Andrew McNaughton
“We will only create regional railways for the 21st century by designing them from scratch based on tomorrow’s needs, avoiding contamination from the ‘what you don’t realise is…’ brigade.
OUR regional railways reflect 19th century Britain. What they are, where they go, who they serve, and how they are operated and maintained owe more to the past than to the future.
As in many developed countries, the least prosperous areas are often the rural ones that are less well-served by transport connectivity and which tend towards depopulation, especially by younger people. Older inhabitants in poor health also have difficulty accessing the high-quality healthcare available in centralised city locations.
Rail has traditionally played a role in connecting rural communities to more major centres. And with careful planning, it will do so in the coming decades, with some investment and changes to operational practice to better meet the needs of those served.
Costs generally exceed direct revenue by up to an order of magnitude, but the service provided is of high community benefit in providing access to employment plus centralised health and cultural facilities.
Rail remains highly valued by communities (even when underinvested in), because it is seen as an enduring, permanent link.
While it is unlikely that new-build rural lines could ever be envisaged, a strategy of recovering and upgrading the still existing ones, and consideration of reopening ones where the right of way has not been lost, is a rational response to rural relative deprivation.
There are three priorities: to drive up usefulness and to drive down both carbon footprint and cost.
Integration
People travel door to door. Yet we often hinder local integration, causing local bus and train to compete in the hope that two sick animals fighting will make them healthier.
What successful regional railways have in common, wherever you look around the world, is integration of road and rail operations. This means using the rail route as the connector to the city, and rural bus routes connecting at interchange stations to join to communities away from the railway. The Netherlands and Switzerland were the pioneers, and others have followed.
Connectivity starts with integration of public transport timetables and guaranteed slick connections that are suitable for able-bodied and reduced mobility people alike. Physical ease means short transfers in an environment that is without steps, dry, warm, well-lit and safe.
Some of this is sensible ‘hard design’, but often the answer is as simple as the proximity of an already waiting bus with a driver, which provides the sense of personal safety. There are some good examples even in Britain - a longtime favourite of mine is Caerphilly.
The Swiss have achieved multiple benefits from encouraging (even subsidising) convenience stores and local supermarkets with long opening hours, either through repurposing redundant buildings or replacing them with factory-made standard shop modules.
As well as providing a reassuring human presence and help point, they have massively increased footfall - restabling the station at the centre of rural communities and highlighting that ‘yes there is a railway here that people like me use’!
Mobility as a Service (MAAS) means that the success of a station need not be limited by car ownership or by the size of (often sterile) onsite parking. Door to station travel through simple apps that summon a public car (whether manned or not in the future, but certainly electric) is no longer a novelty.
With integrated timetabling of guaranteed connections, through ticketing and information tools, a more valuable rural network can be created without requiring high frequency - the emphasis being on dependability, combined with an adequate journey time to the city hub at key times of the day.
To be challenging, we should look coolly at each existing station and ask: “can we make it an interchange in a door-to-door journey?” If not, relocate it or close it, and speed up the service between the places which are actually useful - and provide these with true interchange facilities.
Even the cash-strapped railway in Auckland (New Zealand) has moved a station a few hundred metres from a twilight zone beside an old prison to under a main road bridge where all the local buses stop.
The weight issue
There are few silver bullets in the rail world, but one is train weight. It was true in the 1980s with the development of Sprinters, and they are still best in class at around a ten-tonne axleweight. This is also a key enabler to tackling carbon. Reducing weight is virtuous three times over.
Lighter trains cause reduced wear and tear on the infrastructure, leading to less failure, less maintenance and increased asset life, which translates into lower unit cost. As importantly, every maintenance activity not needed and renewal cycle extended is carbon not expended. It also brings greater reliability and ‘open all hours’ availability, which is attractive to passengers, drawing people onto a low-carbon transport mode as well as increasing revenue.
