Peer review: Mary Bonar
Partner, First Class Partnerships
John Smith has made a worryingly strong case in support of his observation that there is, within Government, “a lack of understanding and experience of the economic realities of the rail freight industry”.
He talks about freight not having votes attached to it, and about fragmented transport planning decisions - citing the example of schemes to relieve the congested A14 that pay no attention to the degree that congestion is caused by lorries.
He also tells us that Rail Minister Clare Perry recently appealed to the rail freight industry for help in developing a better understanding within government of what infrastructure investment is required to support the Government and European policy to shift freight from road to rail.
In response, John has identified the new intermodal and aggregates markets that rail freight could exploit, which will require investment by the operators. But he points out that the rail freight industry often finds that attempts to shift more freight from road to rail are frustrated by lack of capacity, both infrastructure and paths. He has given specific examples of works that are required at Felixstowe and Southampton, and of other competition issues that need to be resolved.
This is obviously a difficult time for rail freight, as it feels the effects of the sudden changes in the global commodities markets in which GBRf has profitably invested up until now. We were probably all aware of the substantial closures and job losses in the UK steel industry without necessarily realising the knock-on effects for service providers such as rail freight.
The industry clearly needs to make its case more effectively and consistently during good times as well as bad. To be fair, the Rail Freight Group, Tony Berkeley and others in the House of Lords have been trying to do so for years, and publications such as RAIL and RailReview are alive to the issues. But these are specialist groups and publications, and the argument needs to be made and understood beyond the rail and transport sector.
When it comes to public sector transport investment, the tendency has been to focus on modes of transport and specifically road and rail, rather than starting with passenger and freight flows (both existing and predicted).
Ten years ago the Eddington Transport Study recommended: “The delivery chain for transport needs to adapt to changing demands; government should take a rigorous and systematic approach to policy making by focusing on objectives and high-return schemes rather than modes or technologies.”
Perhaps this will be more effective now that the Department for Transport has separate companies - Highways England focused on road and Network Rail focused on rail, and the Office of Rail and Road a potential overall regulator.
“There are no votes in freight” simply cannot be a deciding factor in 21st century Britain.
In a recent Independent Transport Commission paper, Devolution and Transport (http://www.theitc.org.uk), I argued that one of the unintended consequences of greater devolution within England is likely to be an impact on national networks and national services, as a consequence of more powerful devolved authorities focused on the economy of specific areas becoming bigger political players.
In the absence of a national transport strategy it is going to be increasingly difficult to balance local, regional and national needs, whether between passenger and freight or road, rail, air and sea.
Like John Smith, I am putting my hopes in the National Infrastructure Commission. It needs to be in a position to set and update (or at least to inspire) government to produce national strategies (and the rail freight industry will need to keep up the pressure for these to support modal shift from road to rail) that will be taken into account when planning and investment decisions are taken nationally, regionally and locally.
