[Mark Gleeson]

End of the day the simplest solution here is to allow the 4 tendering consortia to simply put their best proposal on the table

So consortia 1 might charge y but offer wider carriages with more capacity, other consortia might stay narrow and charge z, x and v respectively

What if y was the lowest cost overall? What if they will charge 10% more but promise a 6 month quicker job?

This isn't lowest cost tendering this the most economically beneficial or something similar. Sadly the passenger impact isn't considered, obviously its easy make money when the trains are stuffed to the roof, having a significant % of spare capacity doesn't go down well with bean counters, but goes down well with us since you will always fill it

And no the answer isn't 42

Can we take the tech spec stuff to the technical forum folks