Opinion Delivering the goods Chris MacRae
The Freight Transport Association has been working with its major retailer members on exploiting their potential for either making use of rail freight or expanding their current use
O
n Track, commissioned by FTA is a report detailing the experiences that eight major high street retailers have had in using rail freight as part of their logistics supply chains. Critically this publication emphasises what
retailers believe they need from the rail freight sector to enable them to make greater use of rail. The retailers contributing to the On Track report identified
a familiar but solvable list of factors that will help continue the growth in domestic inter-modal freight services. These are in effect the Agenda for More rail freight, a form of continuous improvement plan for attracting more retail rail freight:
• increased service frequency to match product lead times • more flexible timetables and service versatility • the ability to expand train capacity when needed • seven-day-a-week service to avoid spot road freight costs at weekends
• more rail freight terminals • temperature controlled containers, particularly for frozen food • pooling of loads to create viable train loads • faster processing of new train paths • continuous improvement to reduce costs and maintain competitiveness
• improved visibility of costs to assist partnership working • continued government funding and grant support • consistent measure of environmental benefits of rail
At the same time, FTA has been leading a project with retailers
on sharing road-based retail freight distribution origin and destination data. This has been published on an anonymised basis on FTA’s Mode Shift Centre website and is the first step in seeking to facilitate the matching of loads on similar journeys that could potentially be aggregated into freight train traffic. This is set against the background of the UK coalition
government’s desire under its Big Society agenda to be less directly involved in mode shift work itself but rather for industry and its representatives to lead this. For balance, it must be said that the Scottish government
is taking a more hands-on approach; organising seminars and workshops on mode shift, involving FTA and other freight trade associations as well as road and rail freight hauliers, logistics service providers and shippers. FTA’s Rail Freight Council comprises the different parties to the rail freight supply chain from shippers, to logistics service providers, rail freight operators, terminal operators and Network Rail. The council is now moving to a more shipper focused agenda and looking to deliver on the areas where retail shippers would see improvement to facilitate greater use of rail freight. The themes of On Track were focused on during FTA’s recent
Rail Freight Council meeting, which reviewed the state of the rail freight market along with developments of interest to shippers over the next 12 – 24 months. The meeting included online brokerage FreightArranger presenting on its new rail freight
Page 32 September 2013
brokerage service for shippers. This provides a ‘search – quote – book’ facility for freight services, with online tracking capability. FreightArranger acts as a ‘travel agent’ for freight customers on existing services. Network Rail presented on its Freight Market Study, with the final version of this taking into account the Track Access Charges Review in NR’s Draft Determination on Control Period 5. The study is based on the MDS Great Britain Freight Model and is designed to inform investment decisions in the rail network for freight in Control Period 6 (2019 – 2024). Importantly, deep sea ports’ intermodal and domestic
intermodal traffic are both forecast to grow in tonne/km to 2030. Electricity supply industry coal is forecast to decline, though biomass is forecast to increase as the UK’s energy supply mix changes. Rail’s total market share is forecast to grow from 10-11 per cent to 16 per cent by 2033. FTA remains keen to ensure that there is no underestimation of the hard work required on service innovation and cost reduction in achieving growth in rail market modal share, particularly for domestic intermodal. Picking up on the themes of the Agenda for More, FTA is developing a rail freight performance study. This study is a work in progress comprising three elements: FTA’s online survey of shippers and logistics service providers; FTA’s Quarterly Transport Activity Survey; and Network Rail’s Freight Performance metric which will be a Control Period 5 regulatory measure. Early indications from FTA’s survey work show that while rail freight’s reliability compares well for customers with other modes, customers still want to see more flexibility and innovation in services.
Freight access charging a concern
The outcomes for freight access charging of the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) Draft Determination on Periodic Review 13 are also an issue of current concern. While the actual increases are not as bad as originally proposed, the principles of increasing charges and of targeting selected traffics such as coal and iron ore on the basis of their inelasticity is worrying. The message that this has sent and the uncertainty in the process has risked freight customer confidence. FTA actions on this have included seeking legal advice and meeting with the head of Unit of EC DG MOVE (EC directorate-general for Mobility and Transport). FTA has also raised the matter in a meeting with the Secretary of State for Transport. In a similar vein, the EC reasoned opinion on Channel Tunnel access charges – the first step in potential infraction proceedings – follows FTA lobbying of EC DG MOVE with a report commissioned by the Association showing negative effects of high freight charges on freight traffic growth. Those interested in participating in the work of Rail Freight Council as a member of FTA should contact the Secretary Chris
MacRae
cmacrae@fta.co.uk • FTA’s Mode Shift Centre can be accessed at
www.modeshiftcentre.org On Track can be downloaded at:
www.fta.co.uk
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