Freight
Going off road
The volume of freight carried by rail has seen a 10 per cent increase over the last 10 years, despite the recession.Katie Silvester went to a Rail Freight Group reception to find out where freight operators – and their customers – see the future of rail freight heading
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ntermodal rail traffic in the UK has almost doubled since 2002 thanks to investment by the government and ports owners in infrastructure,
and investment in new rolling stock on the part of the operators. Rail freight as a whole is also improving its performance, with three quarters of trains arriving within 10 minutes of their booked time. The Rail Freight Group (RFG) is asking the government to address four key areas, in order for rail freight to expand further. These are:
• Keeping track access charges affordable – the RFG wants to see an end to proposals to raise changes
• An increase in the number of strategic rail freight interchanges, as recent planning applications have stalled
• Efficient links to ports, including the Channel Tunnel, with gauge clearance for high-cube containers and sufficient capacity to allow for future growth
• A structure for the rail industry that can accommodate freight, where vertical integration experiments will not exclude the carriage of goods
Tony Berkeley, chairman of the RFG,
spoke to representatives of freight customers, logistics companies, shipping lines and the media at a House of Lords reception, hosted by RFG and DB Schenker. ‘We need stability for investor confidence, which means we wouldn’t be very pleased if the government restructured the passenger railway, or
even worse, because of what’s happened on the West Coast. Let’s carry on running freight services, let’s carry on running passenger services. And we don’t want all the compensation that’s got to be paid to the bidders to be taken away from the rail freight budget. The passenger side should look after itself, we think.’ He continued: ‘We’re still waiting for
the ORR to tell us how much track access charges are going to be for the next five years. If you look at the difference between what we think is reasonable and the amount the ORR is thinking of slapping on the coal traffic, it’s £30-50m – actually rather less than the department will have to pay in compensation for the failed franchise bidders.’
One of the successes that the sector DECEMBER 2012 PAGE 41
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