Merseytravel fury over £207m price tag for Bidston-Wrexham rail link

Nov 5 2008 By Staff Reporter

railway link

NETWORK Rail has been accused of overpricing the cost of electrifying the Bidston to Wrexham railway line because it doesn’t want the work.

The project that would link up Deeside with Liverpool with a regular direct train service has “hit the buffers” because the cost was put at £207 million by Network Rail – three times the price tag Merseytravel came up with.

MPs were told it is hampering the creation of 15,000 new jobs in Deeside because the area is a transport desert.

Giving evidence at an influential Commons committee, Merseytravel chief executive Neil Scales said: “Deeside is a public transport desert. There is potential there for 15,000 jobs but there’s no public transport to it.”

“We have been pushing our colleagues at Network Rail to do the study, which came out at £207 million, which I found absolutely outrageous.

“Network Rail don’t have any benchmarks so I don’t really know whether that’s a gold plated scheme or silver plating or what.

“We have done some independent work which said it was about £66 million.”

He added: “I’m not too happy with that at all so what we have done now is launch another study for an overhead line to see if we can electrify with an overhead line and see if we can use dual powered trains.

“I may look to getting an independent contractor to benchmark the costs from Network Rail because it just seems like they don’t want the job and therefore you’ve got a really high price.

“As soon as we got the £207 million it becomes unfundable.

“It’s hit the buffers, if you like, on the basis that the costs we have got from Network Rail are on the face of it too high.”

The committee was told 45% of the line is in Wales but the Assembly Government and Merseytravel planned to split the costs of the project equally with Merseytravel providing the rolling stock.

Last year 281,000 passengers at Liverpool John Lennon Airport came from Wales and boosting the service would increase that number, Mr Scales added.

The committee heard discussions are under way with Arriva Trains Wales to increase the frequency of the services, which currently runs once an hour in each direction, in the short term.

A spokesman for Network Rail said: “Merseytravel is well aware that the methodology used in the first two reports on this project were flawed.

“They did not take into account everything that needed to considered,” he said.

“The £207 million cost Network Rail has worked out also takes into account inflation and uses today’s prices.”