The International Railway Journal has published a commentary arguing that the way railways buy rolling stock has become circular and self-defeating, and that operators and suppliers both gain from a different approach.

The piece, titled "Not going round in circles: a better way to procure rolling stock," addresses a structural problem familiar to fleet planners and manufacturers alike: procurement processes that repeatedly reproduce the same bottlenecks, cost overruns and delivery disputes.

What is wrong with the current procurement cycle?

The author's central claim is that conventional tendering locks operators and suppliers into a repeating loop. Each order is treated as a standalone transaction, specifications are rewritten from scratch, and the lessons of previous programmes rarely carry forward. The result is duplication of effort on both sides of the table.

For manufacturers, this means bidding costs that must be recovered through contract prices. For operators, it means longer lead times and designs that are not fully adapted to the network realities the fleet will serve.

The commentary frames this as a systemic issue rather than a failure of any single procurement authority or builder.

What does a better approach look like?

The alternative proposed in the article rests on closer, longer-term engagement between purchaser and supplier. Rather than a one-off specification followed by a price competition, the author points toward frameworks where operators and manufacturers work together earlier in the process, before requirements are frozen.

The intended outcomes are concrete:

• Lower transaction costs, because bidders are not pricing in repeated speculative tendering
• Shorter delivery timelines, because designs build on proven platforms rather than starting from zero
• Better alignment between vehicle specifications and actual network conditions
• Greater predictability for manufacturers planning production and workload

As with any supplier- or operator-facing argument for closer partnerships, the claims deserve scrutiny against fleet plans and network data. Long-term frameworks can reduce cost and risk; they can also narrow the field of credible bidders if not structured with care.

Why does this matter now?

Rolling stock procurement sits at the intersection of two pressures. Operators face demands for fleet renewal and expansion tied to service commitments and decarbonisation targets. Manufacturers face order books that swing between boom and drought, making investment in capacity and skills hard to justify.

A procurement model that smooths demand and shares development risk more evenly addresses both sides of that equation. The commentary's argument is that the industry already has the evidence — in the programmes that have gone well and the ones that have not — and needs to apply it consistently rather than case by case.

What happens next?

The article is an argument for change rather than a report of a decision taken, and no regulator, operator or supplier is named as committed to a specific reform. Its value lies in framing the question that fleet planners, procurement authorities and manufacturers will continue to confront as the current ordering cycle plays out.

Readers can follow the full argument in the International Railway Journal commentary.