Rail freight.
CHRISTIAN WOLMAR backs GB Railfreight Managing Director John Smith’s calls for government to recognise the value and importance of rail freight
A couple of years ago, I wrote a short book entitled Are Trams Socialist? Spoiler alert, but the answer was no. The book was really not about trams, but about the failure of transport policy ever since the first Minister for Transport was appointed just after the First World War.
In truth, the notion of transport policy has been an oxymoron. In other words, there never has been a transport policy, let alone a strategy - by which I mean a coherent approach by politicians to what we, as a society and an economy, want from transport.
The problem is that transport is a residual good, which means that it is mostly a means to an end. We need transport to get to our destination, but the journey itself is seen as something of a negative - best got over with as quickly and as cheaply as possible. The days of a jolly ride in the country (or even a train journey for pleasure) are gone.
This has led to a fundamental contradiction by policy makers. They see the growth in transport movements as a good thing. If more people are moving around, then it is a sign of growth, of increased horizons, of greater wealth. The downsides - such as the environmental impact, the damage to local communities caused by transport networks going through them, the effect of long-distance commuting on family life, the fact that increased car use results in obesity - are not properly being taken into account.
Admittedly, it is difficult to pull all this together into a coherent strategy. The only transport minister who genuinely understood this and who tried to develop an actual plan was John (now Lord) Prescott, with his ten-year transport plan published in 2000. It was good to see him at a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference in September, still going strong and pushing the case for public transport.
All this was brought to mind because of an excellent presentation given by GB Railfreight Managing Director John Smith, about the need for a government strategy on rail freight.
Smith is one of those rare railway managers who is constantly seeking to engage with a wider audience beyond the industry, in order to press his case. His offers of cab rides are legendary and are highly instructive journeys - not just from seeing the tracks from the point of view of a freight locomotive, but also for Smith’s analysis of how things could get better.
Smith speaks from experience. His company has built up from an idea tossed around with a few colleagues and an organisation with no rolling stock but just a few big ideas, to one with a turnover of £180 million and a staff of 850 that has given the far bigger DB Cargo (under its various past names) a run for its money.
But Smith is by no means satisfied with the way his business is considered by government and the regulators. He feels there is enormous potential for growth, but that it cannot be realised without a far clearer understanding by ministers of rail’s worth.
In support of his argument, Smith cites one little-known statistic: half of the building materials for London’s booming building industry enter the capital by rail. And he takes great issue with the rather wild statement made last year by former Secretary of State for Transport Lord Adonis, who suggested that rail freight essentially got in the way of passenger trains and should be confined to night services, suggesting that “this is the sort of thing we are up against”.
He is also greatly concerned about possible changes to the access charge regime being considered by the Office of Rail and Road. If this results in a sharp increase, many flows might become unviable.
He points to other countries in Europe which recognise that rail freight needs support to thrive. Indeed - just think how much road maintenance costs could be saved by carrying more freight on rail. As Smith puts it: “Rail freight ticks lots of boxes, yet its benefits are not sufficiently recognised.”
Rail freight has had a rough time recently, given the plummeting carriage of coal, but Smith remains optimistic. For example, he points to the 34 trains per day (not all his) taking containers out of Felixstowe - a number that could be greatly increased if there were more capacity.
However, it took a decade to persuade the
Government and Network Rail to reinstate a mile and a half of the double track on the Felixstowe branch, to create a dynamic loop that will greatly improve capacity and reliability, and Smith is aghast that this cost £60m (memo to NR Chief Executive Andrew Haines: check out why). When I spoke to Smith on one of his cab trips in December 2014 ( RAIL 762), he suggested that perhaps the hourly passenger service linking Ipswich with Felixstowe could be scrapped, although he recognised that this was unlikely ever to happen.
Politicians who suggest closing rail services would (frankly) be ‘toast’, but it is precisely the sort of issue that might arise if there were some kind of national strategy. The trains can take up to 50 ‘boxes’ so, without the dozen or so branch line passenger trains, perhaps another 600 containers could go on rail - greatly relieving the stress on local rails.
Other measures, such as subsidising the handling charges for containers being transferred on to rail (around £50 each, which is not paid by lorries as they can move right next to the containers they are carrying), could also help to reduce the impact of the port on local roads.
I’m not for one moment suggesting that scrapping the passenger trains would definitely be a good idea, or a feasible one. The point is that no one is making such calculations… or is ever likely to.
Perhaps 600 fewer lorries on the road to Felixstowe, and a few extra buses to take the former rail passengers, would be a better use of scarce rail resources. Such a strategy might require hard choices, but it is fanciful to think that the market is delivering the most optimal result for society. There are, in economist’s terms, simply too many externalities (effects brought about by external factors).
This is what Smith means when he bemoans the lack of any coherent thinking on rail freight - or, indeed, on transport policy generally.
For example, he would like to see freight brought by rail right to the heart of cities. He remembers seeing the La Poste high-speed French mail train arrive on a trial run to St Pancras a few years back (which, incidentally, had to be towed through the tunnel because of ridiculous safety concerns), and recalls being told that there were insuperable difficulties about creating such a service - not least because there were no facilities to unload the mail at the station. Again, a proactive government could break through such obstacles.
Smith also wants the Government to support major infrastructure projects for freight, which again requires the sort of strategic thinking that is so clearly absent from Marsham Street (or indeed Whitehall as a whole).
Rather tongue in cheek, too, he says he would like to see the passenger railway learn from the efficiencies delivered in the freight sector, without any major industrial disputes. In other words, he says the passenger railway has a lot to learn from the freight sector. Now, that’s an original thought.