Get freight on track for a better future
Rethinking transport options will help deliver on the government’s climate change targets, writes David Spaven
When the Scottish Parliament unanimously backed the Climate Change Act in 2009, much was made of this being the most ambitious climate change legislation anywhere in the world. In the intervening years, good progress on emissions has been made in a number of sectors – but the glaring exception has been transport. As noted by the sustainable transport alliance, Transform Scotland, “there remains no systematic programme of action to make cuts in transport emissions on the necessary scale, with emission levels remaining as high as they were 25 years ago”.
The Scottish Government’s new Climate Change Plan makes many mentions of transport, but surprisingly little of the potential role of rail freight – just two references in 178 pages. Yet by the Government’s own admission, “per tonne of freight, rail freight produces 76 per cent less CO2 than road freight”.
A key example is electrification. While the Climate Change Plan commits to moving from 26 per cent of the network being electric today to 35 per cent by 2032, there are no detailed funding plans for electrification works beyond the current Edinburgh-glasgow investment. In contrast, the Scottish Government has in place expensive funding commitments which will significantly increase climate emissions – notably its £9 billion road-building programme and the proposal for an annual £300 million Air Passenger Duty tax cut for the most polluting form of transport. It is surely incumbent on the Government to provide suitable mitigation to at least balance this likely increase in emissions – and shifting freight from road to rail is a clear, early-achievable intervention which will do just that.
As the Scottish Government’s 2016 Rail Freight Strategy document acknowledged, rail is most competitive with road where it operates “longer, faster, greener freight trains”. On Anglo-scottish routes, this means investment to provide overtaking loops which can accommodate 775m length trains – the maximum which can pass through the Channel Tunnel, and the equivalent of more than 40 lorry loads in a single movement. In the meantime, rail potential along the East Coast Main Line has been strengthened by news that Tesco is to concentrate its national distribution network on a hub within Teesport, with its new daily train service to the key railheads at Mossend and Grangemouth.
But rail freight cannot prosper simply by concentrating on the East Coast and West Coast Main Lines. Feeder routes within Scotland are crucial to existing and potential traffics, ensuring that the train can get as close as possible to the origin and destination of the traffic it carries. A case in point is Britain’s only aluminium smelter, at Fort William – this has its own rail sidings, receiving the alumina raw material by train. The finished product formerly moved by rail, but infrastructure constraints along the singletrack West Highland Line – weight restrictions on bridges, and short crossing loops – led to the traffic being lost to road some years ago.
Now the smelter has been taken over by the Liberty group, which is looking to diversify the aluminium products manufactured on site. This anticipated growth provides an opportunity to re-examine rail potential, with industry and government working in partnership to reduce transport costs and keep heavy traffic off the unsuitable A82.
There are multiple other examples where rail could be helping the Scottish Government to reach its climate change targets. Concerns have rightly been voiced about the dangers posed by whisky lorries on the A95 road linking Speyside with
the A9 – but why are all the suggested solutions based on road investment? Mothballed railheads at Elgin and Keith are ideally placed to act as hubs for rail movement of bulk spirit to maturation plants in Central Scotland, with trains carrying other food and drink produce from the North East to export markets. This has already been the subject of a successful trial. The Scottish Government, whisky firms and the rail industry need to work together to secure the commitment and investment which will enable trains to ease pressure on the A95 and A9 – and in so doing also help climate change. Of course, manufacturers who have never used rail freight will have to be convinced that rail can deliver. Key performance statistics – like the fact that more than 95 per cent of supermarket containers moving by rail arrive on time – help to make the case, but the railway is often not well understood by outsiders. With that in mind, Transport Scotland will soon publish a new guide – Delivering Your Goods – which shows what rail freight can do, and how to explore commodity-specific and route-specific opportunities. It is in all our interests that this should succeed. David Spaven, Scottish Representative, Rail Freight Group