INDUSTRY INSIDER
The movement to reverse Beeching gathers pace
“As has been pointed out by various commentators, the £500 million fund will not go far in paying for a revival of closed lines, but what it does is to allow promoters in their various forms to evaluate the potential business case.This will benefit reopening projects that have wider network benefits - such as Stratford-upon-Avon to Honeybourne.”
OUR forebears understood that for a community to prosper, there had to be connectivity with the outside world, so that local products could be sold to a wider market with the resulting earnings spent on output growth and improved local incomes.
The arrival of a railway was also an emancipation that allowed access to learning, employment and a range of services that transformed life. In the language of the day, it was seen as a means to elevate the condition of the people.
Universal understanding of this resulted in an extraordinary expansion of railways in the early Victorian age, as promoters emerged to build main line and local railways - often financially backed by investors from local communities.
In the end, it became a railway mania, with shareholder money lost on projects that did not pay. But the resulting consolidation produced companies that were among the largest privately owned enterprises in the world.
If that was the 19th century, in the 20th century we saw a new form of connectivity, in the ability to own a motor car. This was as great a revolution as the ability to make train journeys, which had enabled holiday resorts in Britain to develop, goods to be forwarded on a country-wide basis, and cities to grow as perishables could be forwarded to city centre markets in a matter of hours.
As car ownership expanded, it was natural that owners would use their vehicles rather than make train journeys. And the decline in rail use, coupled with the development of road haulage and an embryo system of distribution later to become styled as logistics, brought about a mid-20th century railway financial crisis. That led the Government of the day to appoint Dr Richard Beeching as chairman of the newly formed British Railways Board, to evaluate what needed to be done to eliminate the deficit.
It was seen by many that the railway had had its day, and thus transport investment was concentrated on building motorways and facilitating their use by allowing ever-heavier goods vehicles. The mantra became that if revenue did not cover costs for a section of railway or branch line, the upkeep was not justified, and it should be closed.
There was no consideration of any wider economic or environmental consequences. The only reason to prevent closure was if the regional Transport Users Consultative Committees (TUCCs) could put forward a case that hardship would result. And if an alternative bus service was available, that was unlikely to occur.
Memorable hearings were held by regional TUCCs, such as that to assess the closure of the West Highland route. The line between Fort William and Mallaig had originally been built with government money to alleviate poverty in rural Scotland, and it was judged that its removal would cause past circumstances to return. Clearly there were no alternative bus services available, and so to prevent hardship, closure of each of the Highland routes was rejected.
But elsewhere, as closures began to affect urban areas, a big change took place as the 1968 Transport Act allowed revenue support payments to be made on a line-by-line basis, and local Passenger Transport Authorities and their Executives were set up in the larger conurbations to develop investment plans for integrated transport.
It was the choice of local authorities whether to set up PTAs. But only seven areas chose to do so, and it was later regretted that areas such as the East Midlands and Bristol had not taken up the opportunity.
Lines that were not part of urban area plans continued to close - most notably the through route between Oxford and Cambridge in 1968, the Waverley Route in 1969, and the North Devon Ilfracombe line in 1970 after a previous rundown of services.
The growth in car ownership obscured from the public mind (and therefore the political agenda) the consequences for people who did not own cars. They suffered growing deprivation as a result of an inability to access better-paid jobs, as the closure of older industries removed employment.
Added to that was the attraction of low-cost holidays in the sun, resulting in an economic decline in coastal communities that has made many seaside towns among the poorest in the country when Gross Value Added (GVA) statistics are used to reflect average incomes. In England, the 2018 average GVA was £29,356, but many coastal towns record figures that are little more than half that amount.
The General Election in 2019 was a wake-up call that demonstrated a demand for better connectivity where communities suffered economic deprivation, and areas of Britain such as the North East voted for the prospect of economic regeneration that the railways can bring.
As a result, the Government has decided to provide money to develop business cases to reopen stations and lines serving deprived communities, and this has gained momentum with 25 out of 50 cases submitted being supported with development funding.
As has been pointed out by various commentators, the £500 million fund will not go far in paying for a revival of closed lines, but what it does is to allow promoters in their various forms to evaluate the potential business case.
This will benefit reopening projects that have wider network benefits - such as the Stratfordupon-Avon to Honeybourne section, which has wider socio-economic benefits that do not accrue to individual local authorities.
Another quiet revolution to help justify new rail services is the relaxation of Treasury rules about investment, contained in what is described as the ‘Green Book’ - a manual that instructs project sponsors how funding should be justified.
At the moment, investment cases are rated by using a Benefit:Cost Ratio where anything above 1.0 produces a positive funding case, but there is an acknowledgment that non-fare box benefits have been under-rated in the past. This has resulted in less investment outside London and the South East.
As the number of successful business cases increases, there will be a need for external funding with the Treasury cash-strapped in the post-COVID period. There is little doubt that if projects are to be implemented, most will be undertaken by contractors who design, build and fund the work. The necessary return could come from track access charges or other beneficiaries such as housing developers.
“Areas of Britain such as the North East voted for the prospect of economic regeneration that the railways can bring.”