Peer review: Jeff Screeton
Managing Director, Intercity Railfreight Ltd
Nick’s article highlights the growing need for innovation in the UK rail freight sector. Times and the market place they are a’ changin’, but I suspect far too many people still can’t (or won’t) see the bigger picture.
The headline is simple: the UK competes in a global economy, and there is always going to be somebody, somewhere, who is looking to do things better, faster and cheaper than we can. We might occupy a number of niches, but for how much longer?
With this in mind we need to be asking why we continue to tolerate so much supply chain waste (and by default cost and, ultimately, lost opportunities). And that’s before we start on the associated challenges and costs of traffic congestion and air pollution - the latter reportedly responsible for some 40,000 deaths annually.
Nick mentions the successful integration of passenger trains into the supply chains of a wide range of time/cost-sensitive commodities, but other benefits need to be considered. The East Midlands experience quickly highlighted that rail can easily be dovetailed into zero-carbon first/last mile transport operations. It is relatively simple to plan urban transport around a rail timetable with stations as cross-dock facilities, which means that small/frequent consignments are not just compatible with cycle logistics but also enable much more effective planning and use of electric vehicles.
The converted HSTs that Nick advocates using for freight plug equally well into the latter scenario coupled to a shared user philosophy and ‘white fleet’ zero-carbon first and last mile transport, which could mean a quick and dramatic reduction in the carbon footprint of retail and e-tail operations coupled to cost reduction and other benefits such as increased responsiveness in an environment moving rapidly towards instant fulfilment.
The recent GWR operation is slowly proving that using marginal freight capacity on passenger trains can make a big difference to local economies. Cornwall’s seafood industry, for example, has been in decline for some years as quotas have bitten, but the need to increase the value of the catch is unlikely to be realised on the back of road transport. Add rail’s speed and the ability for affluent markets such as London to order in the morning and receive fresh the same afternoon, along with an infinitely higher sustainability dimension, and very quickly the ball game changes with profitability fed back down the chain to where it is often so badly needed.
There are no hubs (which underwriters see increasingly as high risk) with the passenger operation, which means an ability to offer full consignment insurance that road cannot (or will not) do. For very high value items such as artwork, ceramics, live shellfish and freshly cut flowers this makes the rail service a game changer for producers used to losses in transit.
Internet-based control systems make a huge difference in the control of rail operations, and enable the sort of dynamic decision-making and contingency planning that was once the sole preserve of road transport. This has proved a deciding factor in the successful bid to attract highly time-sensitive commodities to rail such as clinical trials, fertility samples and human tissue.
The next step is to broaden the debate and start asking why we should not be making better use of existing resources and capacity to move freight quickly, cost effectively and sustainably. Nick refers to the practice adopted by airlines of converting aircraft for freight, but they also have flexible space arrangements whereby seats are removed to create freight space and replaced when required. It is gratifying that one UK company has developed a practical scheme to do just that on passenger trains, albeit with seats that fold up at the push of a button to create space at off-peak times and enable the trains to function as dual-mode passenger/freight vehicles or even pure freight - preferable to being parked up in a siding most of the day while HGVs and diesel vans slug up and down the motorways and create congestion and pollution in town and city centres.
The six million dollar question, though, is whether this technology is being (or will be) considered for the new rolling stock that will soon appear on key routes, or, true to form, will the UK leave it until it’s too late and somebody else has taken the prize from under our noses? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