Lighter trains can perform better with faster acceleration and braking, giving passengers a quicker journey and reducing the time impact of a station call. The shorter journey may allow greater train productivity, hence lower unit cost. And better braking can lead to simplified (or no) signalling control, which lowers cost.
Lighter trains will use less energy - not only lowering cost, but also bolstering green credentials. Electrification can be through simple trolley wires in places, or just used to recharge on-board batteries. Again, the lighter the train, the less energy used, the smaller the battery requirement - which means a lighter train…
Lighter trains are not low-quality trains. But regional railways tend to have few trains in proportion to the amount of infrastructure, completely the reverse of intensive urban systems. So, it is logical to invest what money we have in trains (which the paying passengers can see, touch and appreciate) in order to lower operational and infrastructure carbon and cost.
Tram-train revisited
The tram-train concept was about a fresh approach to operation, process, standards and
“We cannot start by wondering what of the tsunami of main line operational and engineering practice we can dis-apply. It never works - we will only create regional railways for the 21st century by designing them from scratch based on tomorrow’s needs.”
procedures, enabled by technology change.
We have gone horribly astray in this country, developing something which works in Germany because it is different to heavy rail by progressively re-engineering it to be the same! So, let’s get back to the basics of the principles around train-train.
It meets the lightweight challenge, but is properly engineered to be attractive internally and to meet reduced mobility legislation.
Of course, the vehicle needs a control system fitted that is adequate for travelling on main lines into main line stations, but once onto regional lines only the simplest of technology is needed to give movement authority to the driver, who then drives on sight.
Risk of collision with road and other regional rail vehicles is controlled by it being able to stop very quickly, being low mass and having track brakes.
Stations can be like tram stops on city streets, which means easy and convenient access for all with none of the high-level platforms, stairs, footbridges and other impediments that cost so much in provision and maintenance - just some weather protection, lighting and security points. So, new stations, where people want them, become really affordable.
We can take a different approach to level crossings, which become interchange opportunities instead of safety problems.
Level crossings are where buses, taxis, cars and cycles (in fact, all the carriers of potential passengers) come to the railway. These are the places to build new ‘stations’.
With all our trains stopping and designed to co-exist with cars on city streets (remember the track brakes?), there is no need for conventional level crossing barriers and control systems. At most, standard traffic lights will do. How much cheaper and lower-carbon would some railway reopenings be without all these encumbrances?
There is the scope for tram-trains to be extended into regional town and city centres, or even large housing or shopping estates, at modest cost. Short stretches of street running can take the passengers to within walking distance of their destination.
Think of so many places where the station today is in the wrong part of town, remote from today’s centres of employment, shopping and leisure developments. Teesside often springs to mind.
Decisions such as these can be pursued at any time once regional rail has cut over to such technology. They don’t have to be made ‘up front’.
Many of these ideas are showcased in practice in Kassel, Germany ( RAIL 925). With much lower operational and maintenance costs, much higher reliability and availability, more and easily accessible stations yet with reduced overall journey times, and reconnection into the heart of a regional city the size of Norwich, the lines converted to train-train are blossoming with costs slashed and revenue multiplying.
The Kassel example even demonstrates how to mix (safely and reliably) tram-train and relatively slow-moving freight trains, so that freight access onto regional lines can be both secured and promoted.
Freight could just as easily be new ventures into palletised packages and parcels services carried to collection and distribution points at interchange stations along the route - another way of attracting life to regional stations and replacing more higher-carbon road traffic.
The right standards
We need operational and engineering standards and procedures for regional railways, developed as a logical end result of rational risk assessment.
We cannot start by wondering what of the tsunami of main line operational and engineering practice we can dis-apply. It never works - we will only create regional railways for the 21st century by designing them from scratch based on tomorrow’s needs, avoiding contamination from the “what you don’t realise is…” brigade.
Everyone has a part to play - owners, operators, suppliers, regulators, government. But above all, funders and customers - we’re doing this for them, not us! We can do it.