Peer review: Mary Bonar
Consultant, Bevan Brittan LLP
Maggie Simpson has provided a comprehensive update on the different sectors and needs of the industrial and retail market interested in putting their raw materials and goods on rail.
The underlying message is that the commercial organisations have (in most cases) plenty of choice of mode and even location. They are driven by cost and efficiency. It is for our politicians and society, not merely the rail freight operators, to understand the benefits of putting more freight on rail and to make the offering sufficiently attractive.
A 6% increase in tonnes-km moved by rail last year sounds impressive. Linking this to the number of road (lorry) miles saved would be a useful measure in explaining to politicians and voters the wider benefits of increasing freight on rail. It’s one of the areas where more needs to be done - for example, to help sell the benefits of HS2 to people who get all the disadvantages of the line disrupting their area, but none of the direct benefits.
The rail freight market (like the road freight market) is completely different to the passenger market - the freight customer nearly always has an obvious alternative in using road haulage, or in specific cases of changing the location and country of its operations..
This brings the key issues that Maggie Simpson has identified into focus. The underlying point, one that I agree with, is that there is still a long way to go to make the way the UK rail network is regulated and operated sufficiently attractive to make a real impact in getting freight off our roads and onto rail.
In 2007 the Office of Rail Regulation held a consultation into track access options, and a policy was issued in January 2008.
Most of the organisations that took part were interested in the freight market, but the main immediate output was the Crossrail Track Access Option. The policy does, however, provide an answer to the question of how a port or freight facilities developer could ensure that paths are available for the use of the facility to underwrite the return on investment. This is conditional upon there being sufficient capacity on the Network Rail network.
The market changes identified suggest that it is time for the regulator to look again at this policy, as well as monitoring and enforcing the delivery of the efficiency targets it has just set for 2014 to 2019.
