Shift of freight from road to rail would save lives and help the environment
Society as a whole would benefit from fewer HGVS from both safety and climate change perspectives, says David Spaven
Lord Adonis, the former Chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, kicked up a bit of a stir with his recent suggestion that rail freight should be pushed off the tracks – to make space for more passenger trains – with goods instead transported by convoys of semi-automated HGVS.
Leaving aside the uncertainties about the practical operational impact of ‘platooning’ HGVS, and their commercial viability in competition with rail freight, a fundamental consideration has to be the wider environmental and public safety impact of shifting yet more heavy traffic on to the roads.
Rail’s inherent technical characteristics – steel wheel on steel rail, on a guided track, within a segregated and signalled right of way – give this mode of transport a key strength.
The great reduction in friction between wheel and land surface allows heavy loads to be moved at high speeds with a relatively small power input. Rail is a very efficient user of land and energy, able to move large volumes of people and freight swiftly, safely and sustainably where there are dense corridors of movement demand.
With growing concerns about carbon emissions, rail freight stands out as far superior to road haulage, consuming just one third of road equivalent energy. That very substantial advantage – unlikely to be significantly eroded in the foreseeable future, due to the technical barriers to operating electric HGVS over long hauls – demands more support in Scottish Government policies. The new Climate Change Plan for Scotland makes many mentions of transport, but surprisingly little of the enormous potential role of rail freight – just two references in 178 pages.
An even more immediate example of HGV ‘externalities’ – negative impacts imposed on society, but not incorporated in the ‘market price’ – is air pollution.
Annually, 40,000 people die prematurely in the UK as a result of diesel fumes. As shown in the table below, across key air pollutants, rail freight performs outstandingly better than road haulage.
Average emissions in grams per tonne-kilometre Mode – PM10 – CO – NOX– VOC Rail freight – 0.004 – 0.032 – 0.31 –0.021 HGV – 0.048 – 0.33 – 1.74 – 0.15
[PM10 = particulate matter of less than 10 microns; CO = carbon monoxide; NOX = oxides of nitrogen; VOC = volatile organic compounds. Source: Rail Safety & Standards Board, 2007.]
As railway passengers, we perhaps take for granted that our journey will be infinitely safer on the train than in a car – another ‘societal benefit’ which doesn’t form part of the crude market price of competing forms of transport. Britain’s railways are now safer than ever – and for the tenth year in a row there were no passenger fatalities resulting from train accidents on the main network.
In the case of freight, rail has a superlative record, with the last fatality caused by a freight train way back in 1996.
The contrast could not be greater with the high accident toll involving HGVS, which – weighing up to 44 tonnes – are disproportionately involved in fatal accidents. In a single year – 2016 – 273 people across Britain were killed in collisions involving HGVS.
The Office of Rail and Road states that rail is 20 times safer than road – allowing for the much greater mileage performed by HGVS than freight trains.
Within Scotland, official statistics reveal that a total of 1,243 HGVS were involved in fatal and serious accidents over the period 2006-16 – a period during which freight trains operated safely and sustainably across Scotland, day-in, day-out, without a single fatality!
While the best of the road hauliers operate to the highest safety standards – and indeed, a number use rail for the trunk haul – law-breaking remains rife in the wider industry. In 2013 and 2014, UK HGVS had a 59% overloading rate in roadside checks, and in both these years 31% of HGVS vehicles were served with roadside prohibitionsduetomechanicalfaults.
HGVS are not just disproportionately involved in fatal accidents compared to cars. A heavy lorry can impose literally thousands of times
the damage to road surfaces caused by a car – and the evidence is clear to see on rutted lanes on key routes like the A9. Scotland has a massive backlog of road maintenance – with funds being prioritised for building new roads – yet more investment in rail could make a much bigger difference to the daily driving experience of motorists throughout the country.
The message is clear: for the sake of society’s safety and health – and climatechangetargets–weneedasignificant shift of freight from road to rail. David Spaven, Scottish Representative, Rail Freight Group