GOING OFF THE RAILS (2)

Putting official purchases out to competitive tender is in principle a good thing, since it gives the state the opportunity to secure goods and services at the lowest price. However, it doesn't always go well, as the saga of the IC4 trains in Denmark shows.

In 2000 Denmark's state-owned train operator DSB ordered 82 IC4 train sets from the Italian firm Ansaldo Breda to replace the ageing IC3 trains which are the mainstay of the national network. The contract had a value of more than Dkr.5 billion, the first train would be delivered in 2002 and all the trains were due to be in service by 2006.

The project went wrong from the start. Already in 2002 DSB agreed with the Italians that the trains could be delivered late. The first units arrived in 2003, but could not be put into service. The start date was put back to the beginning of 2006, but the first train didn't enter service until August 2008. In May 2009 DSB received Dkr.2.25 billion in compensation, plus a guarantee that the last train sets would be delivered in the third quarter of 2012. However, the last of the 82 sets was finally delivered today; and only 23 of them are in service.

As the head of DSB put it, it has been 13 years of suffering for both DSB and the travelling public. As an example of how things can go wrong, it is a case study. One fact in particular stands out. DSB did in fact order 83 train sets, not 82. The 83rd unit was found in a railway siding in Libya when coalition forces moved in after Ghadaffi had been toppled; apparently he had been given it as a present by Italian's then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi!

Walter Blotscher