COMMENT
ronmental impact. Calls to simply “widen the existing railway” rather than build HS2 have a more than hollow ring when you start to look at that option in any detail. And it just doesn’t deliver the benefits.
And, most of all, patch-and-mend upgrad- ing only buys time. What our European competitors have already amply proved is that it’s better to break out of this conun- drum altogether and build completely new lines. And, if you go to the expense of new lines, then you build them for high speed. A conventional-speed line would cost almost as much as a high-speed one. And a new high-speed line then enables you to lift-off most of the non-stop services from the clas- sic network, leaving the latter free for semi- fast services, regional and cross-country links, stopping trains, vital commuter ser- vices, and freight.
Good for goods
Building a new line is a far-sighted in- vestment in the UK’s infrastructure. For too long, we have looked at our transport problems and hoped that perhaps they would somehow go away, maybe magically healing themselves like a wound. High fuel prices will price-off demand? The internet will reduce travel? The recession will slash demand? Videoconferencing will eliminate all need for business travel?
Well, the arrival of the telephone in Victo- rian times certainly didn’t end the demand for travel. Indeed, there are cogent argu- ments that improved electronic commu- nications will actually help to bind regions and nations ever closer together, and that this latter process will increase the demand for travel, not reduce it. And the recent high cost of fuel doesn’t yet seemed to have had much impact on our overloaded mo- torways.
Patch and mend
Rail thus faces a new challenge, one that it hasn’t faced since World War II – how to squeeze much more passengers and freight onto the system.
We have already seen how upgrading ex- isting lines (the now-infamous West Coast Route Modernisation) costs huge sums and, whilst delivering significant benefits, causes immense disruption during imple- mentation. Never again should we con- template messing-up one of Britain’s most important rail arteries for a decade and a half. Passengers don’t like it, freight won’t have it, and premium traffic such as mails is simply lost to rail altogether.
There is also considerable negative envi-
And, be it noted, High Speed 2 is not just about passenger, it really is about freight too. At the present time, the vast major- ity of our long-distance freight moves by road, and only a small proportion by rail. So there is what might be described as a gearing effect when freight switches from road to rail.
And this is particularly the case for traffics such as consumer goods. Think of it like this. If, say, some 95% of consumer goods goes by road and 5% by rail, then rail’s role is marginal, and the rail traffic can proba- bly be squeezed in between stopping trains on the slow lines, or run at night. But if, say, the road figure falls to 85%, and rail’s share consequently rises to 15%, then that repre- sents a dramatic tripling of rail consumer- goods traffic.
And this is exactly what is likely to happen, as the big retailers and manufacturers find that their lorries are increasingly mired in some tailback near Luton or Sandbach or wherever. The retailers and distributers – Tesco is a leader amongst them – are find- ing that modern rail freight is fast, reliable and brings low-carbon benefits. Providing that distributional warehouses are railside- located, and provided transhipping costs can be kept to a minimum at regional hubs, more and more of these goods will switch to rail, increasing vital logistics reliability whilst removing heavy lorries and cutting carbon emissions.
If this is to occur, then clearly track space needs to be made available on the rail net- work for freight. But this won’t happen easily when passenger traffic continues to grow at the rate it has been doing.
Euro freight
The construction of HS2 also will of course be to European-gauge clearance stand- ards. Now, no-one is suggesting slotting- in international freight services onto HS2 in between the large number of passenger services that will operate. But there might, just might, be the opportunity to run a few premium international freights at the close of the day, after the last departures from London, Manchester or Leeds at, say, 2100 and the essential maintenance shutdown between midnight and 0500.
If so, then international rail freight servic- es running to and from mainland Europe - particularly France, Germany, Italy and Spain - will become very much more com- petitive, making use of fast transit times and higher-payload continental wagons.
And linking Europe’s freight network into deep-UK territory, bringing with it stand- ard Euro wagons, will open up a new UK market for the repair or construction of such wagons. Could we even see standard Italian or French rail wagons being built in Yorkshire or the West Midlands? Why not?
So there are very many reasons to welcome the HS2 proposals, and few reasons to fear them. Of course every effort must be made to protect the amenity of the beautiful countryside in the Chilterns and Warwick- shire. And proper compensation must be paid to those who lose tranquillity or land- scape quality. But we really cannot afford to stand still, to say “no” to HS2 and to just muddle along in a sort of transport ver- sion of a world heritage site, congratulat- ing ourselves on having invented railways in the first place but failing to notice that the leading countries of Western Europe have long since left us far behind when it comes to the development of 21st-century railways.
Every half-century or so, there is a revo- lution in communications - the first canal age, the first railway age, the motorways, the jet airlines. Now, in the 21st century, as Jimmy Savile might almost have said, “This is the Age of the (High Speed) Train!” And of the fast bulk freight train that will run on the released capacity on the clas- sic network.
And,
just maybe, an age of new opportunities for Britain’s remain- ing trainbuilders to really grasp.
E:
david.throwerwarrington@
ntlworld.com David Thrower
FOR MORE INFORMATION rail technology magazine Aug/Sep 11 | 29
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