years on, we are still battling with getting the legislation through parliament. The structure of the industry hasn’t changed and public money continues to sink into a railway black hole. Humongous contracts have been awarded, sometimes in breach of the procurement act without consequence. They linger unstarted for years until they are forgotten about. A coastal highway is proceeding at breakneck speed but nobody seems to remember the Coastal railway which was awarded 10 years ago and a shovel is yet to hit the ground. What about Lagos – Kano modernization which was awarded since 2006 for a duration of 4 years, but 18 years on has not achieved up to 35% completion? Itakpe to Abuja was awarded so many years ago but has also not commenced. So have many others on the infrastructure side as the Government has been unable to marshal the required resources on its own. What about railway operations? The promise was the attraction of the private sector to participate in railway operations. With an overbearing and covetous NRC, the GE concession was frustrated out of reckoning until GE divested out of the transport business altogether. The NRC continues to operate trains in a haphazard manner famously running out of fuel in the middle of a train journey. More disappointingly, it has been unable to build a credible rail freight business.
Notwithstanding there are green shoots of hope and reason to be optimistic about the future. As the national assembly resumes from its summer recess, here is hoping that the railway bill will receive its utmost attention. Let’s get the law passed for a change. The locomotive engine retrofit pilot is a glimpse into the innovative power of the private investor. The new law will open the door for private investors to participate meaningfully and it’s about time too. It’s been a 20-year hike.
Getting the law passed is however just the prerequisite. Implementing the changes effectively to transform the railway landscape would be the acid test. Creating the independent railway regulator is the starting point, while separating railway operations from asset management while retaining vertical integration will help to enable risk sharing and provide appropriate incentives for private investors. The public sector can play to its strengths as regulator and asset owner/landlord while the private sector will operate the railway business. The lessons that we must learn from the unbundling of the power sector continue to stare us in the face. We must employ the appropriate resources with skills and capacity. Finally, the nonperforming non-core assets of the NRC must be set free to become productive again. These include the factories and foundries, printing presses, surplus lands, catering facilities, hospitals…and all the rest. A new dawn beckons for the Nigerian railways.
Rowland Ocholi Ataguba is a London-based strategic railway delivery expert. CEO of Bethlehem Rail Infrastructure Limited, he is a member of the NRC Unbundling Committee and author of the memorandum that initiated the constitution amendment transferring Railways from the Exclusive to the Concurrent list. A major contributor to the debate on the place of railways in national development, he is the author of many policy papers including publishing the epic “Modelling the Nigerian Railways”.
