Peer review: Chris MacRae
Manager – Rail Freight Policy, Freight Transport Association
For rail freight to meet the ambitious targets for unconstrained growth set down in Network Rail’s Freight Market Study in the Long-Term Planning Process, fundamental changes need to happen. This is all about building end-customer confidence in rail as a viable part of their supply chains. The main issues are cost, service responsiveness, network capability and availability.
Cost to the end-customer needs to come down and be comparable with road freight, or it simply won’t be considered as an option for new traffic. Make no mistake, the traffic that rail already has must never be regarded as captive - there will always be a point where cost, service reliability or other factors will push that traffic to other modes.
And let’s kill any idea that a way to help rail freight is through fiscal or regulatory policies that increase burdens on other modes or inhibit their development and innovation. All that does is impose extra burden on UK Industry and business, and push investment and jobs out of the UK. It is essential that rail enjoys a stable fiscal regulatory framework that sets a backdrop of reducing cost with those savings passed on to the end-customer - the last freight track access charges review was highly damaging to shipper investment confidence in using rail freight, with access costs increased and certain traffic having specific ‘mark-ups’ imposed upon them because they were deemed ‘captive’ to rail.
Service responsiveness to rail freight customers needs to get better across the industry, with information on freight performance more transparent. This needs to be across the key freight corridors to build shipper confidence, and in a meaningful end-to-end format that helps benchmark performance.
The network needs to be more accessible, both in terms of hours and days of access and in terms of rail freight-connected sites. Rail freight must provide a seven-day service, including road freight for engineering works disruption. And it is essential that investment in the rail network to optimise its use for freight continues. That includes gauge clearing diversionary routing, and routes to take larger containers when the main routes are shut for engineering. End-to-end journey time improvements and train length also need to be improved.
Channel Tunnel rail freight costs need to come down. A report commissioned by the Freight Transport Association and shared with the European Commission makes this point starkly - cost is the major barrier to more freight using the Channel Tunnel. Cut the charges and volumes will go up.
Government must address the benefits and challenges of HS2. The freight industry is being told that HS2 will release capacity for it on the West Coast Main Line South. But we have no guarantee that such released capacity will not be taken by extra passenger rail services seeking to maintain connection for towns not on HS2. Freight also needs a coherent timetable strategy for WCML north of HS2’s junctions to Scotland, where freight paths will have to compete with passenger services connecting Scotland with HS2. Given the amount of Anglo-Scottish retail traffic, this is a serious issue if it’s not to end up back on the M6 and M74.
