Nick Richardson, technical director at transport consultancy Mott MacDonald, considers that with plans to introduce more electric traction on the railway, the need for a secure power supply becomes essential.
“The debate is turning to how we produce any sort of power rather than how we produce energy sustainably,” he writes.
More worrying, he says, is “the lack of resilience of the power supply itself, with trains drawing power from the same sources as everything else across the country”.
With concerns as to whether major operators have back-up options in the event of a power failure, he says that contingency planning is a must, with a co-ordinated response required.
- We've read it in: Passenger Transport, May 13 2016 (ISSUE 134), p22
