Paul’s interesting article looks well beyond the railway sphere we are used to and into the larger world of logistics. As the introduction into a series of reports on the wider transport environment, it has certainly whetted the appetite to see where rail can enhance a competitive edge or where it needs to ‘up its game’.
Arguably, the movement of freight becomes much more important than the movement of people. People can transmit ideas, documents and money by electronic means, whereas physical goods still need to be transported from their place(s) of production to their place of use or point of sale. Distribution systems using the road network have become the main method for moving goods, with many manufacturers and retail companies having ‘standard form’ haulage agreements with which they contract with road hauliers. These agreements set the minimum standards for the services they require, which is particularly important in the world of ‘just in time’ delivery. They dictate the collection times that suit their warehouses and the delivery times that work for their stores or their customers. These companies can also have an input into the environmental effects of their delivery systems, such as specifying minimum engine cleanliness through the ‘Euro’ standards.
Compare this with the rail system, where train paths have to be applied for and primarily have to fit around passenger services. Road freight is based on pallet or roller trolley sizes, which are relatively easy to load and can be manoeuvred by a single person. Rail freight primarily works on trainloads and container loads, and (as Tony Berkeley points out) this is an area where rail needs to change dramatically in order to compete with road. Some experiments in carrying small amounts of freight on passenger trains have made the headlines, but this does not provide real competition to the thousands of lorry journeys on Britain’s roads every day.
Planning for freight distribution centres has been a slow and painful process, and one that the rail industry needs to improve on. There is still a need to develop a comprehensive network of rail freight centres which can match the distribution networks of the major retailers and manufacturers. There needs to be a system to send roller trolley loads from the main warehouse to be placed on fast electric/bi-mode freight trains that can run to similar speeds as passenger trains and connect into city centre-based distribution centres. Here the trolleys can be unloaded and the goods taken to either the relevant shops or the homes of the people who ordered the goods, probably by electric vans but in certain cases by cycle courier. The issue then becomes the speed at which the loads delivered by train at the distribution centres can be quickly and efficiently moved around the city. At what point will Uber or Deliveroo be providing freight deliveries?
There is already talk of technology being used to ‘platoon’ groups of lorries so that they can travel along motorways closer together, but by using a number of connected carriages on a railway line, the distance between the vehicles is even shorter! The key is reducing the connection time, making for a relatively seamless movement between modes. This is not just the preserve of passengers wanting to move between car, train, bus or tram.
The terms on which movement of goods can be undertaken will be a key factor. Major retailers and manufacturers are used to dictating the terms for delivery, so rail freight operators will need to meet at least some of the retailers’ key requirements. This is likely to also apply to the final mile delivery system. With the developing ‘gig’ economy, there is more scope for the sellers to set the terms under which goods are delivered and to be able to change the people supplying the local distribution network if they are not pleased with the results.
While Professor Powrie suggests generating new patterns of housing and employment to drag people away from too much use of transport, the UK’s transport links have been built up over hundreds of years. Railways often followed the routes of canals, and later major roads followed the routes of railways. Changing the methods of freight distribution within a city region is a more likely achievement than changing the freight routes which supply that city region. However, with some determination and planning, increasing the modal shift from road to rail is definitely possible.
On the passenger side, the one area that was not really touched upon was whether there should be more pressure on people not to travel, particularly over longer distances. Should there be more pressure for connectivity and the establishment of virtual offices? With the growth of AI, if we look 20 years into the future and take a radical approach, how many of the existing jobs in manufacturing, for example, will actually require humans to be present?
While there is comment that autonomous vehicles disrupt the status quo, as they take away rail’s benefit of being able to work while on the move, the majority of rail trips are commutes to work or school on routes where trains provide the greatest density of passenger movement. There would be insufficient space on the roads for all people travelling in trains to be travelling in autonomous pods, even if they were running much closer together. That’s even before the debate as to how fast pods should be able to travel safely - more an engineering function of size, than what would be a reasonable speed at which to travel.
Add to this Dr Niblett’s observations that city centres are becoming increasingly pedestrianised, and the conclusion is that road vehicle use will become restricted. Indeed, the experiments on the use of shared space streets and the ‘Twenty is Plenty’ speed reduction campaigns have shown that vehicle movements are being made more subject to the needs of pedestrians.
Rather than looking at autonomous vehicles as a new enemy, the concept should be embraced as part of the overall journey. Much as people see their car or the bus as part of their journey to the railway station to catch the train, they can swap this for a journey in an autonomous vehicle. At the other end, there will still be the choice of bus, bike, taxi (Uber or otherwise), walking or another autonomous vehicle. The important part will be to tie in each leg of the journey.
A by-product of the arrival of autonomous vehicles is that there will not be such a need for car parks at stations - just a small area for drop-off and pick-up. So what would we do with the car parks that are no longer needed? In an ideal world they could then become the distribution centres for all that new roller-trolley and pallet freight that is to be brought onto rail. Too far-fetched? Maybe, but unless you start to look a little outside the box, you’ll never know!
In answer to Paul’s initial question “What is Transport For?”, I believe it is for creating an effective delivery service. As such we should be looking at how best to use new technology to help us achieve this.
